For much of 2024 and 2025, the story of NewJeans became as much about contracts, court decisions, and corporate disputes as it was about music.
The group debuted in July 2022 with “Attention” and quickly became one of the most prominent acts of its generation. Songs including “Hype Boy,” “Ditto,” “OMG,” and “Super Shy” expanded its international audience, while the Get Up EP reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2023.
Two years after that rapid rise, the group’s future became caught in a conflict involving its agency ADOR, then-CEO Min Hee-jin, and ADOR’s parent company HYBE.
For international fans, the number of companies, executives, public statements, and legal proceedings involved made the dispute difficult to follow. The central question eventually became much simpler: how did one of K-pop’s most successful five-member groups reach the point where it would return with four?
How the Conflict Between HYBE and ADOR Began
ADOR was established under HYBE in 2021 and led by Min Hee-jin, an executive and creative director who played a central role in the early development of NewJeans.
The dispute became public in April 2024, when HYBE launched an audit of ADOR’s management. HYBE accused Min and other executives of attempting to take control of the company and separate it from its parent company.
Min denied the allegations. She argued that the conflict was connected to disagreements over the management of NewJeans and to concerns she had raised internally about similarities between NewJeans and ILLIT, another group operating within HYBE’s multi-label system.
For international fans, it may have seemed unusual to see the members of a successful girl group become so involved in a corporate leadership dispute. Min’s role in NewJeans, however, had extended well beyond corporate management. She had been closely associated with the group’s creative direction and public identity from its early development.
In August 2024, Min was removed as CEO of ADOR, although she remained associated with the company for a period as an internal director. By then, the NewJeans members had publicly expressed support for her and concern about changes taking place within the agency.
NewJeans Publicly Breaks With ADOR
The relationship continued to deteriorate over the following months.
On November 28, 2024, Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, and Hyein announced that they considered their exclusive contracts with ADOR terminated. The members argued that the agency had failed to meet its obligations and that the conditions necessary to continue the contractual relationship no longer existed.
ADOR rejected that position, maintaining that the contracts remained valid and could not be terminated simply through a unilateral declaration by the members.
The dispute then moved directly into the courts.
The five members attempted to continue working independently and began using the name NJZ in early 2025. Adopting a new name demonstrated how far their relationship with ADOR had deteriorated, but it did not settle the central legal issue: whether the members had the right to conduct entertainment activities outside the agency while their contracts remained in dispute.
The Court Stops NJZ’s Independent Activities
In March 2025, a Seoul court granted an injunction requested by ADOR that restricted the members from carrying out certain independent entertainment and commercial activities while the contractual dispute continued.
The ruling had immediate consequences. After appearing as NJZ at ComplexCon Hong Kong, the members announced a pause in activities. Their attempt to establish an independent career was effectively put on hold while the legal process continued.
The dispute remained unresolved for much of 2025. In October, a court ruled that the exclusive contracts between ADOR and the members were still valid, substantially weakening the legal position from which the five had attempted to operate independently.
What followed was no longer a single decision made by all five members.
The Return to ADOR Did Not End the Same Way for Everyone
Toward the end of 2025, individual decisions about the members’ futures began to emerge.
Haerin and Hyein were the first to confirm their return to ADOR. Minji and Hanni subsequently moved toward continuing their activities with the company as well.
Danielle’s situation ended differently.
On December 29, 2025, ADOR announced the termination of Danielle’s exclusive contract. The decision meant that she would no longer be part of the lineup under which NewJeans would continue its activities.
For the first time since the group’s debut, the five members were no longer moving forward under the same professional arrangement.
“2026 Summer of NewJeans” Reveals the New Lineup
For several months, there was little public indication of what NewJeans would look like after the dispute.
That changed on July 22, 2026, with the release of 2026 Summer of NewJeans around the fourth anniversary of the group’s debut.
The content featured Minji, Hanni, Haerin, and Hyein, with Danielle absent from the lineup. It provided the clearest indication yet that future NewJeans activities would continue with those four members.
For international fans who had followed the legal dispute through 2024 and 2025, the release also answered one of the most basic questions left after the members began making separate decisions about ADOR: who would actually appear together again as NewJeans?
Where NewJeans Stands Now
The dispute began inside the corporate structure of HYBE and ADOR but eventually affected nearly every practical part of the group’s career: its contracts, management, name, ability to work independently, and ultimately its lineup.
It also interrupted a career that had developed at unusual speed. Between 2022 and 2024, NewJeans built a large international audience and established a recognizable musical and visual identity. During much of 2025, however, attention shifted away from new releases and toward court rulings and negotiations over the members’ contracts.
As of the summer of 2026, Minji, Hanni, Haerin, and Hyein have appeared together again as NewJeans.
Questions remain about new music, promotions, and how the group will operate with four members. The material released in July confirmed who is currently together, but it did not provide enough information to determine what the next stage of NewJeans’ musical career will look like.
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