THIS icon revealed the legendary behind-the-scenes story of the first-ever "nude" album among idols in K-pop history!
On May 19, the YouTube channel, "MMTG" posted a new episode of "Famous Song Championship" hosted by comedian JaeJae and Girls' Generation Sooyoung.
In particular, this program is dedicated to K-pop and covers hidden stories of K-pop masterpieces loved by various generations.
On this day, Jun Jin, a member of the longest active K-pop group SHINHWA appeared as a guest and revealed various anecdotes about their multihits.
Having various hit albums with dynamic concepts, Jun Jin complained:
"Because we've been releasing so many albums, we can't really come up with a new concept."
MC Sooyoung then commented:
"So, you tried something new and released a nude album."
Jun Jin who was flustered waved his hand and explained:
"That wasn't the concept."
Regarding the reason they decided to show their skin for their "Wild" photo shoot, Jun Jin said:
"If it weren't for photographer Kim Jung Man, we probably wouldn't have filmed it. But also, if this had been completely nude, I wouldn't have done it, but it was semi-nude."
As a brief context, in 2001 SHINHWA who was under SM Entertainment was recommended by founder Lee Soo Man to do a semi-nude concept. At the time, the photo book containing their nude photos exposing their butts sold over 15,000 copies, an extremely huge achievement for a first-gen K-pop group.
When asked about their butt exposure photos, Jun Jin was selected by the photographer to do it after a blind test.
"Photographer Kim Jung Man wanted Jun Jin (me) to do it. He saw all the members (lined up) like this. He saw them. If I had done that, I might have hurt my pride. But now that I'm filming and because my hair is long, it feels a bit like Tarzan. So he just wanted to film it and we did it."
Moving forward, when JaeJae asked the other K-pop idols present at the studio if it is possible for K-pop idols to do a semi-nude pictorial these days, GOT7 Youngjae replied:
"Ah, I can do it if all the members do it, but I can't do it alone."
THE BOYZ Sunwoo then drew laughter when he confidently said:
"I don't think I will do it as a group."
Meanwhile, SHINHWA, a group that debuted in 1998 remained active and the longest-promoting boy group for 26 years now.
Despite their solid career, Jun Jin confessed that they almost disbanded, narrating:
"At the time, we had debuted with our first album and were releasing our second album. We declared in advance that if this second album didn't do well, we would go our separate ways and we would disband. So we worked really hard for our first album, but we worked even harder for our second album and then we received a song called T.O.P and it won first place.
If we didn't, we would have disbanded."
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Written by Eunice Dela Cruz
