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On May 26, 2024, South Korean media outlet My Daily News reported that webtoon artist and Youtuber Lee Byung-Geon had filed a petition to the Seoul Central District Court against Min Hee-Jin's removal as CEO of ADOR. The Korean webtoon artist is popularly known by his pseudonym, Lee Mal-Nyeon, or “Chim Chak Man" (which means "Calm Man").
However, since he used his alias to file the petition and the name was also misspelled on the court document, fans were confused about whether or not the webtoon artist actually filed the petition in favor of the ADOR CEO.
As a clarification, in a new video he posted, he said:
“It is true that I submitted a petition. There is a suspicion that I wrote the petition as 'Lee Byung-Geon' because I wanted to write it in a lazy way and didn't want to get caught. I don’t know why it was written incorrectly, but I think it happened during the transfer process." (as reported by My Daily and auto-translated by Google Translate).
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YouTuber Lee Mal-Nyeon speaks in support of Min Hee-Jin
In his video, Lee Mal-Nyeon aka Lee Byung-Geon also expressed his thoughts and why he opposed CEO Min Hee-Jin's termination in his petition. He elaborated that he could see how passionate and proud she was of her work, adding that the bond she had with NewJeans and their parents is commendable.
This brings attention to the fact that NewJeans had filed a petition in support of the ADOR CEO on May 18, 2024, however, the content of the petition is yet unknown. Furthermore, the parents and legal guardians of NewJeans members also sent a letter to HYBE Corporation and expressed their wish that NewJeans and Min Hee-Jin both should stay together and work alongside HYBE.
Meanwhile, My Daily reported that during his livestream, Lee Mal-Nyeon responded to rumors that he signed the petition in an attempt to win brownie points from CEO Min Hee-Jin. He expressed that he disliked being involved in major controversies and that he didn't think anything like a petition needed to be taken into account if he strongly didn't support her.
He clarified that the misspelling of his name on the petition cannot be seen as identity theft since the petition must be filed with a copy of one's government-issued identity card. Although he said he didn't know why his name was spelled incorrectly, he did affirm that it was, in fact, him.
Lee Mal-Nyeon is regarded as one of South Korea's top webtoon cartoonists and was an exclusive at Naver prior to the webtoons' decline in popularity in 2018. He is popular for his distinctive style of drawing faces and bodies on a black-and-white background before switching to the finer details.
For the uninitiated, HYBE Corporation—the parent company of ADOR—conducted an internal audit investigation and acquired evidence of Min Hee-Jin's alleged attempt to take over the company, illegally trading business secrets, allegedly conspiring with a foreign investor to buy shares from HYBE in order to gain full control of ADOR, and more.
Since HYBE owns 80% of ADOR's shares, it filed an FIR against the CEO and Vice President of ADOR and called for an immediate shareholders' meeting scheduled for May 31, 2024. In response, Min Hee-jin filed an injunction at the court to restrict HYBE from exercising its voting rights in her removal from the label's CEO position.
The first hearing was held on May 17 at the Seoul Central District Court, where additional evidence was unearthed, which were not in favor of the ADOR CEO. Reportedly, KakaoTalk screenshots submitted to HYBE showed her allegedly discussing meeting with Dunamu and Naver and planning on purposefully crashing HYBE's shares in the market.
Additionally, in her chats, she reportedly badmouthed her female employees and NewJeans members. Furthermore, evidence also revealed Min Hee-Jin intended to terminate NewJeans' contract with HYBE, which would have cost ADOR over $27 billion to $39.5 billion.
In other news, NewJeans released How Sweet and Bubble Gum on May 24, 2024. They performed at the Korea University Music Festival on May 25 as part of their college music festival performance tour.
