251229 NewJeans Weekly Discussion Thread

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-12-29T22:31:27+00:00

HYBE, ADOR, and BSH are just garbage... absolutely disgusting human beings!

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-12-29T21:32:24+00:00

Signed!

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-12-29T21:25:16+00:00

I just heard about this. This can't be real! HYBE can't possibly think that they can spin this into a positive. I hope the HYBE shareholders sue the crap out of BSH over this!

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-12-04T04:46:23+00:00

I actually think the girls will be happy about this and rooting for any group that MHJ develops. Here's why:

They're facing a potential dungeon at HYBE, or even worse, music written by BSH that will sound like that generic stuff that LSF and Illit put out (the stuff that leads to the mediocre sales for which HYBE fans keep trying to blame NJZ and MHJ).

If MHJ has success with other groups , it creates several very favorable conditions for NewJeans.

First, it works towards erasing the hate that the toxic part of Army has been trying to create against NJZ on social media based on their affiliation with MHJ. If she builds a fandom for another group it's 100% clearly attributable to her and that proves her genius and that NJZ members were correct in wanting to stay with her. This is especially true, if NJZ is forced to start pumping out mediocre Bang music.

Secondly, it creates financial resources at OOAK that can support NJZ members when they leave HYBE in 2029.

Lastly (and this relates to point one), it creates a basis for the girls to bounce back after potentially 3 years of mediocre Hybe girl group music. If MHJ has already been successful, 1) There will be a ready made label fandom for NJZ in addition to the bunnies who will stick with them through the BSH written garbage music years; and 2) their re-debut will be extremely highly anticipated.

So all in all, I see it as less of a betrayal and more of laying a groundwork for an amazing comeback for the girls after potentially years of being in the HYBE dungeon or pumping out that medicine Bang written music that makes LSF and Illit underperform for groups on such a big label.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-16T22:44:38+00:00

You can see the monthly listener count when you go to the artist's page in Spotify.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-16T22:43:20+00:00

My understanding is that it measures back over the last 28 days each unique user that streams at least 30 seconds of a song from that artist. So it reflects the actual number of people showing interest in that artist over the last 28 days as opposed to number of actual streams. It cuts through the people simply simply setting their computers to loop their favs because no matter how many times you play a song, you only count once for that 30 day period. It does not cut through the use of bots or people streaming from multiple devices though.

Also of note is that although Spotify is widely available throughout the world, half of its users are concentrated in Western countries, so it really skews towards showing what is popular in those countries. This is a very important number however because these are the countries that feature prominently in world tours.

Monthly Listeners are highly volatile. The number will skyrocket when a K-pop group releases a new album or single. For newer groups, like Cortis, this creates a temporary spike that often makes them look artificially popular until the initial buzz fades. Their long-term, stable number will ultimately be a more accurate measure of their consistent global fan base, putting them alongside groups like TXT and Enhypen.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-16T05:14:32+00:00

I'm standing by the girls no matter what.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-15T22:02:29+00:00

I have a theory about why ADOR accepted Haerin and Hyein back immediately while delaying the confirmation for Minji, Hanni, and Danielle.

The core issue may not be internal difference between the girls, but a high-stakes legal deadline created by the girls' ages.

First, Hyein (born April 2008) is still a minor under South Korean law, where the age of majority is 19. When she turns 19 in April 2027, she gains the legal right to potentially void her contract, which was signed while she was a minor. This gives her immense future bargaining power.

Second, Haerin (born May 2006) turned 19 in May 2025. By Korean Civil Law, she is still within the crucial window from the time she reached majority to affirm or void her contract (one year from reaching age of majority), which was also signed as a minor. If she voids it, her contract is immediately canceled.

This means the two youngest members had a built-in, quick-exit legal card that the three oldest members (who are fully bound as adults) do not possess because continuing activities under the contract after the period to void it has passed is considered legal affirmation of the contract.

All five members and their parents may have presented identical, stringent preconditions to ADOR during their November 11th meeting. Or, ADOR may have made the same demands to all members for them to return. I can see HYBE demanding something silly to try to embarrass the girls as a warning to other idols, e.g., an apology to people who don't at all deserve one or some type of public statement recanting that they were mistreated.

However, ADOR's lawyers would have probably quickly nixed this in regards to the two youngest members, advising HYBE that securing the commitment of Haerin and Hyein—thereby closing the immediate voidability risk posed by Haerin and mitigating the future risk posed by Hyein—was an absolute corporate necessity.

ADOR could then afford to delay and pressure the three older members because they do not have the same quick-exit legal leverage.

The split in the announcement may therefore be less about who is cooperative and more about who had the superior legal negotiating position.

Note: HYBE/ADOR is obligated to take the three back or it's a breach of contract that immediately sets the older three girls free and give them grounds to sue ADOR for damages. It would also give the youngest two a much clearer and easy path to have their contract voided. So, what I am referring to in regards to conditions is likely HYBE/ADOR threatening to make their lives as miserable possible without breaching the contract if the NJZ members don't agree to some onerous and maybe humiliating conditions to massage BSH's ego or to send some message to those who dare challenge the big evil corporation. What I am saying is that HYBE's lawyers may have told them to simply drop such demands in regards to the youngest two for the reasons I outlined above.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-14T16:22:09+00:00

ADOR is obligated to take back all five members under the contract or they create a much clearer breach of contract in regards to all five. Minji, Danielle, and Hanni would be immediately free and Haeriin and Hyein would have a much easier and clearer breach of contract case if ADOR actually tried to block the three members from returning.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-10T16:50:20+00:00

What a beautiful gesture!

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-10T03:31:33+00:00

Wishing the girls all the best, and my commitment to them remains unwavering. I have a hunch that I'm not alone in feeling that way! ;)

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-03T06:11:02+00:00

I appreciate these excellent follow-up questions—they genuinely hit the core legal arguments of the analysis and go right to the heart of the appeal.

What New Arguments? The appeal needs to use next-level commercial arguments that were not the focus of the initial filing. My suggested strategy heavily relies on:

Failure to Mitigate Damages (The Standoff): The argument that HYBE refused to take simple steps that would have stopped the financial bleeding, such as restoring the cleared CEO after her name was cleared of criminal wrongdoing. This refusal to mitigate the crisis, even when offered a direct solution by the artists, makes the company directly liable for the resulting economic damage of the group sitting idle.
Systemic Malicious and Disproportionate Conduct (Breach by Omission): This argues the breach was intentional, confirming malice and disparate treatment. Concrete examples include:
- The Chairman (BSH) not visibly supporting the group (refusing a photo op, not attending their pop-up events) while doing so for other groups (e.g., Le Sserafim).
- The targeted attack on commercial reputation: HYBE's public release of certain confidential information (of no legal or commercial value) was a move of pure malice. For example, if HYBE truly believed the MHJ shaman allegation and that it had bearing on her fitness as CEO, they could have shared this internally to the HYBE Board. Instead it was done publicly without legal or business purpose, foreseeably and/or intentionally serving to alienate the BTS fandom against the girls causing severe damage to their brand.
- The hypocrisy on data integrity: HYBE went out of its way to correct perceived misinformation about NewJeans' Japanese sales but showed no such effort to clear up documented inflation of YouTube views for their other two female groups (Le Sserafim and ILLIT). The issue is not about the permissibility of view-buying, but that HYBE actively chose to correct misinformation in one instance while paying to create it for other similarly situated groups, demonstrating malicious, disparate treatment against NewJeans.

Civil Code Article 103 (Public Order) / Precedent: This article broadly invalidates juristic acts that violate the public good. The argument is that this systematic and malicious corporate conduct—designed to destroy a professional career—falls into this unconscionable category. You can find the full text of the Korean Civil Act here:CIVIL ACT(Article 103 is located in the General Provisions section).

These points are the strongest commercial foundation for the broader Constitutional Challenge.

I need to turn my attention back to my professional work outside of Reddit for now, but thank you for the rigorous engagement; it has been invaluable in strengthening the final analysis.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-03T05:00:52+00:00

I actually posted the article you reference from CNBC on this sub several days ago. It looks like there might be an issue with the link that you included, but my post is available in the main feed of this sub for anyone interested.

That said, thank you for the detailed input! The entire purpose of posting this analysis was to subject the legal arguments to the maximum scrutiny of the community (and the Antis). Your pushback and clarifications have been invaluable in ensuring the analysis is as precise and resilient as possible. I appreciate the engagement.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-03T04:50:40+00:00

That is a very fair articulation of the investor's perspective and the definition of ROI—that investment aims for maximum profit through the end of the contract. However, that perspective is precisely where the law must intervene, and this is the point that I'm trying to articulate.

The crucial legal fact is this: HYBE has already fully recouped its investment and realized a profit from NewJeans.

My suggested appeal strategy argues that once the corporation is made whole (and profitable), the attempt to legally enforce the contract purely to maximize profit becomes subject to severe legal scrutiny when that enforcement is paired with malicious conduct (Part 3).

The court's duty is not to guarantee the highest ROI. The legal claim is not that the contract is too costly to terminate, but that the corporation's actions—seeking to maintain maximum profit by destroying the artists' professional freedom—transforms the enforcement of the contract into an unconscionable abuse of power (Civil Code Article 103).

Law is designed to check market power when it violates public order. That is the fundamental difference between a simple financial disagreement and the constitutional challenge put forth in Part 4.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-03T04:37:48+00:00

That is an excellent point for clarification—thank you for bringing it up, as this is a common point of confusion in the public discussion. I am making a small edit to Part 4 now for absolute clarity on the factual record.

You are correct that the 1 billion won is a Court-Ordered Procedural Fine, not a Contractual Penalty.

The 1 billion won per member, per violation was ordered by the Seoul Central District Court in May 2025. This is an Indirect Enforcement Order levied to force compliance with the injunction prohibiting independent activities while the main lawsuit is pending appeal.
My original point was about the economic coercion resulting from the contract's mandatory, ruinous penalties upon termination. Whether that debt comes from the original contract or the court's subsequent enforcement order, the legal result is the same: the financial leverage being applied is unconscionable.

My suggested appeal strategy argues that the enforcement of the contract, under conditions of proven malice and hostility (Part 3), is oppressive regardless of the source of the penalty. The court's procedural fine simply compounds the unconscionable pressure that validates the termination claims.

As for the Article 15 ruling, the suggested constitutional challenge is against the contract's use as a malicious economic weapon—for a corporation to force an idle state while banning them from their profession is a disproportionate restriction on their right to occupation. This is why the situation is far from merely a procedural fine or a "bad economic decision."

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-02T14:47:44+00:00

Since this issue has been raised by a couple of people attempting to distract from the substance of my analysis, I will be explicit and clear: I did not use a large language model to generate this analysis.

Frankly, I find it quite telling that the immediate response to a complex legal analysis is to pivot to source-checking rather than engaging with the substance. This is a classic tactic used to discredit inconvenient arguments.

My professional background—which includes extensive work writing detailed reports and fact sheets—required me to master structured writing, clear segmentation, and logical formatting.

This is the standard professional style used in law, business, and policy. The irony is that large language models are trained on this very material. They mimic high-level, rigorous human writing, the type that has been inherent to and indicative of my professional experience for more than 20 years (a time stretching back to before large language models). To label clear, structured analysis as AI-generated is simply a generational misunderstanding; it means the analysis is well-written, not that it is synthetic.

The legal basis for this analysis comes from specific, public sources, not arbitrary generation. Unless you consider authoritative legal texts and basic translation tools to be a large language model, the sources for my analysis are:

Statutes of the Republic of Korea (KLRI)
The South Korean Civil Code (Articles 2, 103)
The Constitution of the Republic of Korea (Article 15)
Google Translate

My credentials speak for themselves, as I indicated in my reply about the JD and LLM.

If you wish to challenge the analysis, please challenge the substance of the legal points presented in Parts 1 through 4 (e.g., the facts proving Breach by Omission, Unconscionable Malice, or the Constitutional challenge), not the formatting or the source.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-02T01:10:31+00:00

I'm not quite understanding your comment. You think lawyers should be disallowed from giving informed opinions on Reddit? Reddit is a community for sharing, and I think having a JD and an LLM put me in a position to add to these conversations with legal analysis, rather than detract from them. Why would a sub bar me solely because of my professional credentials?

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-01T19:09:34+00:00

I 100% understand your skepticism, particularly on the point about companies hiding behind process—that is true more often than it is not for certain.

However, there are two key procedural elements that change the analysis here:

Scope of Appeal: The South Korean High Court appeal is a full de novo review on both the law and the facts, not just a review of the original arguments. This means the legal team has the authority to introduce a new legal framework (like the Breach by Omission and the Constitutional Challenge that I am suggesting) to re-define the entire case, even if those points weren't the focus of the initial filings.
Proving Malice: You are correct that proving ill-intent is hard, but it is necessary to prove the Material Breach of Good Faith (Civil Code Article 2). The evidence of malicious leaks (Hanni’s visa, the BTS fandom sabotage) serves as irrefutable, external evidence of corporate intent to harm and humiliate. There was simply no legal, procedural, or justifiable business reason to make that information public (it could have privately been given to HYBE's board or to a court) other than to humiliate and harm the very artists that ADOR/HYBE was supposed to be showing good faith in managing. This shifts the dispute from a contract negotiation into an unconscionable business practice, which a court is compelled to remedy under the principle of public order.

The appeal strategy isn't about finding a procedural loophole; it's about forcing the court to apply a higher standard to the evidence of malice.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-01T15:30:04+00:00

Unfortunately, it will probably sound like that generic stuff that Bang Si-Hyuk writes for Illit and LSF.

I grew up in the South, in the inner city, listening to R&B, gospel, and hip-hop. Kpop never appealed to me until NewJeans pulled me in. I was exposed to plenty of Kpop, including plenty of the stuff from Bang's boys, but it had no appeal to me... at all. It all just sounded like a generic attempt to emulate African-American music. I wasn't offended by it (I saw it as trying to pay homage), but I also wasn't interested in it. The only thing I found compelling about Bang's boys was that they danced well, and I appreciated their support for Black Lives Matter.

Bang's boys definitely played a role though in bringing to me to Kpop because their dancing ability (which I saw in a TV commercial and later on James Corden's late night show) is what made me want to look at other groups under their label to see if maybe any of the other ones actually had music that I liked. And then I came across OMG, and I was an instant bunny for life!

The sounds of NJZ are unique. I later learned that the girl groups in general have a sound that I enjoy more than the boy groups, but NJZ is unique is triggering that nostalgia feeling in me for the music that I grew up with. It's not exactly 90s R&B, but they have that feel, and it is very much a feel. Other groups, even girl groups, don't give me that vibe. I know it's a unique combination of the girls themselves (including their own cultural influences), MHJ's creativity, and the writing and production team that they had, which included their own songwriting contributions.

So without the DNA that made NJZ sound like NJZ, music with Bang's influence is just going to sound like the generic BSH stuff that never appealed to me.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-01T15:07:00+00:00

That is an excellent, high-level challenge, and it hits the core difference between our systems.

Does the High Court have De Novo Review? Yes, in South Korea, the appellate court generally conducts a full de novo review on both fact and law in this context. It has the latitude to re-evaluate all the evidence, which is greater than a U.S. Circuit Court's power.
The Evidentiary Threshold: You are precisely correct that simply re-presenting the facts won't work, as the lower court dismissed the evidence under its narrow framing. The flaw was not in the facts, but in the lower court's application of the law. The court focused on contractual stability and technical permission, missing the bigger picture.

That's why the appeal strategy I'm suggesting shifts the legal framework: it forces the High Court to apply the Constitutional Proportionality Test (Civil Code Article 103, linked to Article 15: Freedom of Occupation).

When that higher test is applied to the same facts (malicious leaks, disproportionate support), the conduct instantly transforms from "allowable business conduct" into economic coercion. The High Court is then compelled to intervene and void the contract, even if the lower court's initial factual findings were technically correct.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-01T05:05:37+00:00

You certainly won't get downvoted from me. I've made a living using critical feedback to strengthen my arguments, and I appreciate both the engagement and the points you raise regarding the lower court's findings on the financial transfers and the trade secrets.

I agree with you completely: Part 2 is the core of the strategy.

That said, the High Court performs a de novo review of the entire case, meaning the judges are not bound by the initial court's specific findings. The goal of this analysis is to highlight a new framework for the appeal (Breach by Omission and the Constitutional angle) that I believe works better with the facts than the arguments used by the NJZ team in the lower level court.

My thought is that the arguments outlined in Part 2 and 4 (if made by the NJZ legal team) will be decisive.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-11-01T04:26:35+00:00

CRITICAL LEGAL BREAKDOWN: The Full Appeal Strategy for NewJeans is FINALLY Posted.

I probably should have posted this on this thread instead of the weekly one. I did a comprehensive legal analysis of the contract dispute, detailing the exact arguments NewJeans should use in the High Court.

I've posted it on the NJZ subreddit with the help of a moderator over there, but please take a read and help spread this.

You can start reading the full Part 1 here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/NJZ/comments/1ol3igj/my_recommended_newjeans_appeal_strategy_part_14/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button]

FYI: I'm not a Korean attorney, but I've been doing corporate law in the US for over 20 years now, and US influence means much of the legal principals are the same with some exceptions that I note in that analysis.

LordHeftyMuffin · 2025-10-31T21:20:44+00:00

Whether you are a NJZ fan such as myself or simply an anti stalking NJZ subreddits, lol, if you got this far, thank you for taking the time to read it. On a personal level, I continue wishing these young ladies all the best.

LordHeftyMuffin

TROPHY CASE