BTS member Jungkook has seemingly voiced his support for K-pop girl group NewJeans in new Instagram posts amid the ongoing HYBE–ADOR feud.
BTS’ Jungkook uploaded two posts of his dog to his personal Instagram page on September 14, with captions that seem to reference K-pop quintet NewJeans. The first featured five different coloured hearts and the English sentence, “Artists are not guilty.”
Fans began speculating that the post was made in support of NewJeans, as the colours of the five hearts match the quintet’s individual official colours. Later that same day, Jungkook posted a second photo to the same page, this time only with the English caption: “Don’t use them.”
Amid the speculation, Jungkook’s label Big Hit Music released a statement, per MyDaily, on the same day, where it clarified the intention behind the singer’s cryptic posts. However, the label did not explicitly mention the ADOR-HYBE feud or NewJeans.
“We have confirmed that he made the posts because he thought that under no circumstances should young artists be dragged into conflicts or used as a shield,” the statement read, as translated by Soompi.
Jungkook’s posts came just three days after the K-pop girl group hosted a surprise YouTube livestream on September 11 calling for HYBE to reinstate former ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin. According to the members themselves, the livestream was held without the knowledge of their agency.
“We hope that HYBE makes the wise choice to reinstate Min Hee-jin as the CEO of ADOR by September 25,” said Minji. “The ADOR that we want is an ADOR where the music production and company management are done by Min Hee-jin as the CEO. We make this request as the way to cohabitate peacefully with HYBE.”
Prior to their now-deleted livestream, NewJeans shared support for Min during their award acceptance speech at The Fact Music Awards earlier this month. Before that, three members of the girl group voiced their frustration over the ongoing feud between ADOR and HYBE in online posts.