Joshua Hong of Seventeen is booked and busy.
On Thursday, he spent the morning suited up for a speech at UNESCO. Hours later, he’d shed that skin for hot boy summer and a front-row seat at Paris fashion week. Long story short: He isn’t moving at all like a member of a 13-person K-pop group that just announced an extended hiatus.
The appearances were his first scheduled activities after Seventeen, one of the top K-pop bands under the K-pop mega-agency Hybe, announced it would pause group activities.
Half of the nine active members must enlist for South Korea’s mandatory military service. Around a third of the group will hold down the fort until a planned comeback in 2028.
Hong — the band’s key American member and one of its two English speakers — was tapped to rep them at UNESCO.
Hong told Business Insider the youth initiative the band’s worked on with UNESCO inspires him because it’s a “collective effort” that has opened up “a variety of doors for them to think creatively and develop their own solutions.”
Hong also teased some future projects — he’s expressed interest in expanding into Hollywood and working more in fashion.
“As I’ve begun diving further into new endeavors, whether in music or beyond, I’m excited to see how I’ll grow as an artist, and I hope I can continue to share positive energy with people in everything I do,” he said.
The unit era
Hong’s work in Paris coincided with his bandmates’ much-hyped album drop.
The “V8” mini album — featuring Vernon and The8 — is the first unit release in the group’s hiatus era. They kicked it off with a listening party at a club in Seoul’s Itaewon district on June 28, and will hit arenas in Asia for a series of live shows.
Top producers from Pharrell Williams to Alice Longyu Gao have their fingerprints on the album, which features eight high-octane bops like “rat race” and the title track, “singasong.”
“We really wanted to tell an authentic story. Looking back on the times we’ve spent and how they’ve led us to who we are today, it naturally brought us to this theme — how our experiences of youth drive us forward,” the duo said.
Other Seventeen members also have work in the pipeline.
Dino, the group’s youngest, is set to debut under his alter ego, Picheolin, on August 3.
Meanwhile, vocalists Seungkwan and DK are scheduled to wrap up their “Serenade” concert tour in Kaohsiung on July 26.
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