Park Jin-young Reveals Why He Hired Bang Si-hyuk First: 'He Didn't Try to Impress Me'

Park Jin-young didn't mince words on the August 1st episode of MBC's variety show Jeonjijeok Chamgyeon Sijeom (also known as My Little Old Boy, episode 409): the first person he ever hired was Bang Si-hyuk, now chairman of HYBE, and the reason had nothing to do with talent on paper.

"The first employee I ever hired was Si-hyuk," Park said during a meal with his current staff. "I was comfortable with him because he didn't try to look good in front of me."

It's a small detail that lands differently when you consider what both men built afterward. Bang Si-hyuk went on to found HYBE and turn BTS into a global phenomenon. Park Jin-young built JYP Entertainment into one of the Big Four labels. Their parallel trajectories started, apparently, with Bang being too unbothered to perform for his future boss.

Park's broader point wasn't just nostalgia. He was making a workplace argument to the people sitting across from him. "When someone in front of me is comfortable, I'm comfortable," he said. "When they're trying to impress me, that's when it gets awkward."

He went further, separating two kinds of difficulty on the job. Demanding work, he said, is supposed to be hard, that's how people learn, and he'll keep correcting mistakes until staff get things right. What he won't accept is a different kind of stress: employees spending energy reading his mood instead of doing the job.

"Work can be hard because it's meticulous and I have high standards. That's fine, it should be hard," he told his team. "But being stressed because you're watching my emotional state, that's something you really shouldn't do."

The distinction matters to him. Difficulty tied to craft is productive. Difficulty tied to managing upward is, in his words, a waste that he actively wants to eliminate from the room. Given that his first hire apparently lived by the same principle, the timing of that lesson feels intentional.