Episode 61: The Rise and Fall and Rebirth of TVXQ Part 3—To the Toppermost of the Poppermost (2006-2008)
This is the third part in an episode series on the rise and fall and rebirth of TVXQ aka 東方神起 aka 동방신기. I touched on the group in my history series—which you may want to listen to first if you haven’t—but the circumstances surrounding the group’s almost disbandment and multitude of legal problems which began in 2009 and lasted for years afterwards are still contentious with fans (and anti-fans) to this day and their story really deserved proper time and attention paid to it.
I tried my best to remain as neutral as possible throughout this story and where a single narrative wasn’t possible I attempted to steel man all sides of the argument. Listeners can make up their own minds about the heroes and villains of this story.
The first episode is available here and covers the founding of S.M. Entertainment and some of the circumstances that led up to the creation of TVXQ.
Part 2 takes a look at the critical years 2003-2005 and the circumstances that led S.M. Entertainment to pivot their new boy group TVXQ to the Japanese market.
Part 3 looks at their rise to the top of Japan’s boy group market (as well as to the top of the newly forming “K-Pop” market) culminating in a performance at the prestigious national New Year’s Eve concert 紅白歌合戦 (Kouhaku Utagassen) on December 31, 2008, only one of four boy groups invited to perform.
(And a correction for part 3—Yamapi had already debuted with NEWS when 青春アミーゴ was released. The one thing I didn’t double check! You know what they say about assumptions…)
Ladies… of “a certain age” in the audience to see 東方神起 (TVXQ) on Utaban for an episode that aired November 22, 2007.
One of the things that shouldn’t be overlooked when looking at TVXQ’s rise in Japan is their successful rebranding from teen hysteria teenyboppers to romantic Korean men in the image of Bae Yong Joon aka “Yon-sama”. The housewife demographic is a powerful one and even as TVXQ picked up younger fans, the aunties suffering from “Bae Yong Joon Fever” remained a core part of the fan base… and really aunties remain a core part of the Japanese fan base to this day (as well as the core fan base of other K-Pop groups like BTS). It only makes sense that TVXQ would provide the theme song for Bae Yong Joon’s 2007 epic drama The Legend, a drama that has seemingly been wiped from the Internet. If you have a copy with English subtitles (or Japanese subtitles) let me know because I’d love to watch it again.
The K-Pop album sales arms race that currently has Seventeen’s sales numbers for FML with the new top selling record of all time with over six million began with TVXQ’s Mirotic in 2008 and although record keeping is fuzzy for numerous reasons it’s generally agreed that TVXQ’s sales record will hold until S.M. Entertainment group EXO released XOXO in 2013.
The poster for Heaven’s Postman (2009), a joint Korean-Japanese production under the CJ Group. The script was written by legendary Japanese drama scriptwriter Kitagawa Eriko (Long Vacation, etc), who has an eye for idol talent and specially requested Jaejoong.
Jaejoong branching out into solo work—even as S.M. insisted that the group activities came first—is also a significant development of these years. He was the center of the group in Japan and you have to wonder if he (or any of the other members) had been receiving offers for solo brand endorsements and other work that S.M. was preventing them from taking because it would interfere with “group activities.”
The Gospellers are a respected Japanese vocal group and it’s a testament to TVXQ’s rising star that the Gospellers invited them to participate in the 2007 Soul Power Tokyo Summit. I really love that whole slate of funky R&B songs they did during this era. “Choosy Lover” remains eternal.
An example of a five-member TVXQ Japanese commercial from 2009, with popular actress Ueta Aya. You can see that their image was romantic and refreshing…
Koda Kumi with TVXQ (Yunho and Changmin) on her instagram after attending a TVXQ fan club event in 2022.
Koda Kumi, one of Avex’s “Three Queens,” has remained friendly with the current version ofTVXQ.
Ahhh take me “back to the old school”… those were the days.
By the time 2008 comes to a close, the seeds of the “K-Pop industry” as we know it today have been planted. Something that my ex-A.R.M.Y. guest from episodes 49 and 24 and I have discussed at length is the importance for artists of the ecosystem, that an artists exists in context, not just as an entity in a vacuum.The 2008 SBS Gayo Daejun—which gave us showcases like the excellent piano battle between BigBang’s Taeyang and TVXQ’s Junsu—really signals the beginning of the “K-Pop” ecosystem, with its own mythos and stars… stars that may or may not overlap with what domestic Korean music consumers, generally, are listening to. Although it’s been completely memory-holed, the TVXQ vs. BigBang rivalry was a lot of fun. Most fans today won’t remember BigBang as the scrappy number two idol group behind kings TVXQ but the era exists! For a while BigBang’s T.O.P. and Jaejoong were even held up as friendly rivals for their acting roles… and as part of a glamorous “idol F4” along with Yoochun.
While there were certainly highs during this period, there were also many disturbing and traumatic incidents that came with their fame and those incidents left a mark on the members. I think it’s important to remember, especially when thinking about what happens next, that all of the members of TVXQ were under extreme stress during this era thanks to overwork and anxiety from being constantly stalked and all of the other pressures from family, S.M. Entertainment, and so on.
The songs played are:
“Bolero” by 東方神起 (from ~ The Secret Code ~ Final In Tokyo Dome)
“Rising Sun” by TVXQ
“Mirotic” by TVXQ
“どうして... 君を好きになってしまったんだろう？” by 東方神起
“Timeless” by SG Wannabe
“ロコローション” by Orange Range
“アイドル” by YOASOBI
“青春アミーゴ” by 修二と彰 (aka Yamashita Tomohisa and Kamenashi Kazuya)
“Juicy” by Koda Kumi
“Boomerang” by The Grace
“동방의 투혼” by TVXQ (World Cup 2006 Korea image song)
“Rising Sun” by TVXQ (live at a-nation 2006)
“Sky” by 東方神起 (Official MV; note: this song bangs big time)
“풍선” (Balloons) by 다섯손가락 (1986)
“Balloons” by TVXQ (and you can make up your own mind on the schmoopy stages; this one was only about a month after Yunho had been almost killed by an anti-fan poisoning his juice.)
“Choosey Lover” by 東方神起 (Official MV; note: I love this song so much)
“Lovin’ You” by 東方神起 (Official MV)
“Sky” by 東方神起 (live at a-nation 2007)
“永遠に” by Gosepllers (with TVXQ, live at Soul Power Summit 2007)
“Begin” by 東方神起 (acapella performance live on an early morning show, 2006)
“Hey Say” by Hey!Say!7 (a temporary Johnny’s & Associates unit; by 2009 Johnny’s & Associates groups would be moving their release dates so as not to clash with TVXQ)
“Last Angel” by Koda Kumi feat. 東方神起 (Official MV)
“Last Angel” by Koda Kumi feat. 東方神起 (Live at the Black Cherry tour final 2007)
“Purple Line” by 東方神起
“Mirotic” by TVXQ
“Mirotic” by TVXQ (cover by Jungkook (BTS), March 3, 2023)
“Purple Line”/ “どうして... 君を好きになってしまったんだろう？” by 東方神起 (Live on 紅白歌合戦 December 31, 2008; introduction by SMAP’s Nakai Masahiro)
“Haru Haru” by BigBang
“CLAP!” by 東方神起
Our opening song day is “Bolero,” performed live at Tokyo Dome on July 5, 2009. The concert was the final date of the Secret Code tour, supporting the group’s fourth album in Japan. They played 21 performances across 11 venues from May to July of that year. “Bolero,” an incredibly powerful ballad, was the encore song. I still get goosebumps when I hear Jaejoong make his entrance…
On my very first trip to Japan, in 2014, I happened to pick up a book written by music critic Ichikawa Tetsushi called 『誰も教えてくれなかった本当のポップ・ミュージック論』which translates to something like The Truth You Weren’t Told About Pop Music. Well, the book has a big section on 東方神起 aka TVXQ aka DBSK aka Dong Bang Shin Ki aka the subject of this series of episodes. One of the things Mr. Ichikawa says is that until he attended a 東方神起 concert, he hadn’t really understood the emotional power of their ballads. He was shocked to find that the ladies seated around him were in tears for most of the concert. It was this combination of pure emotional catharsis combined with their swooping harmonies that was a such powerful draw for the fans, at least for BigEast, the Japanese fans. But it does point to something big: when Korean and global K-Pop fans, generally, Cassiopea, think of TVXQ’s music, what they think of is likely either the frenetic energy of “Rising Sun” or the sultry “Mirotic,” the latter of which was the TVXQ song selected by Rolling Stone in 2023 to represent the group. Well, the Japanese fans, BigEast, are much, much more likely to name something like the touching ballad どうして君を好きになってしまったんだろう？The divide between TVXQ and 東方神起 is real. Me, personally, I’d pick “Bolero.”
But 2009 is still a few years out from where we left off in our story of the rise and fall and rebirth of TVXQ. If you haven’t listened to part 1 or part 2, I’d suggest catching up on those first but the TL;DR is that TVXQ debuted in 2004 in the middle of a downturn for both SM Entertainment and the Korean music industry, more generally, with BoA being one of the few shining lights. Except that BoA was really a product of Japan’s Avex Group, a former Japanese dance music label turned pan-Asian pop music behemoth. Back in Korea, Lee Soo-Man and SM, hoping to recapture the glory days of super teen idol boy group H.O.T., especially in China, put together a new group of elite trainees called Dong Bang Shin Ki, whose selling point was that they were idols who could actually sing… and then after some success with the domestic teen audiences, shipped them off to Japan instead of China in part because Japan was still buying albums but also the Hallyu Wave in the form of Bae Yong Joon had just crashed up on shore there. TVXQ (東方神起 in Japan) have a hard time of it at first but their luck starts to change late in the summer of 2005 when AVEX buys a large share of SM Entertainment and both TVXQ’s music and image improve drastically in quality and they start gaining fans. Oh and Jaejoong has just suffered a major stress injury to his knee.
So, as I mentioned in the previous episodes, there had been a real push in the late 1990s into the mid-2000s from both domestic record companies and multinationals to find acts that would play well across Asia (and possibly even break into the West.) Japan had acts like Utada Hikaru a singer-songwriter who grew up in America (and spoke English), Korea had BoA, and Taiwan had gifted the world the legendary boy groups known as F4 and Fahrenheit. One reason for this push is something I’d mentioned in the last episodes: record sales were declining across the region. And a big reason for that was piracy, which was such a huge problem in Korea (and China) that both were named as piracy hubs by the U.S. Government. So, despite Lee Soo-Man’s obsession with the massive Chinese market (and consequently SM Entertainment’s fascination with the Chinese market) for a company looking to get on a steadier financial footing, Japan just makes more sense as a target. An article from the October 21, 2004, issue of Hankyoreh magazine even quoted Lee Soo-Man as saying that when he entered the Chinese market in 1998, he didn’t expect to earn a profit for at least ten years. And that was before the bottom fell out of the CD market.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: in the last episode I introduced the popular R&B vocal group SG Wannabe, who debuted at the same time as TVXQ. According to the Recording Industry Association of Korea, SG Wannabe had the best selling album of 2005 with 414,855 copies sold. In 2007, SG Wannabe, again had the number one selling album in Korea but this time they only sold 190,998 copies. Less than a decade out from the million sellers of H.O.T. and the entire market in Korea has changed. But in Japan, Orange Range had the best selling album of 2005 with 2.6 million copies sold. In 2007, it was Mister Children with 1.2 million copies sold. While there definitely was a decline, it wasn’t nearly as steep and that top number of about 1-1.5 million for the best selling album of the year would stay fairly steady even into the 2020s, even as idol acts began to dominate sales charts in Japan, too. So if you are a music company looking to make money via record sales, especially with an idol group, Japan was and is still a very good target to aim at.
That strong history of piracy and bootleg music sales in Korea I discussed in the previous episode meant that there really wasn’t a strong consumer tradition of purchasing official versions of albums or, almost more importantly, purchasing what are called “catalog sales” or older albums. Something that was an important revenue earner for record companies in markets like the United States and Japan. So as the Internet became a more and more convenient place to find and listen to music, especially after the introduction of devices like the mp3 player and then of streaming audio, the only people in markets like Korea who were still buying albums were the hardcore fans and albums, idol albums especially, increasingly began to be more targeted to that hardcore demographic, with multiple versions for collectors that had different bonus contents included. In other words albums as merch rather than physical media meant to be played. TVXQ’s second Korean album, Rising Sun, released in 2005, which I discussed in the previous episode, had essentially one version in the Korean market. TVXQ’s third Korean album, released in 2006, had four versions with different content on each one and quite a few fans could be expected to purchase all four copies. That’s a huge leap forward in the “culture technology” of album sales and other K-Pop companies would soon follow SM’s example.
Telecom companies in Korea had also begun aggressively entering the music market but while there had been a boom in mobile and online music sales, the bulk of that money went to the telecoms and the web portals—not to the music companies and certainly not to the musicians and performers. With more and more people turning to music streaming, even things like ringtone sales were doing more business than recorded music. In early 2008, an article from Billboard magazine, quotes the CEO from this small independent company called YG Entertainment as saying that only 15% of their revenue comes from music sales, whereas three or four years ago sales had been the majority of revenue.
Companies needed to diversify—we saw in the last episode that S.M. Entertainment had even begun a for-profit training school—and companies had to look for more and more creative revenue streams for their artists: fan clubs, merchandise, concerts, brand tie-ins, feature films, television drama soundtracks, and more. But all of this takes a lot of up front investment—spending money building up a fan base to (hopefully) make even more money from those fans. So, for a company like S.M. that was trying to build up a deeper roster, they needed every penny, every won, every yen that their tentpole acts of BoA and TVXQ brought in (minus the cut off the top to Lee Soo Man’s Like Planning, naturally).
So let’s turn to Japan where, incredibly, people were (and are) still buying CDs. If you’ve listened to my history series, then you might remember that 2005 was an incredible year for the boy groups from the talent agency Johnny’s & Associates. Their talents were everywhere in 2005, successful TV dramas, variety shows getting ratings that the Super Bowl would be jealous of, and, of course, the hit songs. In particular, the duo of Yamashita Tomohisa and Kamenashi Kazuya, both trainees at the time, scored a massive once-in-a-lifetime super hit called “青春アミーゴ.” It was so popular that it not only ranked in as the best selling song of 2005 in Japan with almost a million copies sold but was also the third best selling song of 2006 and I guarantee you that anybody alive and conscious in 2005 could sing a few bars and probably do the choreography for the chorus too. And who had the best selling song of 2006? That would be the Johnny’s & Associates group KAT-TUN, newly debuted with “青春” hitmaker Kamenashi—better known as simply “Kame”—as one of their two lead singers. The hype and hysteria around KAT-TUN was so big that they had their debut concert in Tokyo Dome. Take a moment and imagine how popular a group has to be for them to debut in a venue like Tokyo Dome.
This was the boy group competition TVXQ would be up against in Japan trying to make a dent in the Japanese market and it would not be easy. But luckily, they had AVEX on their side, as well as the residual push of Hallyu and the middle aged ladies suffering from Bae Yong-Joon fever. AVEX has a lackluster reputation with fans today but in 2006 it was the number two label behind Sony Japan and by 2008 they’d be number one thanks in no small part to the “Three Queens”: Amuro Namie, Hamasaki Ayumi, and Koda Kumi. AVEX in 2006 was a powerful ally for any J-Pop group, especially one hoping to make an impression in a boy group market dominated by Johnny’s & Associates.
But more important than the CDs, even in Japan, were the lucrative brand tie-ups, drama, anime, and movie theme songs, commercial endorsements, fan club membership fees, concert tours, and all the other crucial revenue streams that come from being a popular musician. In 2005, the top five most popular male celebrities for brand endorsements were literally the five members of Johnny’s & Associates group SMAP. Literally they were the top five. And the top ten ranking for brand endorsements, monetarily, went like this number one: SMAP as a group. Numbers 2-4, three of the five individual members of SMAP with the other two coming in a couple of places down after another Johnny’s & Associates group, TOKIO, and popular actress Ueta Aya. Bae Yong-Joon wasn’t quite at the SMAP level but he was in demand; he was proof that there were lucrative brand tie-in opportunities for Korean men in Japan.
So, forget about music show trophies, this is the real playing field that TVXQ needed to compete on for the real money and breaking through was not going to be easy. However, they did have one thing working in their favor. As I mentioned in the last episode, in 2004, housewives across the nation of Japan fell in love with Korean actor Bae Yong-Joon and his performance in the Korean drama Winter Sonata. TVXQ, with the pivot away from the bog standard J-pop teen pop they’d debuted in Japan with to the tender ballad of their third single “My Destiny,” was aiming directly for this extremely lucrative demographic. It was a smart move. Rather than try to fight for the already captured teen fans of the Johnny’s & Associates groups, why not target a different demographic, one that had already bought into the fantasy of the romantic Korean man? And spoiler alert: it worked big time. The music critic I mentioned earlier, Mr. Ichikawa, when talking about TVXQ, also remarked on their capturing of the housewife demographic. You can see them in the audiences of music shows filmed in this era. And the housewife demographic is nothing to laugh at. They are a powerful and very loyal consumer block. While TVXQ, of course, also had younger fans in Japan, it was that powerful housewife demographic that was at the core of their marketing and image building in Japan. By 2006, they had swapped the over-the-top Visual Kei hairstyles for Bae Yong-Joon’s signature glasses. Literally. I can post the pictures in the show notes.
And what about SM Entertainment? In May 2005, “Minus Touch” Kim Kyung-Wook was replaced as CEO of SM Entertainment by BoA’s former manager Kim Young-Min. As we pick our story back up, SM is still dealing with Lee Soo-Man’s legal problems as well as having just lost their lawsuit against the FTC for unfair contracts. They launched a new 12 member boy group—Super Junior—in November 2005 that would try again with the member rotation concept and China focus. Super Junior had a strong initial debut, adding a 13th member in 2006, but would struggle greatly over the next couple of years, including a truly awful car accident in spring 2007 that sent member Kyuhyun into a coma. Then there was The Grace, who were launched as a girl group counterpart to TVXQ in 2005. The group never really caught on, through no fault of the members who were all very talented. It was the wrong time and the wrong place… and the wrong branding to tie these women to TVXQ, upsetting devoted Cassiopiea who (allegedly) formed anti-fan clubs of the group.
Girl group Girls Generation would debut later in summer 2007 only to struggle to make an impression. Rock band TRAX—who I mentioned at the end of the last episode, the band meant to tackle Japan’s rock scene—was making no impact in Japan and would lose member No Min-Woo in 2006. Min-Woo would (you’ll never believe this) later sue S.M. Entertainment for—among other things—pressuring entertainment industry people not to work with him after he quit TRAX. Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the last episode, through 2006 and 2007, SM was also in court with two former trainees, who wanted to get out of unfair contracts. So, a lot was riding on TVXQ breaking in Japan because TVXQ, along with BoA, were essentially supporting SM Entertainment as they struggled to build out their struggle bus of a roster.
So, as we pick our story back up in 2006, just keep in mind that SM Entertainment is not yet out of their “Minus” era. Because SM Entertainment desperately needed the revenue TVXQ brought in (again, minus the cut to Lee Soo Man’s Like Planning), the group was essentially juggling two full time promotional schedules concurrently in Korea and Japan, plus additional promotions across the pan-Asian region, that all five members—Hero Jaejoong, Xia Junsu, Micky Yoochun, U-Know Yunho, and the baby, Max Changmin—made it through this era alive is truly a miracle. One Japanese fan blog described their schedules during this era like this: If TVXQ had work in Japan on Friday and Sunday, SM would book them in Korea on Saturday. In one infamous week from June 16 to 23rd, 2006, they traveled around the world in 8 days: Fly from Korea to Thailand for the Channel V Awards on June 16th, then to Germany where they appeared at the World Cup in Germany on June 18th to cheer for Korea (they had done the 2006 World Cup image song for Korea), then back to Korea then off to Saipan for shooting a music video then Niigata in Japan for a concert on the 23rd. That’s 8 days worth of schedule. 8 days. And in the middle of everything, on the 21st, yet another Japanese single dropped.
“Begin,” the single released on the 21st, was written by Avex stalwart Jin Nakamura, who would go on to write award winning songs for Exile and Juju among others. It’s a classic Avex-style R&B ballad. The kind of song that plays well at karaoke. The exact kind of song that makes ladies burst into emotional tears during a concert. The video was done in sepia-tones on a soundstage and prominently highlighted the members’ glossy good looks and big eyes as they sang to camera. It became their best selling single so far in Japan. The housewives were definitely starting to pay attention.
But then during the Malaysia tour stop on July 14, 2006—held for 20,000 people with newly debuted Super Junior opening for them—tragedy struck. Yunho had apparently dislocated his ankle but went on stage and danced anyway, also while suffering from major throat pain. He was physically at a breaking point and would be out of commission for the next month and forced to rest, missing out on TVXQ’s return to the a-Nation concert series which ran from July through August, although he was participating in preparations for TVXQ’s third Korean album, which were happening concurrently to a-Nation.
I don’t know how much the TVXQ members themselves would have taken in at the time but watching the footage from a-Nation 2005 and then a-Nation 2006 really shows their growth. Instead of just the small cluster of fans at the front of the stage, there’s more of an overall rumble of recognition when they come on. And “Rising Sun” gets people up and moving. The members may have been worked to the point of hospitalization but it was getting results.
Their next Japanese single, “Sky,” the one with the video filmed in June in Saipan during the hell week, was released on August 16 and confirmed the a-Nation audience response. “Sky” cracked the top 10 of the Oricon chart, selling almost 30,000 copies. Their best sales numbers in Japan to date. (And almost more importantly, it was the tie-in song for a summer Baskin Robbins ice cream commercial.) “Sky” is a fun up-tempo J-pop song written by another J-Pop stalwart, H-Wonder, the man responsible for heaps of songs for artists ranging from Koda Kumi to BoA to Exile to V6 and Arashi. And what I think is worth highlighting about “Sky” is not just sales numbers but that, to my ear, it’s the perfect localized boy group track. TVXQ, beginning to be better and better know by their Japanese name 東方神起, now look and sound not just like a J-Pop boy group but like a good J-Pop boy group. The material was good; their voices sound fantastic; and the members looked incredible. It had taken them nearly two years, two members sidelined due to injury from overwork, and an unceasing grind on both sides of the East Sea/Sea of Japan to get to this point.
In the first episode, I discussed how the contracts for pop stars in Korea had originally been quite short, only three to five years. While the idea seems to have been to avoid being stuck with deadweight teen talents after a burst of initial popularity, what was starting to happen was that these agencies were seeing popular young artists reach the end of their contracts and deciding to leave the agency and go somewhere else for a better deal (in the case of SM Entertainment’s Shinhwa) or (in the case of DSP’s Sechs Kies) just flat out disbanding because they were tired of the grind. Or in the case of H.O.T., the company stupidly disbanding them itself rather than renew their contracts, assuming that they were no longer worth the cost. Another problem with the shorter contracts is that to make any kind of progress in the massive Japanese pop market—which we’ve established was also extremely lucrative—domestic Japanese record companies wanted at least seven years to be able to raise and sell the artists properly. S.E.S. had never stood a chance in Japan because of their short contract length but BoA, who was still doing very well, and now TVXQ proved that having that long ramp-up time in Japan could bring real results.
Something else to think about as you begin to see how much work it took to try and break into domestic markets across Asia, is that you can begin to understand why Lee Soo-Man has kept returning to the idea of having localized sub-units—something we see the company try with Super Junior, EXO, and NCT—in order to spread the workload. Part of it is money and control, sure, but the other part has to be knowing the impossible burden for Korean idols trying to build on-the-ground local fandoms in every country in Asia at once. The local subunit concept is not inherently a bad one, although boy group fans have traditionally reacted very negatively to it, in part because idol fans—traditionally, although this is much less true today as the fandoms have globalized—are looking out for the best interests of the idol, not the best interests of the company. Local subunits would naturally make the company and team brand bigger than the brands of the individual members…
But back to TVXQ, their third Korean album “O”-Jung.Ban.Hap. was released on September 29, 2006. The title track was a standard Yoo Young-Jin cool guy zone SM Production number, with the MV showcasing the group as pan-Asian superstars, but the song that I think is more significant off of this album is “Balloons,” which was a featured B-side. “Balloons” was a remake of a song from an 80s rock band but arranged to sound extremely childlike and schmoopy. As best as I can tell, the idea seems to have been a heavy-handed attempt to manufacture a broad public hit exactly like H.O.T.’s “Candy,” with a song that could reach both teens and their parents. The costuming was extremely juvenile, lots of children’s show primary colors and backing dancers dressed like fairytale characters. And to my eyes, anyway, TVXQ themselves appear dead-eyed and extremely over it, as they prance around on stage with Snow White and Peter Pan.
Of course, it didn’t help that the group was exhausted, mentally and physically. Yunho had returned from his medical rest only to be sent back to the hospital in an infamous incident that took place on October 14, 2006. An anti-fan disguised as staff had handed Yunho juice spiked with glue. He drank it and it almost killed him. Yet he was back at work just days later, prancing around with Snow White and Peter Pan and trying to look cheerful. And that’s just what was made public. The stories from behind-the-scenes in this era as TVXQ grimly marched through an impossible schedule are horrifying. All five members have come out in recent years with stories from this time. Yunho suffered from PTSD from the spiked juice incident. The constant travel between Seoul and Tokyo (and beyond) was isolating and all of the members have spoken about becoming depressed and homesick; they were regularly working to the point of physical collapse, too tired to stand, left “dragging themselves on the floor like fish” after rehearsals. At one concert in 2007 Jaejoong infamously fell through a trapdoor that had been left open but returned to stage with bruised ribs and kept performing. Fans noticed the members lip-syncing more frequently in concerts, voices shot after 30 or 40 straight days of performances. And then there was the constant presence of the “sasaeng” or stalker fans who would invade their rooms, wake them up in the night in their beds, call them incessantly, and chase their vehicles. Especially after Yunho’s near death incident in 2006, the members have to have been terrified that the next time they might not be so lucky to escape with their lives.
And yet a big part of selling an idol group—versus just a normal pop act—is that the members’ own personalities and their interactions as a group were just as important as the songs they released. The pressure to be “on,” to provide fan service, and to keep up a good face not just when they were on stage but especially when the behind-the-scenes cameras were running, would have been immense. One of the big hooks of any idol group are the relationships between the members. And for TVXQ that involved crafting a kayfabe family narrative where Yunho was the father, Jaejoong, the mother, and the other three were the kids. This dynamic was explicitly marketed to fans and sent to the media as a promotional point. The Yunho-Jaejoong “ship” or “pairing” was extremely popular and the members would have been under incredible pressure to play along, whether they were feeling it or not. Whatever real feelings it may or may not have been based on, the family narrative was also another important part of the package.
On top of that, the five members were always together. They lived together, worked together, and traveled together with essentially no break from each other. This kind of pressure-cooker atmosphere can and will lead to intense interpersonal conflict. Small annoyances or fears or anxieties build and build and build… and you have nowhere to escape to because you have no time off and home is the dorm where you live with these same guys and where fans will break in and climb in your bed and on top of you while you’re asleep. It’s not surprising that the members began… acting out. Jaejoong was picked up for a DUI in 2006 and then he and Yoochun got into a car accident, driving into a tree, in early January 2007, apparently trying to flee from fans chasing them.
You can say that they were already adults at 18, 19, 20, 21 and made their own decisions but the mental and physical exhaustion brought on by this constant level of work and travel would have made it very hard to sit and rationally and logically look at the deals they had made. In a situation like this, ideally a young adult would have a trusted authority figure—someone like a parent—who would be able to advise with the young person’s best interests in mind. The members of TVXQ… did not have that.
Remember the member rotation crisis in episode two? It came out later in court that at that time in November 2004, the members’ parents all signed off on a contract that made sure TVXQ would remain just these five members, with no changes, for thirteen years. Now as 2006 turned to 2007, there were just ten years more of this grind to go, give or take a couple of years hiatus for mandatory military service.
So, as 2006 turned to 2007, TVXQ caught something of a lucky break in timing on the boy group scene in Japan. Remember KAT-TUN, the super group who debuted in Tokyo Dome? Well, one of their members, Akanishi Jin, went on a sudden hiatus and then peaced out to Los Angeles to uh, “study English,” leaving something of a gap in the boy group marketplace. A not insignificant number of fans across Asia find themselves turning to TVXQ instead. Younger and hipper fans than the Bae Yong Joon aunties. Akanishi had been known for his vocals… TVXQ are known for their vocals. Akanishi was known for his pretty face… TVXQ had Jaejoong, known for his pretty face. KAT-TUN had the extremely popular fan-pairing of Kamenashi and Akanishi; TVXQ had the extremely popular fan-pairing of Jaejoong and Yunho. Akanishi would eventually return to the fold before leaving again permanently in 2010 but KAT-TUN’s momentum did take a real hit during Akanishi’s hiatus and KAT-TUN vs 東方神起 would become something of a rivalry among fans in Japan and across Asia during the next few years.
Taking advantage of that boy group market gap, TVXQ would double down on the Japanese market in 2007 and take a hiatus in the Korean market. They kicked off the year with back-to-back singles in Japan,“Step-by-Step” and, one of my personal favorites, the funky dance track “Choosy Lover.” Both are solid J-Pop boy group tracks and both cracked the top ten of the Oricon chart. This was followed by their second Japanese album, Five in the Black, which also hit the top ten of the album charts for the week it was released, and a Japanese tour. As spring went into summer the momentum was building and in between Japanese tour dates, they would release their 11th Japanese single, “Lovin’ You.”
“Lovin’ You” is a return to the kind of deep, emotional ballad that TVXQ excels at and it’s another song written by a J-Pop stalwart. In this case, Sakai Mikio, who, as an aside, also wrote one of my favorite Tackey & Tsubasa songs: “Kamen.” “Lovin’ You” sold nearly twice as much as their previous single, almost 50,000 copies, and it was enough to get them to number two on the Oricon chart for the week. Their highest position yet. The final date on their concert tour was at that grand symbol of artistic success: the Budokan. They’d finally made it. The Beatles had played here and, now, so had TVXQ.
Between the Budokan concert and their first number two on the charts, the tide was truly turning for TVXQ in Japan. You could sense the excitement as soon as they stepped on stage at a-Nation later that summer of 2007. A triumphant return for the former bathroom break group. Fans with cheerful red balloons are liberally sprinkled through the large venue and even a-Nation attendees who look like they’re probably fans of another one of the acts on the bill are getting into the performance, waving their arms in time with the music and cheering. The members of TVXQ look extremely happy. They’d really and truly earned this.
TVXQ had also earned the chance to participate in the 2007 Soul Power Summit—that’s S.O.U.L. as in the music, not Seoul like the city—a special soul music concert series that began in 2006 and ran through 2022. The group was able to showcase their musical skills by performing with a live band for the first time, as well as holding their own performing side-by-side with the respected Japanese vocal group Gospellers, which, as a long-time J-Pop idol watcher, I can tell you that is something special. There are two basic categories of J-Pop idol: idols who can actually sing and idols who can’t. To be clear, there’s no shame in being in the latter category because Japanese idols are not actually expected to be able to sing well (and you can listen to me discuss this in various other episodes) but through their hard work, TVXQ were building their brand as “singing entertainers” who could actually sing. They were even billed as a コーラス・グループ or a singing group rather than simply an idol group and were often asked to sing a capella live on variety shows, which they would do. Their mics were on and those mic were not those speciality pre-programmed autotune mics used today.
There was a huge promotional push for the next Japanese single, which came out on August 1, 2007, a triple A-side featuring the peppy “Summer Dream,” “Song for You,” and an ending theme song ballad called “Love in the Ice.” There were multiple versions of the CD, brand tie-ups, special event raffles, and lots of marketing. They sold almost 125,000 copies and made it to… number one in the daily singles chart! Unfortunately, they were only number two in the Oricon weekly charts, behind another boy group: the temporary unit “Hey Say 7” from Johnny’s & Associates, who had conveniently sold just a couple more thousand copies of their song “Hey Say” to tip them into the number one slot for the week.
But the fact that TVXQ had now reached the level where they could challenge the Johnny’s & Associates groups meant something big. And TVXQ were charming. They’d learned enough Japanese by this point in mid-2007 to be able to banter on television variety shows, an important part of reaching mainstream Japanese listeners outside of the core fandom. I’m going to play a good example of the group interacting with popular comedy duo Downtown on the music show Hey!Hey!Hey! on August 6, 2007. This is Junsu explaining that he’s been inventing new Dad jokes.
I cannot overstate the importance for idols of this kind of interaction with comedians and other mainstream talents. Both in Korea and Japan, the idols who manage to get a foothold in the world of variety show programming, where they are most likely to reach normie entertainment consumers, tend to have the longest and most successful careers.
As 2007 closes out, TVXQ would also appear in a collaboration with fellow Avex artist and one of the “Three Queens” of J-Pop, Koda Kumi, for a tie-up song for the release of the movie Resident Evil III, which led to their very first appearance on influential Japanese music shows Music Station and Utaban. They would also make a special appearance at Koda Kumi’s Tokyo Dome concert. This was more than Hallyu, this was actual, real mainstream popularity in Japan.
But a passing comment on the Utaban appearance stands out in retrospect: Jaejoong is demonstrating his ability to eat spicy foods by eating plain rice with hot mustard, which he explains that is something he even eats at home. Koda Kumi is shocked, “Are you broke or something?!”
It was a throwaway joke but it carried a deep sting of truth. TVXQ was generating revenue… but how much of that money was actually getting to the men working themselves to exhaustion? Avex had to have their cut, as did SM Japan, SM Entertainment in Korea, and don’t forget Lee Soo Man’s shell company Like Planning taking a nice cut of everything coming into Korea. Were the men of TVXQ broke?
As we enter 2008 and build to the crucial year of 2009, the question of money, but also of the members’ own individual desires, and not to mention the split between the competing interests of Avex in Japan and SM Entertainment outside of Japan, would reach a boiling point. How long these men function as essentially two separate groups both with full time promotional schedules without collapsing completely?
TVXQ began 2008 with another Japanese single, “Purple Line,” released in January 2008. It would become their first number one single on Japan’s Oricon chart, making TVXQ the first K-Pop boy group to get a number one song in Japan. It’s not their strongest single, musically, but it’s a fun song that kind of leans into a Timbaland-esque R&B sound that was popular at the time. But I think what’s worth paying attention to more than the charting or the slick car commercial-style MV are the credits on the song, which was written by Yoo Young-Jin and lists Lee Soo-Man as the producer.
Now, it’s possible Lee Soo-Man himself actively produced this one particular Japanese song from TVXQ but it’s also possible that Lee Soo-Man was being given a vanity credit in order to get a direct cut of the money TVXQ was earning in Japan. And “Purple Line” having writing credits from SM Music Director Yoo Young-Jin instead of one of Avex’s stable of hit makers, certainly makes it seem like S.M. Entertainment was getting frustrated watching their group earn money across the East Sea, money they (and Like Planning) weren’t necessarily getting what they felt they deserved.
So, the first part of 2008 sees TVXQ building on their Japanese success of 2007. They have a bigger album, T, a bigger tour, and they are tapped to do a theme song for a bigger drama (Bae Yong Joon-starrer the Legend), and their showing at a-Nation is even bigger and better… that first number one is followed by three more number ones in 2008. Setting a new record for Korean boy groups in Japan. And importantly early 2008 is also when we begin to see the members begin the slow process of establishing solo brand images, with “Purple Line” followed by a series of Japanese singles that featured just one member each, released one per week. It’s a scenario that appears to be designed to measure who the most popular members are. Judging by sales alone, that would be Jaejoong by a mile followed by Yoochun and Junsu, with Changmin and Yunho trailing behind.
As summer turned to fall, TVXQ finally returned to Korea to focus on preparations for their fourth Korean album, Mirotic, which was released on September 26, 2008. Having been just over a year and a half since their last Korean promotions, fans were ready and waiting to showcase their collective power. Over 300,000 preorders were reported and S.M. had to delay the release by two days because they were unable to keep up with demand. The album—with three versions—would go on to sell over half a million copies, something nobody had managed to do in Korea since Seo Taiji in 2004. It’s actually kind of ominous in retrospect. Those fan power-driven album sales can be seen as the opening salvo in what would later into the 2010s and especially into the 2020s become an overheated and increasingly barren wasteland of fans bulk buying albums but, back in 2008, those big numbers were still novel and kind of thrilling.
And those album sales showed a level of fan club size and coordination that hadn’t really been seen since the days of H.O.T. and Sechs Kies. As with all giant sales metrics in contemporary times, the sales themselves represent less a measure of general popularity than a measure of the size and power of the fandom. And you had better believe SM Entertainment, as well as all of the other K-Pop idol companies, were paying attention.
And the title song was a genuine hit. For a group whose last domestic work had been the utterly banal remake of “Balloons,” seeing the grown and sexy men striding across the stage must have been shocking. One can’t imagine the TVXQ of 2006 being slapped with a 19+ sticker. “Mirotic,” the song, became legendary. To this day, almost 15 years later, idols are still imitating Changmin’s big belting high note. TVXQ would also cement their legend status by closing out the year with their very first invitation to Japan’s prestigious Kouhaku Utagassen, the big New Year’s Eve concert that plays on NHK and which, at the time, got insane ratings of something like over 50% of the country. It was a huge honor, especially considering they were one of only four boy groups invited that year: SMAP and Tokio (both from Johnny’s & Associates) and EXILE (also from Avex) were the other three. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to speculate that if the events of 2009 hadn’t played out the way they did, 東方神起 had a really good chance at becoming the next most popular boy group in Japan after SMAP.
But despite the celebratory atmosphere at the end of the year, there were already signs of trouble to come. For one thing, the 2008 financial crisis had hit Korea. The stock markets tanked; foreign capital fled; the Korean banking system was in crisis; and exports of Korean goods slowed to a trickle. Just as the members of TVXQ were looking to stretch their wings, the financial climate took the air out from underneath them. Jaejoong had announced a film role in September 2008, the first solo work from any TVXQ member. The film was a joint Japanese-Korean production with Jaejoong specifically requested by popular scriptwriter Kitagawa Eriko (she did Long Vacation and so on) which was a huge honor for any idol but SM Entertainment’s position in November 2008 was “TVXQ prioritizes group activities.” If SM Entertainment had been considering solo activities for the members—especially with the successful debut of the TVXQ-esque boy group SHINee in May 2008—it’s possible those plans were now in jeopardy thanks to the global economic crisis.
Meanwhile, in interviews about Mirotic, the members appeared divided when faced with the question of “SMP” or “SM Production,” a style that had a somewhat negative connotation in Korea thanks to the lingering bias against “singing entertainers.” Junsu wanted to clarify that they weren’t a group that “only” did SMP but rather a group that could do SMP among other styles. Meanwhile Yunho stepped up to play the role of company man and emphasized that their biggest successes had been SMP and he was proud to have introduced SMP to fans in places like China and Thailand.
And on top of everything else, while TVXQ were off building a solid base of support in Japan, the pop landscape in Korea was quickly beginning to change. Between the beginning of 2004 when TVXQ debuted and the end of 2008, K-Pop had gone from something unseemly and associated with drugs and shady backroom deals that no respectable person would let their children near to SM Entertainment CEO Kim Young-Min getting a presidential commendation for what he accomplished in spreading the Korean Wave abroad with BoA and TVXQ.
And TVXQ’s boosted image—an image that now went beyond just teenage hysteria to suave and sophisticated Asian superstars—helped kick off a new wave of idol groups. Remember how I said that in 2003, it was stars like Se7en and Rain who ruled the scene? Well, that was changing and changing fast. Even that small independent company mentioned earlier in the episode, YG Entertainment, had now gotten into the idol group business. In 2006 they had debuted a hip-hop themed idol group called BigBang, who had a massive breakout hit in August 2008 with “Haru Haru.” That hit had injected new life into the emerging “K-Pop” scene as the industry gleefully turned TVXQ vs BigBang into the newest Korean pop royalty rivalry, even having BigBang’s Taeyang face off against Junsu in a piano battle at the SBS Gayo Dajeun on December 29, 2008. There hadn’t been this much excitement around teen pop since H.O.T. vs Sechs Kies almost a decade ago.
Most importantly, with all of the money now sloshing around this new K-pop scene, even with the financial downturn, the big corporations were really starting to pay attention. That small independent company, YG Entertainment, with the new hit group? MNET and their parent company CJ E&M swooped in with an offer they couldn’t refuse. The same went for SK Telecom and JYP Entertainment. Allegedly MNET even tried to force SM into a deal… but it would take another 15 years before they’d finally gain control of the company.
Little by little the K-Pop idol scene as we know it today, with some critical support from the Korean government and from the big chaebol companies, was beginning to take shape. And that shape was the shape that could drive major fan spending: the idol group. First TVXQ, then Super Junior in 2005, the number of idol groups appearing on Korean music shows gradually began to increase and the number of normie acts began to decrease. Between 2006 and 2009, awards shows went from showcasing acts like R&B vocal group SG Wannabe and soft rock band Buzz to wall-to-wall singing entertainers: SHINee, 2NE1, After School, f(x), 2PM, Beast…
But, at least for now, there was only one group at the very top: TVXQ.
Let’s close out part 3 with a song from T, the third Japanese album, released in January 2008: “Clap,” written by Figge Bostrom, who is one of my favorite J-Pop songwriters.