And today, in this article, we will provide you with a detailed rundown of the struggles of one of the Korean male idol groups that debuted in 2012, VIXX. For those of you who might not know yet, VIXX is a South Korean male idol group under Jellyfish Entertainment that debuted through a reality show titled MyDOL. The group is composed of six members: N, Leo, Ken, Ravi, Hongbin, and Hyuk. They are predominantly known as a concept or performance group whose music, lyrics, choreography, and overall stage performances are crafted together to tell a story or concept. Now, when you already know the basic info about this cool group, let’s get to the main topic. Stay tuned and keep scrolling down the article.
Trainee Formation for VIXX
Before we talk about VIXX, it will be better if we explore how they were formed first. As we already said above, VIXX was created through Mnet’s reality show titled MyDOL. MyDOL is a South Korean reality show that documented the formation and debut process of the boy band, VIXX. It premiered on Mnet on April 12th, 2012, and aired until May 23rd, 2012. A group of 10 idol trainees under Jellyfish Entertainment were put through various activities and missions to determine the selection of few that will debut as part of a six-member idol group on May 24th, 2012, on M! Countdown, according to some portal news. The 10 trainees’ names in this show are Cha Hak-yeon, Jung Taek-woon, Lee Jae-hwan, Kim Won-sik, Lee Hong-bin, Han Sang-hyuk, Ro Nak-hun, Shin Yoon-chul, Lee Byoung-jun, and Lee Dae-won. The first half of the series serves as an elimination-style competition among the 10 trainees, wherein the prospects who display the best talent and promise will be chosen by viewers to become part of the final group. Then, the second half of the series follows the early pre-debut activities of the final six members who have made it into the group. This reality show began with their first episode in Y Studio with all 10 trainees getting make-up done for their first profile photoshoot. They are shot by renowned fashion photographer Choi Yong Bin. They start off with individual shoots and then continue with the group shots. The next activity is to practice the choreography. All trainees who have done the photoshoot are shown at their training studio, where they practice the choreography created by Yang-wook. After Yang-wook leaves, the trainees continue practicing the dance for several hours. In this show, all the trainees were practicing very hard and received fair critiques, but none of the trainees received universal praise and a few received negative critiques concerning their singing or dancing abilities.
Street Performance
In the second mission, they go to a middle school, where females are the minority of the student population, as their performance destination. The response towards the idols’ individual and group performances is underwhelming, to say the least. After that, the group travels to another school to perform, this time an all-girl high school. All teams are very well received, especially Sang-hyuk’s team’s performance of “Hip Song.”
Developing Acting Skills
Some days later, after having practiced singing and dancing so far, suddenly the group of trainees were practicing acting as opposed to their normal routine. It was decided that the trainees would take part in an acting mission due to overwhelming requests for it on the MyDols Angels fan page. Jellyfish artist Seo In-guk and music video director Lee Geun-ho stop by the practice room to judge which trainee has the best acting skills and to determine which of them will earn a role in In-guk’s newest music video. According to some portal news, Ken and Leo’s acting tests were not shown. A few days later, the head of the rookie development team, Lee Hee Jung arrived at the trainee practice room to reveal the winner of the acting test audition and HongBin was revealed to be the winner. At a later time, HongBin left the trainees and went to a music video shooting location. He shot his scenes with the female lead, actress Son Eun-seo.
Foreign Language Skills
After a few days of practice for the final evaluations, the trainees went to a separate location away from the dorms. They were unaware of the purpose of the excursion until an unexpected guest arrived to meet them. Jellyfish artist Brian showed up to help the trainees with their English. He also brought along a Japanese teacher, Sayuri. Most of the idols were nervous about talking in both English and Japanese. Nakhun (who was born in Australia) and Byoungjun (who was born and raised in California) excelled in the English aspect of the class.
Trainee Ranking Evaluation Through Episode
Performance Compilation
Random Facts Through Episodes
There are many facts that have been revealed through the trainees. Whether they already knew about it, or the facts just became their news. Among the random facts that were revealed is when Byoung-jun abruptly left the apartment without permission for then-unknown reasons, and then suddenly returned while they were shooting, and apparently just wanted a break, and went to visit some friends and his father. Or when Nakhun who thought they should change songs, and Ravi who wanted to stick to the song they had when their team got quite a hard critique.
Where Are the Other Trainees Who Did Not Become Members of VIXX Now?
Since it has been about six years since the show, people started to ask where are the four former trainees that didn’t make it into VIXX. Some of the trainees are a little bit hard to be tracked down. But here are some pieces of information that we managed to get for you:
Latest News
On September 19th, 2019, after one and a half years, VIXX made their comeback with the song called “Parallel.” The lead song “Parallel” reportedly signifies a parallel universe where the all-male group exists, according to some news portals. Although N, at that time was serving his military service, the social media post did not mention any of VIXX’s subunits and went through the new song with their five members.
. VIXX D/S ‘PARALLEL’ Title Song _ 평행우주 (PARALLEL) . 2019. 09. 19 6PM (KST) Release . #VIXX #빅스 #PARALLEL #평행우주 #20190919_6PM A post shared by VIXX OFFICIAL (@vixx_stargram) on Sep 11, 2019 at 8:00am PDT VIXX also made the teaser for their 2019 Season’s Greeting. This time, all of the members are there.
That was all that Channel-Korea has provided for you. Keep supporting VIXX and the other K-Pop idols. Don’t forget to respect each other and we will see you in the next article. Bye!
