The Unbearable Lightness of Saying ‘Let’s Just Follow the Law’

After winning the first trial in the lawsuit she filed against HYBE Co., Ltd. over ADOR’s put option contract non-fulfillment, Min Hee-jin publicly proposed to Chairman Bang Si-hyuk that she would give up the 25.6 billion won in damages if all legal battles related to NewJeans were halted. I wrote on Facebook, “If this offer is accepted, the story ends with Min Hee-jin as the bigger person, so I expect they’ll refuse,” and I still hold that view.

Some who disagree with the outcome of the lawsuit insist that “the law must be followed” or ask “is a contract a joke?”, but even setting aside whether they have any real legal expertise, I have to wonder how carefully they’ve actually read the contract documents between the parties. There is also the claim that “since the total amount of damages HYBE is seeking across its various lawsuits related to NewJeans is in the 40-billion-won range, Min Hee-jin is coming out ahead,” which struck me as so simplistic that I didn’t even feel it was worth rebutting. Still, on the off chance any of them read this piece, let me explain: there is, of course, a huge difference in weight between the 25.6 billion won in damages confirmed by a finalized first-instance judgment and the damages HYBE Co., Ltd. is merely claiming in its complaints at this point in time.

Let me return to the main topic and explore what it actually means to “follow the law.” I should state upfront that I am not a legal professional, and that I am simply sharing thoughts I have developed about the law while living as an ordinary citizen.

One of the many careers I dreamed of as a child was becoming a lawyer. I think it was around the beginning of my teenage years; I often imagined myself in court, coolly reciting provisions of the statute one by one and slicing through the opposing side’s arguments as cleanly as a knife. Much later, after watching the hit drama “Suits,” I realized the problem: the provisions of the law are not made up of zeros and ones like a semiconductor circuit. Leaving aside the fact that even semiconductor circuits now face issues like quantum tunneling as line widths shrink—so the analogy itself has limits—if statutes really were composed of zeros and ones, that would create enormous problems. I see this instead as “deliberate flexibility.”

Imagine that in the 1920s, when cars first began to be mass-adopted, the U.S. Congress passed a law stating that no car capable of driving faster than 30 km/h could be manufactured. The rationale might have been that the road infrastructure at the time could not safely handle higher speeds, or that in the absence of modern safety technology, a collision between cars at over 30 km/h would likely be fatal for passengers. The problem arises when a car from the U.K., equipped with advanced safety technology and capable of traveling at 60 km/h, is imported. The legislative intent was simply to protect passenger safety, but by outright banning the production of cars that can exceed 30 km/h, U.S. manufacturers had no incentive to develop new technologies that would ensure safety at higher speeds, and British manufacturers—unconstrained by such regulations—rapidly ate into the U.S. auto market. Even once the flaws in the law were recognized and an amendment process began, administrative procedures would take time, and responding would take even longer. By the time a new model was ready for launch, the U.S. auto industry might already be bankrupt. If, at that point, an auto startup produced a model with the same safety technology, would it be breaking the law? On the surface it would be violating the letter of the statute, but because it aligns with the law’s underlying “intent,” it would likely not be enforced. This is a simplified hypothetical for ease of understanding, but in practice, most advanced legal systems today operate in a broadly similar way.

The sweeping tariffs Trump imposed, including on key U.S. allies, were recently ruled invalid by the Supreme Court on the grounds that he had abused presidential authority, and companies that have already paid tens of billions of dollars in tariffs are preparing refund lawsuits against the IRS. The statute Trump relied on to impose tariffs without congressional approval was the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), enacted in 1977, which grants the president authority to control trade activities in the event of a national emergency triggered abroad. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Trump appeared to have “abused [the law] as if it gave him the power to set tariffs on all products from all countries, in any amount, for as long as he wished.” IEEPA does spell out the conditions for an “emergency,” but it does not, for example, define it as “a situation in which Country A restricts exports to the United States of Substance B, which is used primarily in advanced semiconductor manufacturing at 99.99% purity,” and if it did, the very point of the statute would be lost. As Trump’s case shows—he upended the global trade order for about a year and made countless people’s lives more difficult—the law’s “deliberate flexibility” can at times function in deeply perverse ways.

In modern society, I see the law’s fundamental role largely as maintaining social trust through negative incentives. The “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” system in the ancient Code of Hammurabi may have offered a sense of catharsis to onlookers in the moment, but at its core it is a structure that grants victims the right to inflict the same harm on perpetrators, thereby increasing the total amount of harm in a society and partially legitimizing it.

Some people think of the law as a standard for judging right and wrong, but in reality the way the legal system operates and evolves is heavily dependent on public sentiment and the broader social climate. Elected legislators are people who draft laws that appeal to voters’ tastes; they are not driven by some abstract ideal of what is right. They may criticize this dynamic using terms like “mob rule,” but in an era when the spread of the internet and mobile technology has made it abundantly clear how subjective right and wrong can be, the notion that the modern legal system is—or should be—an arbiter of good and evil strikes me as rather naive. I, too, have my own opinions, so I don’t find this tendency particularly ideal, but that is the reality we live in.

No matter how much the law advances, such acts will never fully disappear. Partly this is because people differ in what they think a person is capable of doing, but it is also because there are people for whom negative incentives simply do not work. For a billionaire, if smoking in a no-smoking area provides enormous utility, a 100,000-won fine is pocket change, and there are people who are not afraid of, or cannot truly imagine, committing a crime and going to prison. Still, most people do respond to negative incentives for certain behaviors, and because there is a “belief” that if they suffer harm, the law will provide a remedy, they can leave a laptop on a table at Starbucks without much worry, and real estate transactions worth billions of won take place. Just as a central bank underpins the financial system, the legal system ultimately serves as the final guarantor of collective trust, helping to sustain and advance society.

Let me return to the beginning and ask what people really mean when they say “we have to follow the law.” HYBE Co., Ltd.’s lawsuit against Min Hee-jin is based on alleged attempts to seize control of ADOR, a subsidiary in which HYBE owns an 80% stake and which is the agency for the girl group NewJeans. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Min Hee-jin was ADOR’s CEO. If she is already the manager in charge, the idea that she is “seizing control” from herself is impossible unless the government officially recognizes her as having a split personality. Moreover, the right to appoint and dismiss inside directors belongs to HYBE as the majority shareholder with an 80% stake, which means ADOR’s management rights are not something Min Hee-jin can “seize,” nor is the structure set up in a way that would allow her to do so.

HYBE later changed its allegation that Min Hee-jin tried to secretly take NewJeans independent into an accusation of breach of trust. If there were evidence, it would mean that, as CEO of ADOR, Min had planned something that would damage the company, which makes the claim more logically complete.

However, the court of first instance found that there was no actual act of breach of trust. It noted that, although there had been talk in private conversations about taking NewJeans out due to ongoing conflicts, this was a hypothetical discussion premised on the plaintiff’s (HYBE’s) consent. The court explicitly stated that “the plaintiff’s move to demand Min Hee-jin’s resignation as CEO, invoke its audit rights, and leak this to the media was the act that first broke the relationship of trust.”

In the end, the first-instance court seems to have “followed the law.” At least, that is true if my understanding of the law’s purpose is correct.