South Korean police seek arrest warrant for HYBE founder Bang Si-hyuk

South Korean police have asked prosecutors to seek an arrest warrant for HYBE chairman and founder Bang Si-hyuk, widening a capital-markets case that now reaches the architect of the company behind BTS. Investigators suspect Bang of fraudulent unfair trading under South Korea’s Capital Markets Act, centered on HYBE’s 2019 share transactions before its October 2020 initial public offering.

Police sent the warrant request to the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office after questioning Bang multiple times. The allegations say he misled early investors into selling HYBE shares before the listing and steered those shares to a private-equity fund linked to his associates. Yonhap reported suspected illicit gains of nearly 200 billion won, or about US$135.9 million, while other reports put the figure at about 190 billion won, or roughly US$129 million.

The move also lands against a wider enforcement backdrop. Bang had been under a travel ban since August 2025, and HYBE denied involvement in a reported U.S. Embassy letter that sought to lift that restriction. The company said Bang was not officially invited to the U.S. Embassy event cited in the request, underscoring how the case has spread beyond finance and into diplomatic and reputational territory.

For HYBE, the stakes go beyond one executive. Bang founded Big Hit Entertainment in 2005 and built it into HYBE, the music company best known as BTS’s agency and now home to acts including Seventeen, Le Sserafim and Katseye. BTS was so central to the company’s growth that it accounted for more than 80% of revenue in the first half of 2020, before the IPO gave HYBE a market valuation that made it one of South Korea’s most visible entertainment groups.

That visibility is part of why the case matters. If prosecutors push ahead, the warrant effort could become one of the most high-profile capital-markets probes involving a top K-pop executive and a flagship Korean entertainment company. It tests whether regulators are willing to pursue alleged governance failures even when the defendant sits at the center of a global fan economy and a major pillar of South Korea’s soft power.