NJZ or NewJeans? (NewJeans Confession)

On November 28th 2024, Newjeans urgently made a press conference to show that they were leaving HYBE. During the symposium, they revealed that they were going to terminate their contract with HYBE as soon as they reach November 29th. Newjeans claiming 

s that they have been mistreated and abused within the company. Sources state that this all started when Min Hee Jin, the creative producer for Newjeans transferred from SM entertainment to HYBE entertainment, due to SM’s disapproval of the concept she had in mind for SM's upcoming girl group. After consulting with Bang Si Hyuk, the chairman of HYBE, they agreed on official terms thereby signing a contract in 2019. 

Min Hee Jin already had set concepts of what the new girl group would be, however Bang Si Hyuk wanted a different “Billie Eilish” kind of group, while Min already had set concepts and ideas for their debut album. This was the emergence of their conflicts. Ultimately, both individuals decided to create their own separate groups. Min’s group was planned to debut in 2021 however due to Bang’s plans the former’s was interrupted and eventually delayed by more than a year. When Bang’s group was preparing for debut, all of NewJeans’ productions and advertisements were put on hold because Bang wanted all the public’s attention to go to his group, Le Sserafim. This is also why Bang scouted members who were already well known like Chae-won and Sakura from a temporary K-pop project IZNA.

Once NewJeans debuted on July 22, 2022, they achieved numerous staggering achievements.  They sold more than 440k copies within the first three days of pre-order period, breaking the record of highest sales of a debut album by a K-Pop girl group of all time. New Jeans is the only debut album by a K-Pop girl group to sell more than 200k copies in a single day. Their song, OMG sold 700k+ copies within the first week of release, which was the 4th-highest sales within the first week of release by a K-Pop girl group at the time. 

This angered Bang and he never congratulated the members of NewJeans even once. Subsequently, he created a K-pop group survival show named “R U NEXT” which resulted in the group ILLIT, who debuted on March 25, 2024.

In April 2024, Min accused ILLIT of plagiarizing the choreography, concept, and visuals. Min eventually goes to court with HYBE, charging them with mistreatment of the group. 

On September 11, 2024  NewJeans hosted Youtube livestream to call for Min Hee-jin’s reinstatement as CEO, calling HYBE an “inhumane company” due to their entire group’s mistreatment. 

Ultimately, Min Hee-jin resigned from the internal director position on November 20th 2024. 8 days later, NewJeans terminated contracts with ADOR in an emergency press conference. 

On December 15, 2024, NewJeans members launched an independent Instagram account. Throughout the course of the instagram account, NewJeans has changed their name to njz_official. 

They declared that new music would be released on March 23, 2025. The future holds many things for NJZ/NewJeans.