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 co