Who is Bang Si-hyuk?
HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk, center, appears with K-pop boy band BTS in an image published when the music company was named to TIME magazine's list of 100 most influential companies of 2022, marking its second year on the list. Captured from TIME
HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk, center, is seen walking along livestreamer Seyeon, left, and her older sister in Beverly Hills, Calif., in August 2024. Captured from YouTube
HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk, 54, studied aesthetics at Seoul National University and was recruited by JYP Entertainment founder Park Jin-young in 1997. He spent his JYP years writing songs for acts including g.o.d, Park Ji-yoon and Rain before founding Big Hit Entertainment in 2005.
He kept writing after going independent, working on singer Baek Ji-young's 2008 ballad "Like Being Shot By a Bullet" and 2AM's "Never Let You Go" (2010), making him one of the country's most sought-after composers well before he had a hit act of his own.
Big Hit Entertainment's first girl group, GLAM, launched in 2012 as a joint project with Source Music and disbanded in January 2015. BTS debuted in 2013 and went on to achieve global success, transforming the small entertainment agency into the country's largest music company.
Big Hit Entertainment expanded into a multilabel operation with the purchase of Source Music in 2019, followed by Pledis Entertainment and KOZ Entertainment in 2020. Bang rebranded the growing empire as HYBE in 2021 and stepped down as CEO that July to chair the board. He remains the company's single largest shareholder.
Other than his appearances in BTS' early content as "Hitman Bang" or "Bang PD-nim," Bang has kept his private life almost entirely out of view, which is part of why an August 2024 sighting became a national talking point.
Footage posted to a walking-tour YouTube channel showed him strolling through Beverly Hills with livestreamer Seyeon and her sister, while separate images showed him crouching to photograph one of them.
HYBE said Bang had met Seyeon's sister through mutual acquaintances and advised her on dealing with someone impersonating a HYBE employee. The company said he later helped the pair with restaurant reservations and directions when they visited Los Angeles, and rejected suggestions of any other relationship.