Kacie on K-pop: I hate hiatuses

If you follow my private Instagram account, I sincerely apologize for the influx of posts that you’ve seen over the last few days. It’s been a really eventful few days for a few K-pop groups and their respective fanbases. 

Throughout my year of writing this column, I suppose I’ve never delved deep into the groups that I personally follow — my “ultimate” groups are Stray Kids, THE BOYZ and TREASURE. Aside from being fourth-generation boy groups with members of relatively similar age groups, one thing each of these groups has in common is their experience with members going on and off hiatus. 

In no way is the concept of a hiatus anything unique to these three groups — BTS have gone on several as a group — but it’s a concept I’ve grown very familiar with since becoming a K-pop fan of these groups specifically. And this past week, after a little over seven months, each of my three favorite groups officially have no members on hiatus currently, whether that be through members resuming their activities with their respective group or leaving permanently. 

While there’s no official definition of what a hiatus for a K-pop idol actually is, it usually occurs when an idol gets injured or sick (in order to let them get necessary recuperation time) or is involved in a scandal (so the story can blow over without too drastically impacting the idol’s group as a whole). 

The idol’s management company customarily issues a notification to fans via social media, and the idol takes a pause from all public appearances, which can sometimes even include a suspension in their versions of member-specific merchandise. Additionally, the other members of the group may or may not be allowed to discuss the member on hiatus publicly. 

Hiatuses, in general, are sad. Perhaps it has to do with the emphasis on unity that many K-pop groups emphasize — many fans often use the acronym “OT,” meaning “one true,” along with the number of members in their favorite group to show that they support all of the members of a certain group. Or, maybe it’s the strong personal connection many fans feel they have with their idols that makes not seeing new content featuring them for an extended period of time really difficult. 

But I wanted to write a column on this topic specifically not to talk about how it feels when your idol is on hiatus, but instead how it feels when their hiatuses end. 

THE BOYZ’s Eric, whose hiatus was announced at the beginning of March for health issues, ended his hiatus Monday with a tweet and a letter on THE BOYZ’s Fancafe social media platform, to the surprise and delight of fans around the world. “ERIC” and “BACK IN THE GAME SOHN,” a pun utilizing a THE BOYZ song lyric and Eric’s last name, trended on Twitter worldwide within two hours of his return. 

I celebrated too, texting my friends who also like THE BOYZ about his return all day and watching way too many music videos to be productive, all in the name of commemoration. 

But less than a day later, TREASURE announced that their two members that had gone on hiatus in late May, Mashiho and Bang Yedam, for health reasons and intentions to pursue a different career path, respectively, would be officially leaving the group, and that TREASURE would promote itself as a 10-member group moving forward. Fans responded frustratedly, trending “OT12” in multiple countries and asking TREASURE’s entertainment company for a more comprehensive explanation behind the decision. 

I, for lack of a better word, mourned this loss too. Friends sent me consolation messages and I watched even more music videos, this time in the name of remembrance. 

Writing all of this and talking about this with my friends who don’t follow K-pop, makes me realize it might all seem a little silly. But I think something that’s really interesting about K-pop is the relationships that it fosters — both between fans and their idols, but even moreso, between fans themselves. Seeing how much these idols mean to people is intriguing, but seeing how fans come together to celebrate what is essentially a loved one’s return, or to cry over a collective loss, perhaps is even more indicative of the community and space fans create for one another. 

Kacie Yamamoto is a senior writing about Korean pop music. She is also the editor-in-chief of the Daily Trojan. Her column “Kacie on K-pop” runs every other Friday.