However, on November 20th, Min Heejin issued a statement confirming her departure from HYBE, effectively ending any possibility of her returning as Adore's CEO. Following this, speculation has grown that New Genes might also part ways with Adore to join Min Heejin in a new venture.

If New Genes decides to leave Adore and align with Min Heejin, they will likely face a legal dispute over their exclusive contracts.

This could delay their activities indefinitely during the legal proceedings. Even if New Genes wins the contract termination case, the issue of trademark rights remains.

Currently, the New Genes trademark is owned by Adore.

Legal experts predict that even with a favorable ruling on contract termination, reclaiming the trademark would be a significant challenge.

Additionally, if New Genes fails to terminate their contracts, the estimated penalty for leaving Adore is expected to reach hundreds of billions of won. According to the Fair Trade Commission's standard exclusive contract terms, penalties are calculated by multiplying the monthly average revenue of the past two years by the number of months remaining in the contract.

Adore reported a revenue of $110.3 billion won last year, and New Genes has five years left on their contract.

As such, the estimated penalty for New Genes could range from $400 to $600 billion won. Meanwhile, Min Heejin continues to express her affection for New Genes, sharing promotional content for the group on her personal SNS even after resigning from Adore.

On November 25th, Min Heejin filed breach of trust charges against HYBE's chief communications officer, CCO Park Tae-hee, and PR Director Jo, with the Seoul Yongsan Police Station. Earlier, on November 22nd, she also filed defamation lawsuits under the Information and Communications Network Act against officials at HYBE's subsidiary Belift Lab, including CEO Kim Tae-ho, Vice CEO Choi Yun-hyuk, and others.

Additionally, she has launched a $5.1 billion damages lawsuit against Belift Lab.