A-S-A-P, baby Hurry up, don't say maybe

The process of erasing NewJeans

https://youtu.be/8W5plY1YYu8?si=V59_H7FOpc9i0hEm

In June 2025, during the defamation trial between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively, a piece of evidence was submitted in court.
It was a message written by Melissa Nathan, the head of the PR firm hired by Baldoni.
The message read, “You know we can bury anyone.”

According to the publicly disclosed contract, the three-month campaign to damage Blake Lively’s reputation cost $175,000.
The document outlined three specific tasks:

Manipulating search results

Shaping social-media discourse

Amplifying negative narratives

And at the bottom of the document was the firm’s guiding principle:
“Untraceable. No fingerprints.”





In early 2024, HYBE acquired a 51% stake in TAG PR for $25 million, claiming the move was to strengthen its global PR and crisis-management capabilities.
However, as the court documents later revealed, TAG PR’s so-called “reputation management” was in reality a form of coordinated manipulation.





When the conflict between HYBE and Min Hee-jin became public in April 2024, a strange pattern began to emerge.
Jeff Benjamin, a Billboard K-pop columnist, testified:

“I received an email containing negative information about Min Hee-jin. The sender was TAG PR.
The message was detailed — it listed her past remarks, her reputation in the industry, and criticisms of her management style.”

Benjamin, following journalistic ethics, did not publish the claims as they were. Instead, he reached out to Min for comment.
HYBE’s strategy had been simple: if Billboard published an article, Korean outlets would recycle it, leveraging Billboard’s name to lend credibility to the narrative.





Soon, negative discussions about Min Hee-jin and NewJeans began spreading naturally across the internet —
from Reddit’s K-pop communities to fandom accounts on Twitter, and even reaction channels on YouTube.
Melissa Nathan’s words, “We can bury anyone,” were now aimed squarely at them.
The very agency that once claimed it could bury a person for $175,000 was now a HYBE subsidiary, serving to eliminate its internal “threats” within the K-pop industry.





Ahead of NewJeans’ comeback, there were 1,700 articles about Min allegedly attempting a management takeover.
By contrast, articles about Chairman Bang Si-hyuk’s alleged private-equity misconduct numbered only 150.

Some might argue that “complex financial cases simply attract less public interest.”
But it was striking that reports on HYBE’s internal weekly industry report — which compiled negative public sentiment and keywords about rival idols — totaled only 170 articles.

When Min filed a put-option lawsuit, the coverage across major outlets was eerily similar.
The same quotes, the same emphases, and almost identical framing — as if written from one template.
This mystery was resolved only after the trial ended.

During cross-examination, Min’s lawyer asked a HYBE witness:

“Were you aware that HYBE’s media relations team provided press materials to journalists through group chats?”

The witness replied, “I don’t know anything about that.”
That witness was Jung Jin-soo, HYBE’s Chief Legal Officer — someone unlikely to be unaware of such coordination.

Court attendees later testified that trial updates were being relayed to the media in real time.
HYBE’s PR team had stationed staff inside the courtroom to draft summaries of favorable testimony and send them to reporters before the day’s session even ended.
For time-pressed journalists, HYBE’s pre-packaged summaries offered a convenient shortcut — effectively shaping how the trial would be interpreted.





Even after it was revealed in court that HYBE had been supplying materials to the press, only a handful of outlets reported it.
Acknowledging that fact would mean admitting their own complicity — that their journalism had been compromised.
But silence itself was collusion.

By choosing not to report it, the media became a part of HYBE’s system of influence.
The press, which should serve as a watchdog, had become the company’s loudspeaker.
Min had no such system behind her.

The disparity in numbers was a reflection of power itself.
Numbers, at times, speak louder than words.

When BBC News Korea uploaded an interview about NewJeans’ halted activities, it drew 130,000 views and 10,000 comments.

For comparison: a plane-crash report on the same channel had 650,000 views and only 1,700 comments;

a Mr.Beast video — 50 million views, 31,000 comments.

The ratio made the NewJeans clip stand out as unnaturally high in engagement.

Perhaps the topic was inherently controversial.
Perhaps fan wars were driving the spike.
But other patterns raised further questions.

In a YouTube Shorts clip discussing dual citizenship, one comment about actor Daniel Henney drew a bizarre reply:

“I can’t stand NewJeans — they’re left-wing.”

Similarly, on an unrelated community post about jeans-washing methods, someone commented,

“I don’t really support them either.”
What does washing denim have to do with supporting NewJeans?

In a digital space where the line between real and fake grows increasingly blurred, if we stop questioning whether public sentiment is authentic or artificially amplified, we lose the ability to discern the truth.

Perhaps most shockingly, when Chairman Bang Si-hyuk was placed under an overseas travel ban, outlets like Dispatch — which had consistently attacked Min and NewJeans while defending HYBE — did not publish a single line on the matter.




The script above covers everything up to the 9-minute-20-second mark.