A WORD ON THE NEWJEANS VS. ADOR CONFLICT: The Dignity and Innate Rights of NewJeans, And All Idols

People Are Not Property, Including
K-pop Singers.

Contracts are meant to be covenants of mutual benevolence.
They exist to safeguard flourishing, binding parties to serve one another’s good.
The moment a contract becomes a mechanism of coercion, trading a human soul for profit, it betrays its own telos, 
And transgresses the moral order under which every legitimate law must bow.
 

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1. The Moral Foundation

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All true law is rooted in the inviolable worth of the human person. The Korean Constitution itself proclaims in Article 10 that every individual possesses inherent dignity and the right to pursue happiness. Any clause that reduces a human being to disposable capital nullifies itself, for it collides head‑on with the deeper law of creation: that women and men are imago Dei—bearers of divine image—not merchandise.

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2. Institutions as Stewards, Not Owners

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Institutions are good when they remember they are servants of the people God entrusts to them. Yet history shows how quickly stewardship decays into slavery once profit eclipses personhood. When a label files litigation that could bury teenagers beneath mountains of debt, it is not “protecting investment”; it is sacrificing children on the altar of Mammon. “Face‑saving” press releases cannot launder such violence. Only repentance can.

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3. Covenant Over Contract

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Imagine a parent confronted by a child aching to leave home. A father who loves does not brandish the knife of legal penalty; he listens, he pursues, he restores. So too should any company whose rhetoric dares invoke the language of family. If ADOR or HYBE truly believed the members of NewJeans were daughters and partners, lawsuits would have been the last resort—or no resort at all—after every channel of humble dialogue had been exhausted.

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4. The Poverty of Profit‑Only Thinking

Money is a derivative good: it is worth only what it can purchase of real value—life, beauty, communion, love. A contract that secures cash by strangling the artist who generated that value devours itself like the ouroboros. This is not sustainability; it is cannibalism disguised as commerce. Rome fell when it mistook power for glory; the entertainment empire that does likewise will meet the same fate.

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5. Call to the Industry and the Nation

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We call on ADOR, HYBE, and every cultural institution: turn back. Dignify the ones who make your empires possible. Rewrite contracts in the key of covenant. Trade litigation for conversation. Choose shepherding over slavery. For when you honor the image‑bearers in your care, you align not only with constitutional virtue but with the very grain of the universe.

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And to the watching public: let us refuse the cheap spectacle of corporate bloodsport. Let us hunger instead for a culture where artistry blossoms in freedom, guarded by structures that remember their place as gardeners, not gods.