Ever since the proliferation of K-pop audition programs following the meteoric success of Mnet’s “Produce 101” in 2016, fans have been dreaming that these winning bands would last forever instead of parting ways after a year or two.

Boy band n.SSign debuted with that exact goal in mind.

Having debuted on Aug. 9 with 10 members who were contestants from the Channel A audition program "Youth Star" in 2022, n.SSign, pronounced "en-sign," was put together by n.CH Entertainment’s CEO Jeong Chang-hwan, with the keyword “sustainability” as his utmost priority.

Some members are even signed with agencies other than n.CH Entertainment, but they have agreed to join forces to keep n.SSign as a whole.

Now just a little under two months after its official debut, members are grateful — but they’re also determined to make it work, too.

“We did have a pre-debut period where we performed in Japan, but we’ve just officially started,” Huiwon told the Korea JoongAng Daily in an interview held last month.

“We’re grateful for everyone who says that they’re happy to be with us, and we want to say that we’re even more thankful that we have everyone with us.”

How did it happen?

n.SSign did not form by happenchance. In fact, it was planned and executed through a meticulous strategy that began in the very first days of “Youth Star.”

Prior to founding n.CH Entertainment 2017, CEO Jeong worked in Korea’s then-largest K-pop company, SM Entertainment, from 2000 and then served at the company’s production subsidiary SM C&C as CEO from 2012, until establishing his own agency.

Jeong doubled as the chief of CJ ENM’s music business department from 2018 to 2020, during which project boy band Wanna One had been active after debuting as the winning group from the second season of cable channel Mnet’s K-pop audition program “Produce 101.” Wanna One stayed together from August 2017 until January 2019.

That’s when Jeong’s understanding of these audition-born groups started, according to n.CH Entertainment’s executive director Chang Hyun-jin.

“We knew the risks, but we started with the goal of making a permanent group,” Chang said.

“The members thankfully understood where we were going, so we made the group with a lot of our own trainees but we also worked out a way to cooperate with different agencies with which some of the members are signed. We shared the vision and the plans we had from the beginning, including the pre-debut tour in Japan.”

But nothing could have happened without the members, Chang said.

“The members really saw eye to eye with our vision and worked with us for the same end,” she said. “They all show great energy and have a clear dream in mind. They really were the perfect fit for this project.”

Why Japan?

It’s often the case that smaller K-pop groups now start by aiming for fans overseas in the first place.

The K-pop market is getting bigger but so are the number of newly-debuting bands each year, making it tougher for the little guys to perhaps reach their fullest potential in the domestic market. K-pop fans overseas have also proven to be more open to smaller groups of diverse genres than in Korea, where the so-called “Big 4” agencies — HYBE, SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment — dominate the scene.

Japan has traditionally been the first place for K-pop bands to tour outside of Korea, given the similarity in cultures, their familiarity with the K-pop genre and the larger size of the music market.

The "Youth Star" series was aired simultaneously in Japan — a first for a Korean show, according to Chang.

“Other audition programs have also partnered with overseas channels, but they usually had a week or two of a gap between when the program ran in Korea and then overseas,” she said. “But with our program, we specifically went for this strategy because we wanted to put the same emphasis in the Japanese market.”

How is it doing?

The band currently has a much larger fandom overseas, especially in Japan, according to Chang.

As is the case with many up-and-coming K-pop bands these days, n.SSign is aiming to gain its fan base from outside of Korea before working its way into the domestic market. That’s why it held a tour in Japan prior to its "official" debut and plans to hold four performances in November at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo.

Approximately 80 percent of their fans are from overseas, especially from Japan, where the band has “gained very loyal fans,” according to Chang.

The band is on-target with the numbers it set for its debut, although the company did not disclose the figures.

n.SSign debuted with “Birth of Cosmo,” a five-track EP which includes hip-hop dance lead track “Wormhole: New Track” along with the pre-released track dance track “Higher” and more. The EP also saw over 210,000 pre-orders and topped the albums chart on Japan's iTunes albums chart a day after its debut.

The album sold 207,227 copies in total during the first week of its release, a high number for a newly-debuting band. It started a new web content series produced by SLL last month titled “Project 10K,” which also began streaming on Japanese service Abema.

What are the goals?

For now, the members’ goals are modest, but still ambitious.

“We have the Arena concert in November, so we want to finish that well first,” Kazuta said. “But after that, we hope we can perform at end-of-the-year concerts or music award ceremonies."

The band is also planning to hold another tour next year, according to n.CH Entertainment’s Chang.

The tour is meant to increase the number of fans in the regions where the concerts are held, but it is also a method of creating new content to be posted online and viewed by others around the world. The ultimate goal is to follow in the footsteps of boy band Ateez, which also started by establishing a fandom overseas by touring around the United States and then bringing that momentum back to Korea.

“K-pop isn’t just confined to the Korean border anymore, and a K-pop group doesn’t have to start in Korea,” Chang said. “It was conventional for K-pop groups to start here and then go abroad in the past. But now, wherever it started, the important thing is that it is being loved. We hope that n.SSign can help people see that the survival tactics of smaller groups like us can work too.”

By the end of next year, n.SSign hopes to be performing in the United States.

“Our ultimate goal is to become a global group,” Huiwon said. “We want to be a global group that transcends the limits of language and returns all the love that we have received from our fans.”

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]