Belift Lab denies ILLIT ignored NewJeans' Hanni who is set to appear before National Assembly 

The widening rift between Korean entertainment agency HYBE, and NewJeans and former ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin continued, this time about an issue involving rookie K-pop group ILLIT. 

During a YouTube live broadcast on Sept. 11, NewJeans demanded HYBE to reinstate Min Hee-jin as CEO of ADOR. 

During the same broadcast, Hanni said she heard a manager telling a HYBE artist to ignore her greetings. She did not name the artist but netizens guessed that it was ILLIT. 

ILLIT and NewJeans' Hanni (X, Instagram)

NewJeans failed to reinstate Min Hee-jin as ADOR CEO after the Sept. 25 deadline they set for HYBE lapsed. 

Hanni has been invited as one of the reference persons and witnesses by the South Korean National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee’s state audit on workplace bullying on Oct. 15. 

On Oct. 9, Hanni revealed that she has decided to appear and go to the National Assembly state audit. The National Assembly is Korea’s legislature. 

Belift Lab, the agency of ILLIT, issued an English version of a statement regarding an Ilgan Sports article about the ILLIT-Hanni greeting issue on Oct. 10. 

Here is the full statement of Belift Lab about the issue: 

Our Statement on the Oct 7 Article by Ilgan Sports 

Hello, This is BELIFT LAB. 

We would like to address the article published by Ilgan Sports on October 7. 

We strongly urge an end to the unfounded controversies that seek to damage the reputation of our newly debuted artist, including the baseless claims surrounding the ‘greeting’ issue and the absurd plagiarism allegations. 

The protocol team (manager) of ILLIT did not make the comment ‘Ignore them’ in reference to NewJeans members. 

Additionally, the members of ILLIT have never passed by NewJeans members without greeting them. 

This has been confirmed through investigations conducted on June 13, the day the parents of NewJeans raised the issue. After reviewing surveillance footage and consulting with relevant staff and artists, it was verified that the two groups crossed paths for only about five minutes on May 27 at the HYBE building. 

The footage shows ILLIT members exiting the elevator and bowing at a 90-degree angle to NewJeans member HANNI, who was standing in front of the elevator. 

When this footage was reviewed with the then-CEO Min Hee-jin on August 14, she argued that the moment the ILLIT members failed to greet NewJeans occurred just after the relevant clip was captured. 

She insisted that there must be additional footage to back her claim. However, the security company explained that obtaining further footage was impossible, as the request was made beyond the 30-day retention period for surveillance footage. Former CEO Min has since claimed that HYBE has discarded the footage by design.

It's important to emphasize that her claim regarding the alleged remark, ‘Ignore them,’ is not aligned with the facts. Our protocol team is instructed to treat all artist groups with respect and to speak in honorifics when addressing them. 

Moreover, while she asserts that the surveillance camera had captured the moment when a staff member made the comment and that it was deleted, this argument is flawed since CCTV cameras do not record audio. 

Ever since this issue was raised, we at BELIFT LAB have participated in the investigation with sincerity and good faith, knowing that we have always asked our artists to treat the artists of other labels with respect and courtesy. 

However, despite the explanations we provided upon request, unverifiable new claims have continued to surface. Consequently, this fabricated issue has now escalated to the point of being addressed during the National Assembly's national inspection. 

At this juncture, we can only question the motives behind these actions. In an effort to protect our employees, who are in a more vulnerable position compared to artists accustomed to public attention, we have refrained from publicly discussing this matter until now. 

However, as continued efforts are made to portray a fictitious event as fact, the relevant staff have expressed severe emotional distress and a profound sense of being unjustly accused. In matters like this-where a simple greeting between labels should have been resolved in good faith, out of the public's eye-there is only one true victim: the protocol team staff, who is being wrongly targeted. 

Since this issue was first raised, we have sent two official responses to ADOR, one in August and another in September. We requested the prevention of further incidents and an official apology from ADOR after a member of NewJeans publicly mentioned the matter during a live broadcast. 

Unfortunately, ADOR has not responded to our requests. Going forward, if this issue continues to harm the reputation of our staff, artists, or company, and disrupt our business operations, we wish to make it clear that we will take all necessary measures to address it appropriately.

June 13 NewJeans Raised the Issue 

After being informed of this incident in writing, we conducted a thorough face-to-face investigation by addressing the matter with the artists and staff at BELIFT LAB. Through this process, we confirmed that the alleged remark was not made. 

To further verify the facts, we proactively requested HYBE to review the surveillance footage. Since the written document did not specify an exact date for the incident, we reviewed all footage from May 14 to June 13, focusing on the areas where ILLIT members were within the HYBE building. 

On the footage from May 27, we identified a single encounter between ILLIT and NewJeans. The video shows ILLIT members bowing at a 90-degree angle to NewJeans as they exited the elevator and entered the styling room. We obtained a copy of this footage. 

June 19 Shared Our Findings with NewJeans 

Based on our investigation, we held a face-to-face meeting with the newly appointed ADOR executives and the parents of NewJeans members. During this meeting, we shared that the BELIFT LAB employee had not made the remarks or engaged in the actions claimed by NewJeans members. 

August 14 Reviewed the Surveillance Footage Again in the Presence of the Relevant Parties 

The issue was raised again later by NewJeans. In response, ADOR and BELIFT LAB obtained consent from both groups and reviewed the incident that took place on May 27. 

When we reviewed the footage from May 27, ADOR argued that the scene in question must have occurred after the clip we reviewed. Both parties then contacted the security company, which informed us that the footage beyond that point could not be retrieved as it had exceeded its 30-day retention period. 

(The article published by Ilgan Sports does not directly mention BELIFT LAB or ILLIT. However, the actual names are referenced in this statement, as the artists involved have already been identified in online discussions.) 

The statement by Belift Lab, the agency of ILLIT (X)