‘Did the New Jeans manager cross the line?’

Attention is being paid to the outcome as New Jeans‘ agency Adore caught the ‘maritime conduct’ of the New Jeans manager and announced legal action in response.

The gist of the maritime conduct pointed out by Adore is that it confirmed that the manager in question ‘passed’ and encouraged a ‘direct contract’ between New Jeans and a specific brand.

On the 10th, Adore stated, “Recently, an employee in charge of New Jeans’ management directly contacted an advertiser and ‘en[ed] a direct contract between the artist and the brand ‘excluding the company’ and “The manager himself admitted that such communication took place.”

During this process, Adore reported that “we gave the manager ample opportunity to explain,”but he repeatedly made false statements and refused to cooperate with the investigation, making it inevitable that “we had to put him on standby for work, including the return of company assets such as his laptop.” In addition, Adore claimed that even for the devices that were returned, members arbitrarily ‘formatted them so that they could not be completely recovered and submitted them.”

This incident is expected to cause considerable repercussions, as it overlaps with New Jeans declaring the termination of their exclusive contract with their agency Adore, which is practically a notification. The fact that Adore recently filed a ‘lawsuit to confirm the existence of an exclusive contract’ with New Jeans and emphasized that it was ‘inevitable’ also seems to be related to the recent detection of ‘attempted direct contract’.

Meanwhile, the manager involved in this incident is said to have reported a high-ranking executive of Adore to the Ministry of Employment and Labor on the same day for workplace bullying.

In the complaint, the manager claimed that the company restricted his movements for several hours until he returned his company laptop, demanded that he submit his personal cell phone, and even though he formatted the company laptop because it only contained personal data, the company began an investigation using this as grounds for disciplinary action.


Reporter Heo Min-nyeong mignon@donga.com