Here Are 6 K-pop Boy Groups You Should Know By Now

July 7, 2021

There’s every type of K-pop boy group for every music taste.

K-pop boy bands have been around for a while. The first generation include H.O.T, Sechs Kies, and TVXQ. They’re closely followed by the era of Bigbang, Super Junior, which was when K-pop started to be known internationally. Now, we have the generation of BTS and EXO, who both garnered incredible international success.

Each generation brought something new to the table; from music styles to fashion, and promotional strategies and the industry evolved along with them. Because BTS is so popular these days, people are starting to look into other talented groups as well.

It’s just a matter time of before these groups reach the stratospheric heights of BTS. So, here’s a list of some groups from the 3rd and 4th generations of K-pop that seem bound for superstardom.

iKON

iKON, was formed in 2015 by YG Entertainment, home to Bigbang, 2ne1, Blackpink, and Winner. Originally, they consist of 7 members, but they continued as 6 when their leader B.I left the group. Right now, iKON’s composed of Bobby, Jinhwan, Ju-ne, Yunhyeong, Donghyuk and Chanwoo. iKON has long list of hit songs and various music awards. They achieved a grand slam victory as best new artists in all the year-end awards during their debut year, and theyre still making hit songs. The song “Love Scenario” is their most successful one, with its video garnering more than 500 million views.

SEVENTEEN

Seventeen, also stylized as SEVENTEEN or SVT, was formed by Pledis Entertainment in 2015. The group consists of 13 members: S.Coups, Jeonghan, Joshua, Jun, Hoshi, Wonwoo, Woozi, DK, Mingyu, The8, Seungkwan, Vernon, and Dino. Seventeen is considered a “self-producing” idol group, which is unique among Korean groups. The members are actively involved in the songwriting, choreographing, and other aspects of their music and performances. SVT has a lot of popular songs, but recently their song “Left and Right” was really popular that people use it in Tiktok even though they don’t know who sang it. The music video is nearing 100 million views.

Day6

Day6 is actually a pop rock band under one of the biggest label in South Korea, JYP Entertainment. The group debuted on September 7, 2015, with EP The Day, which peaked at No.2 on Billboard’s World Album Chart a week following its release. The band consists of five members: Sungjin, Jae, Young K, Wonpil, and Dowoon. Aside from that the members are collaborating with international artists as well. Recently, Young K collaborated with Ben&Ben to make their version of “Leaves.” Their collab already garnered 3.5 million views.

NCT 127

When you talk about NCT, they actually consists of even more members. NCT 127 is the second sub-unit of the band NCT, formed and currently managed by SM Entertainment, the home of Girls Generation, Super Junior, EXO and Red Velvet. Among the sub-units, NCT 127 has most number of members who are individually popular.

Stray Kids

Twice and Itzy’s labelmates, Stray Kids, was formed by JYP Entertainment through the 2017 reality show of the same name. The group is composed of eight members: Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin, and I.N. It took a while for Stray Kids to gain the attention they deserve, but it all changed when they released their single, “God’s Menu.” In fact, this single alone garnered more than 200 million views already. Due to their popularity, they recently won in the talent survival show, Kingdom: Legendary War where they competed against iKON and SF9.

SF9

SF9 is FNC Entertainment and the company’s first dance boy group. Consisting of nine members, the group debuted on October 5, 2016 with the release of their first single album, Feeling Sensation. They are starting to gain attention as some of the members already tried acting in Kdramas like Rowoon who first graced the TV screens in Extraordinary You.