1VERSE, Including a North Korean Defector, Builds Global Fanbase Through Social Media Virality Before Official Debut

The rookie boy group 1VERSE, under the label Singing Beetle, made its official debut on July 18, presenting a new global model for K-POP. 1VERSE (pronounced “Yuniverse”) built a worldwide fanbase by consistently posting content on TikTok and X over the past year before releasing its official debut album, *The 1st Verse*. The group consists of five members with highly diverse backgrounds. Rapper Hyuk and singer Seok are North Korean defectors, making 1VERSE the first K-POP group to include two members from North Korea. They are joined by Kenji, an American of Chinese descent, Ito, a Korean of Japanese descent, and Nathan, a Laotian-Thai hybrid from Bentonville, Arkansas. Hyuk escaped North Korea as a child and experienced extreme hardship firsthand. He recalled, “I started working at the age of 9 and had to take desperate measures to find food. When I was caught stealing, I was beaten until I was bleeding.” Now having begun a new life through music, he poured his experiences into the lead single of the new album, “Shattered.” He explained, “‘Shattered’ captures how my life felt shattered, and it’s the first time I’ve shared this story based on my emotions when I heard my father in North Korea had passed away.” The other defector, Seok, is 25 years old and left North Korea in 2019 with his father and grandmother. He talked about secretly watching Psy’s “Gangnam Style” through a friend in North Korea back in 2012. He said, “I had never seen a music video like ‘Gangnam Style’ before, and that video and song left a deep impression on me.” The members worked hard to overcome differences in culture and language. Kenji is an American of Chinese descent from Los Angeles, Ito is a Korean of Japanese descent from Japan, and Nathan is a singer who had been releasing solo music since 2020. He learned dancing and singing on his own by watching K-POP performance videos on TikTok before being finally selected as the fifth member of 1VERSE in December 2024. Hyuk said, “Even though none of the five of us speak perfect English or Korean, we can get along comfortably using gestures and a few basic expressions,” and Nathan added, “It’s really fun to see us all trying to understand each other, and we’re putting a lot of effort into learning more about each other’s interests.” Over the past year, 1VERSE gained hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and X through viral trends and its unique content. Fans jokingly asked questions like “When is the debut?” and “They can do anything but debut,” but after the official debut, they changed their response to “Ah, so they’re finally debuting now.” The first single, “Multiverse,” released on July 4, is a Korean song influenced by electronic sounds and Western pop, and it was made available on global streaming platforms along with the lead single “Shattered.” Meanwhile, the rookie group idntt, under the label Moodhouse, is also adopting a new debut strategy. Its first sub-unit, unevermet, will release its first album, *unevermet*, on August 11 and begin official activities. It is reported that the first album of this group of seven members features contributors who have worked on legendary K-POP songs by artists such as KZLAB, EL CAPITXN, VERSACHOI, and NoIdentity.