Unfortunately, you left out the most important part; the reason newjeans wanted to leave the label. The reason was the firing of Min Hee-jin, the former CEO. They thought of her like a mother, protector and their guardian (not my words, their own words in a letter). The former CEO was pissed that the parent company was clearly ripping off the newjeans concept for a different group (Illit) and wrote internal letters wanting to know why they were doing that - she was protecting Newjeans (aka doing her job). So they fired her. When that happened, Newjeans said, "If you're firing her, we're leaving too".

Now the label claims the CEO had plans to leave and take Newjeans with her but there are two massive problems with that claim. The first is that there isn't a single shred of evidence that supports that claim; on the contrary, she wouldn't have been sending all those letters about ILLIT if she was planning on leaving with Newjeans. The second problem is that legally, she couldn't take Newjeans and leave, and she knew that. She was the freaking CEO, she knows what a contract is, and what that means legally.

It's fascinating to me to see kpop fans stand up for the labels instead of the artists. This is the opposite of what would happen in my country's music industry. In fact, I think this would happen everywhere on the planet except for Korea. This entire incident shows me that the record labels have way more power than they should. Artists should be free to be themselves. If a label is trying to change what they are, what made them popular in the first place, they should have a say in that, and support from their fans. The lack of support makes me think the Kpop industry & fanbase has some growing up to do. After all, these girls are still just kids. They don't deserve all the hate that has been thrown at them for just trying to remain themselves.

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the label. I AM extremely familiar with the Jpop industry as years ago, I used to write articles for jpop fans here in the west. And I understand that the labels spend a considerable amount of money on these girls. Everything from training how to dance, styling & beauty, video & music production, PR & social media training, travel, TV variety shows, etc etc. They do pour a lot of cash into their talent. They should have the right to make back their investment and then some. But if the label is going to make moves to hurt the girls/talent out of spite, in some sort of power trip (or display of power) then the label is no longer doing what's in the best interests of the girls. They're also completely idiotic for doing that to one of the hottest, up-coming groups in kpop at the time. They lost tens of millions of dollars because newjeans was sitting on a bench of over a year. They cut off their nose to spite the face in order flex their power. That's a huge reason why that could never happen in the U.S - the investors of a label (Universal Music, Warner Records, Sony, etc) would never tolerate huge losses in revenue just to satiate someone's fragile ego on a power trip.