FACTS ABOUT YOUR KPOP IDOL

UNIQ

Profile: UNIQ

Korean entertainment company, SM Entertainment has been promoting in China with their artists for years, but it seems like Chinese companies have finally caught on. In October 2014, one of China’s most well-known entertainment agencies, Yuehua Entertainment, debuted a five member male idol group UNIQ, whose members are fluent in both Korean and Mandarin.

UNIQ (유니크) consists of five members: Chinese members Wang Yibo, Li Wenhan, Zhou Yixuan; and Korean members Kim Sungjoo and Cho Seungyeon. This debut is particularly unique (pun intended) because its Korean activities are not overseen by a Korean company but the Korean branch division of Chinese company Yuehua Entertainment.

If you’ve ever followed this niche area of Korea-China collaborations and projects, you should immediately be able to recognize Yuehua as the company that currently manages former Super Junior member Han Geng (韩庚). They even manage former Chinese-Japanese solo artist alan (阿蘭). Both of these artists have achieved great success in China since joining Yuehua Entertainment from their former companies. If you only recently followed K-Pop, that’s alright too because you may recognize Yuehua from news headlines this past summer when former EXO member Kris was rumoured to be in talks of signing with the company.

The collaboration between YG and Yuehua needs more clarification from either side, but from what has been reported, UNIQ is a group that spent their time training under Korea’s YG Entertainment, but will hereafter be managed by China’s Yuehua Entertainment. The interesting thing about this is that UNIQ made their debut stage on Korean music show Mnet Mcountdown earlier this week (October 16, 2014). Considering it is Yuehua Korea who helps manage all of UNIQ’s activities in Korea, it’s curious that they have enough leverage in the industry so early on for this opportunity to promote on a major weekly music show.