Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Amidst the ongoing HYBE/ADOR battle and general complaints from fans about how the company is being run (like a gacha game from Nexon, perhaps), reports emerged that HYBE CEO Park Ji Won had handed in his resignation.
Later, his resignation was confirmed in a statement to HYBE staff, citing the need for new leadership and naming current CSO Lee Jae Sang as his successor.
Park Ji Won highlighted HYBE’s rapid growth over the past three years and noted that the executive team has been planning for the next five years, focusing on sustaining growth. “We believe new leadership is necessary to drive the changes required for HYBE 2.0,” he shared, confirming his resignation.
He also revealed that the current HYBE CSO Lee Jae Sang has been preparing to lead HYBE 2.0 as the new CEO. Park Ji Won will remain as an employee of the company.
HYBE additionally commented, “Lee Jae Sang, who we have planned to appoint as CEO, is an entertainment industry expert with extensive experience in strategic planning and operations both domestically and internationally,” and added, “We expect him to leverage his capabilities to help HYBE grow into an advanced entertainment lifestyle platform company based on music and technology.”
In a way, he mostly did his job by leading them through the IPO and what not, though the multi-label system management since appears to be a bit of a mess, and purchases like Ithaca Holdings are hemorrhaging money. No matter what you feel about Min Hee Jin, only the most delusional company stans could think at this point that the ongoing fiasco was handled competently, thus a change isn’t much of a surprise.
Whether promoting from within through Lee Jae Sang — who was key to the Ithaca acquisition — will lead to much different results is a question we’ll have to wait for an answer to.
