NewJeans Minji has been catching people’s attention with her natural beauty — which once also caught SM Entertainment’s founder.
After a long wait, the new independent label, ADOR, debuted five trainees who successfully passed the HYBE's Plus Global Audition in 2019. In July, NewJeans officially debuted with its debut music video for Attention and first EP, New Jeans.
Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, and Hyein have been breaking records since they first entered the industry, but the group’s leader turned most heads because of her connection with SM Entertainment.
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NewJeans Minji Almost Debuted With SM Entertainment Girl Group
Amid the rising popularity of NewJeans, a video discussing Minji’s offer from SM Entertainment founder, Lee Soo Man, emerged.
According to the YouTube channel Drama Gallery, a staff of Source Music revealed in the anonymous online community, Blind, that the former CEO personally recruited the idol to become a trainee at the agency. However, she declined the offer and stayed at Source Music instead.
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The exact reason why she rejected Lee Soo Man remains unknown. However, fans started speculating that Minji chose to work with HYBE’s CBO (Chief Brand Officer) Min Hee Jin, who became part of the company in July 2019.
At that time, the agency tasked her to lead a girl group between then-Big Hit and Source Music. When HYBE officially launched ADOR, the CBO transferred the girl group’s management and waited for the perfect timing to debut NewJeans.
NewJeans Breaks Records
Minji surely made one of the best decisions ever as the five-member group has been earning overwhelming attention from different charts.
A week after its debut, NewJeans immediately set a record for achieving the highest first-day sales of any girl group debut album in the history of Hanteo. In addition, NewJeans’ debut EP sold an impressive total of 311,271 copies in the first week of its release alone.
With that, the EP became the album with the highest first-week sales ever.
It ultimately broke the record set by LE SSERAFIM, who sold 307,450 copies of FEARLESS.
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Check back for more stories, updates, and rumors about NewJeans Minji here at EpicStream!