K-pop's contract for children is only a suggestion

theMEGASTUDY, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In the ever-evolving and expanding world of K-pop, becoming a household name seems to be the end goal. Lots of groups debut every year, yet few have made as big an impact immediately after being revealed to the audience as NewJeans, known for hits like “Super Shy” and “Hype Boy” and for making headlines with their every move.

Lately, though, they haven't been making news for topping the charts. Instead, they are locked in a legal war with their agency. After The New York Times obtained and published the contracts the members signed, the situation shifted from a standard music industry conflict into a global conversation about human rights and labour.

The contracts NewJeans signed at 14 to 17 dropped the protections South Korea wrote for young performers and kept the rights to their faces and voices. HYBE says the template was never binding.

NewJeans debuted in July 2022 under ADOR, a sub-label of the entertainment conglomerate HYBE, with five members: Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein. Their launch came as a complete surprise, dropping the music video for “Attention” with none of the teasers or traditional pre-debut promotion the industry is known for. With their Y2K concept and music combining classic Korean pop, R&B and relaxed pop, they quickly turned from rookies into global style icons.

How the fight began

Behind the eye-catching music videos and chart-topping success, tension was building between HYBE and Min Hee-jin, the creative director of NewJeans and CEO of ADOR. In April 2024, less than two years after the group's debut, HYBE's audit of Min and ADOR became public: the company accused her of trying to take independent control of ADOR and break it away from the parent company. Min was replaced as CEO that August.

The members, deeply thankful for everything Min had done for them, fiercely sided with her. On 11 September 2024 they bypassed their PR team to host a surprise YouTube livestream, where they called out HYBE management, accused it of mistreatment and demanded that Min be reinstated as CEO of ADOR.

Ending the livestream, the members gave HYBE an ultimatum: reinstate Min by 25 September, or they would consider their contracts broken. When that did not happen, they held a press conference in November and declared their contracts terminated, saying HYBE and ADOR had breached their trust and ruined the work environment. Naturally, the company didn't just let them walk away. ADOR sued in December, arguing that the exclusive contracts were legally binding, and the dispute sprung into a legal war of hearings and court battles that ruled against the group's attempts to tear up their agreements, from an injunction in March 2025 that the Seoul High Court upheld in June.

Following months of legal battles and a Seoul court ruling on 30 October 2025 that NewJeans' exclusive contracts were legally valid, Haerin and Hyein returned to the label in November and Hanni followed in December. On 29 December ADOR announced it was terminating its contract with Danielle Marsh, citing an outside agreement that conflicted with her contract, independent activities and damage to the reputation of ADOR and the group. Minji is still in discussionswith the label.

What the contracts left out

But why does this matter now? On 5 November 2026 The New York Times, in an investigation by Sarah Hurtes and Jin Yu Young, published parts of the contracts the members signed in 2022 and reported that the clauses South Korea's standard contract template includes to protect young trainees had been stripped out or rewritten. That poses a real problem for labour and human rights, considering the members of NewJeans were minors, aged between 14 and 17.

In South Korea, the government provides standard contract terms for the entertainment industry, designed to protect performers. They grew out of the fight against the “slave contracts” that bound idols to unfair, long-term deals, a problem the JYJ members' 2009 lawsuit against SM Entertainment brought into the open: their contract ran for 13 years, and breaking it early would have cost them twice the profit they were projected to earn for the rest of the term. The Korea Fair Trade Commission, which corrects unfair adhesion contracts and distributes standard ones, revised its standard entertainment contract in June 2011 to require agencies to protect the basic rights of underage performers. In 2012 it enacted an Exemplary Transaction Standard between management companies, entertainers and production companies, covering fair profit sharing and banning unpaid and forced appearances. KOCCA, the Korea Creative Content Agency, works on the industry side, supporting production, distribution, training and intellectual property across music, broadcasting, games and other genres.

The government's standard language guarantees basic welfare rights for minors, such as protection of their physical and mental health, access to education and the right to adequate sleep and rest, and it forbids agencies from demanding excessive exposure from them. Unfortunately, it seems these templates function more as guidelines than mandatory, non-waivable statutes. HYBE itself told the Times that the standard contract is a non-binding guideline.

According to the Times, these clauses were removed or altered in NewJeans' contracts. Instead of guaranteeing sleep, rest and protection against excessive working hours or overly revealing clothing, the documents focused heavily on restrictions, including rules penalising an “insincere attitude”, “neglect of self-management” and “inappropriate romantic relationships”. The contracts also contained strict exit clauses with financial penalties, and barred the members from publicly stating “true or false facts” that could damage ADOR's reputation. Reputation is exactly what ADOR cited when it terminated Danielle's contract.

It is undeniable that vague and ambiguous terms give companies sweeping power over their artists to declare a breach of contract. Civil contract terms must be reasonably certain to be enforceable, yet ambiguous “reputation protection” clauses can be weaponised: they let a company impose financial penalties or withhold settlements by deciding whether an activity is prohibited only when it is convenient. Roh Jong-eon, a Seoul entertainment lawyer who reviewed the contracts for the Times, called them “unusually aggressive”.

A negotiation between unequals

One more thing to note is that, since the members were minors when the contracts were signed, their parents or legal representatives took part in the process. Labels often use the presence of an authority figure on the artist's side as proof that a heavily negotiated contract is perfectly valid when, in reality, we are looking at an inherent power imbalance. A minor or their family entering negotiations with a powerful entertainment conglomerate rarely has equal bargaining power.

The Times reported that emails it obtained showed ADOR's terms were “essentially nonnegotiable”. When the mother of one member asked for several changes in January 2022, ADOR's vice president replied that if she did not agree to the current draft, “it may be best to reconsider the contract itself”.

Contractors, not workers

Another problem the Times reported, citing insiders, was that it was not uncommon for the members to rehearse until 2am, that video cameras monitored training areas and that taking breaks was discouraged, which HYBE denies, saying it does not penalise artists for resting. When a minor's daily schedule, training, physical appearance and lifestyle are this heavily managed by a company, does the “independent contractor” label become a way to bypass child labour laws?

The question comes from the way South Korea classifies idols. In November 2024 the country's labour ministry closed a workplace-harassment complaint filed on Hanni's behalf, concluding she was not a worker under the Labor Standards Act, as the BBC reported. Idols are treated as independent contractors or commercial service providers, which strips away baseline labour protections. If any other teenager were working into the early hours, with their movement, associations and behaviour restricted, it would trigger regulatory penalties: the Act caps the working hours of 15 to 18 year-olds and bars them from working between 10pm and 6am unless they consent and the labour minister approves. Because entertainment law treats artists as self-employed, bound by civil contracts, agencies can get away with clauses that don't follow standard procedures.

The price of a face

Besides the daily training schedule, the contracts included financial conditions on appearance, requiring the members to cover a significant share of the label's spending on cosmetic surgery, skincare and other beauty treatments during their trainee years. Agencies usually front these costs as investments, contributing to what is called “trainee debt”, a sum artists pay back out of their future earnings after debut.

The Times also reported, citing two people familiar with the situation, that the agency photographed the young performers from multiple angles to study how light would hit them onstage and suggested cosmetic procedures to some of them. HYBE told the paper that it does not require cosmetic surgery or recommend procedures against an individual's wishes, and the two people close to the group said the suggestions were not taken as coercive. HYBE also says that in NewJeans' case it covered the initial training costs, so the members received settlements from debut.

Clauses surrounding appearance are notoriously difficult to challenge. Plastic surgery is an everyday subject in South Korea and many people follow the trend, but under civil law, proving that a minor was forced into surgery against their will is a high legal bar. Pressure can be applied indirectly, through repeated evaluations, subtle comments on appearance or the fear of being left out of the debut line-up if they refuse. Unless clear pressure can be proven, these clauses are difficult to invalidate.

A voice the label keeps

What's more disturbing about these documents is that the agency keeps the right to use and license the members' names, likenesses and voices, including through AI-generated voice clones and chatbots, after the contracts expire in 2029. Traditionally, when an artist signs with a label, they temporarily license their image and likeness so the company can sell albums and merchandise and organise tours. Once the exclusive contract ends, the artist regains full autonomy over their image and brand.

In this case, according to the Times, ADOR could keep selling NewJeans' music after the contracts end while paying the members a significantly reduced share, and the members, though they must still be paid, would have no control over where their voices and faces appear. The paper added that the legal validity of these clauses remains unclear. It sounds like something a Black Mirror episode would be based on, yet it is reality, and it is terrifying territory for intellectual property and the right of publicity.

With advances in technology, specifically deepfakes, voice cloning and hyper-realistic avatars, an agency no longer needs a living, breathing artist in a recording booth or on a stage to make money from their brand. Software can replicate a singer's exact vocal timbre and inflections to sing new songs written entirely by artificial intelligence. A 3D avatar of an idol can be created at the peak of their youth and made to star in commercials, music videos or even hologram concerts.

By inserting these clauses, agencies secure a permanent asset: even if an artist walks away at the end of their term, the company can run a completely digital, synthetic version of them. Slave contracts were outlawed because public policy dictates that no human should be bound to a company forever. But if someone owns a digital copy of you, have you ever truly escaped? And what happens when an AI-generated version of an idol is used to promote something the real person vehemently opposes?

ADOR's answer

On 6 November HYBE and ADOR issued a statement going point by point through what they called the facts. Rather than publishing it as a standalone release, they sent it to industry publications such as Music Business Worldwide and to Korean media. According to the statement, the draft contract was shared on 7 January 2022 and signed in April, after three months of discussions including written questions and answers, emails and revisions reviewed by the artists' legal counsel. It cites a Seoul High Court decision recognising that the contracts followed sufficient discussion between the parties.

The statement also addresses the mother of the member now in dispute with ADOR. One change she requested, an obligation to promptly notify the company of any attempted tampering, was not accepted, and HYBE quoted her reply thanking the company for its “thoughtful response”. When another mother asked whether the artists' share of expenses could be reduced, HYBE said its legal team proposed several options, which ADOR's then vice president rejected.

On supplementary protections for minors, the statement said all HYBE labels sign the government-standard supplementary agreement for minors with their trainees, that it covers personal rights, sleep, education and rest and remains in effect until adulthood, and that the “exclusive contracts themselves contain provisions protecting fundamental rights”.

On exit fees, the Times reported that penalties are calculated from average monthly sales over the final two years before termination, counting only the months in which the group generated revenue, multiplied by the months left on the deal. Lawyers who reviewed the terms said this method could inflate the penalty. HYBE argued that while the provision “may appear to differ in wording from the government's standard contract”, “the two provisions have the same economic effect”, and that the Seoul High Court “thoroughly reviewed the provision and explicitly determined that there were no issues with it”.

The company also pointed out that the clause applies only when it “has faithfully fulfilled its contractual obligations, but the artist unilaterally terminates the contract during its term or materially breaches the contract with the intention of terminating it”.

That clause sits at the centre of ADOR's lawsuit against Danielle, with the company seeking around ₩33.1bn (roughly $22 million, by the Times' conversion) from her, a member of her family and Min Hee-jin, down from an initial ₩43.1bn. Most of the claim is exit fees, according to the Times. Danielle's lawyer has filed a complaint with the Fair Trade Commission, which began investigating HYBE and ADOR on 4 June, according to the lawyer.

On artificial intelligence and digital likeness, HYBE said the contracts include terms protecting the artists' personal rights and that AI-generated content “naturally requires the individual consent of each artist”. It added that it is fully aware of the risks to intellectual property and has “no reason or intention” to use the members' image or voice without authorisation.

Under South Korea's Criminal Act, stating facts that could damage a person's reputation can be a criminal offence even when those facts are true, unless they are stated solely in the public interest. In its statement HYBE explained that the clause prohibiting acts that damage the company's reputation is directly linked to the criminal offence of defamation and is meant to prohibit conduct that would constitute it.

On the restriction of romantic relationships, the company reasoned that the clause protects the artists from public controversy and was included with the consent of their parents. It also said the cameras are installed only in shared spaces such as practice rooms, in compliance with relevant laws, mainly to prevent crimes such as trespassing and theft.

In the end, the statement said the contracts “were negotiated, finalized, and signed by Min Hee-jin, then-CEO of ADOR; the vice president appointed by Min; the individual members and their parents; and legal representatives for certain members”. HYBE said it had explicitly asked the Times to identify Min as the person who led the process, and that leaking contracts and litigation documents to foreign media was an attack on K-pop that left it no choice but to respond. Min's side disputes this: her representatives told The Korea Times that HYBE's legal team drafted the contracts, and that they could not be finalised without approval from HYBE's legal team, chief financial officer and chief executive.

What comes next

What began as a disagreement inside a major entertainment conglomerate has blossomed into a defining chapter of media and legal reckoning. The courts have ruled that each member's exclusive contract is legally valid, leading to the return of Hanni, Haerin and Hyein and the abrupt departure of Danielle, while Minji is still in talks about her return. Yet it seems this fight will not be won in the courtroom alone. For an industry built on dreams and hard work, the answer will shape every artist who steps onto the stage next.

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