Just before Min Hee Jin announced her resignation from ADOR and that she would be leaving HYBE, it was revealed that NewJeans‘ Hanni‘s workplace harassment petition was dismissed by the Labor Ministry due to idols not being classified as employees of the company.
The labor office said that given the content and nature of the management contract signed by Hanni, it is difficult to view her as a worker under the Labor Standards Act who provides labor for wages in an employer-employee relationship.
The South Korean government and courts have long classified entertainers not as workers but as “exceptional entities” who operate under exclusive contracts with their management agencies.
Despite some people weirdly insisting that being ignored and isolated wouldn’t be workplace harassment, if it happened it certainly would’ve been, as the relevant law was raised by Yonhap.
Article 76, Paragraph 2 of the law stipulates that no employer or employee shall cause physical or mental suffering to other employees or deteriorate the work environment beyond the appropriate scope of work by taking advantage of superiority in rank, relationship, etc. in the workplace, referring to such an act as workplace harassment.
In terms of this specific controversy, it seems problematic mostly for NewJeans’ likely case to terminate their contract, and is a boost to HYBE’s seemingly already strong legal position on that front.
Still, apparently this was expected, so I assume their lawyers would know that as well.
The dismissal of Hanni’s case was largely anticipated, as the National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee had already reviewed the matter ahead of the Oct. 15 audit.
And there’s calls by other politicians to reform this ruling.
“The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that entertainers are not considered employees, and tax authorities classify their income as business income, subjecting it to business income tax. Therefore, the Ministry of Employment and Labor’s recent decision aligns with these legal and tax interpretations,” said Lee Jae-kyoung, a professor at Konkuk University Law School and president of the Korea Entertainment Law Society. “However, the protection of entertainers’ rights should be addressed through other measures, such as standard contracts and reporting centers operated by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.”
“The issue of workplace harassment has recently been extended to include non-regular employees, such as temporary workers and broadcast writers, who may work independently but are still recognized within this framework,” Lee said. “What complicates the matter further is that idols’ working hours are not clearly defined, and many begin their careers as teenagers. Entertainment companies must seriously discuss how to manage and protect these individuals within their corporate systems,” she added.
Well, that’d be nice.
Regardless, putting Hanni and your biases for or against her case/reasons/company/whatever aside, it’s pretty exemplary of why a lot of the abuse in K-pop is allowed to happen to idols. It’s concerning simply from the viewpoint that idols are not afforded the same protections as even regular employees are, and they are frequently treated poorly as it is, basically in exchange for the lottery ticket. Thus, it’s effectively open season for companies on what they can make idols do and how they can control them, and it’s also why using whether something was legal or not in relation to whether something was ethical is rather pointless. As the lawmakers say, it should be possible to treat idols more as humans while allowing for career upside, but changing that is going to be a lot of work.