Syndrome (2006), the beginning of Hybe

Hybe (née BigHit Entertainment) began life in 2005. Founded by “Hitman” Bang Shi-Hyuk, a well known songwriter and producer at “Big Three” company JYP Entertainment, BigHit Entertainment’s first major project was Syndrome, an ambitious illustrated, serialized, multimedia web novel that would combine elements of manhwa, music, melodramatic narrative, and parasocial audience engagement. 

The project seems to have begun life as an attempt to launch G.Soul, a promising young JYP Entertainment trainee who was set to be the next Rain/Se7en. G.Soul wasn’t just any trainee, he was a talented singer who would later be touted by JYP himself as having been personally blessed by R.Kelly (pre-criminal charges) and if you listened to my recent Episode 84, you know that R&B soloist was the dominant male idol type in that mid-2000s era so it was a big deal for JYP to let Bang swoop up his star trainee for his new company.

At a certain point, however, G.Soul fades to the background and by the time that Syndrome was announced with big fanfare on June 6, 2006, G.Soul’s debut was not the focus. “Hitman” Bang’s name was the draw.

The then-popular internet novelist Guiyeoni was tapped to write the serialized story and the character designs for the illustrations would be based on real life young talent. On top of this, the most unique part of the Syndrome concept was that the production team would monitor netizen feedback in real time and adjust the serialized web novel in response to that feedback—with an aim of giving readers exactly what they wanted. And if you’ve been following the news from Hybe recently, you may have already figured out that this ended in complete disaster and a couple of ruined careers.

Judging by the PR coverage from 2006, by the time Syndrome went live, the goal seems to have been the creation of what was called “일반인 스타” or general public stars. People who weren’t known as actors or singers or performers but just for being a heightened version of themselves. Something close to the Japanese version of “idols” where the draw isn’t the performances as much as it is the personalities. Indeed, this is following in the footsteps of one of Bang’s sempai, Akimoto Yasuhi, creator of AKB48. 

Poor, young G.Soul was left on the soundtrack and in a single character’s name—”Ji Sol.”  Instead of promoting the young singer as part of a big debut, a handful of rookies were scooped up from “Conduct Zero,” a popular segment of KBS’s Happy Sunday that aired in early 2006 and showcased cute bad boys/alleged juvenile delinquents getting schooled in proper behavior. (These segments are uploaded to YouTube now and are a lot of fun, although there are no English subtitles, alas.) Park Tae-Yang (who would end up in Chaos), Kim Dong-Hyun (playing “Ji Sol” and who would end up in Boyfriend), and Lee Hwan were added to the cast from “Conduct Zero”, along with young actor Jin Ha (not sure if he’s the same Jin Ha as this Jin Ha).

There was clearly an attempt to craft something of a domestic F4 using the four male leads; media pushed the idea that fans should ship them together, calling the four Haetaejimong, a portmanteau of the characters’ names.

Haetaejimong, the proto-HYYH boys

So, as it turns out, Guiyeoni’s fans did not want such a blatantly commercial product from her and the blowback was swift and brutal; her career never recovered. 

G.Soul’s career would also sadly take a hit from this aborted launch. Missing that crucial mid-2000s R&B hunk window, he remained a “trainee” at JYP Entertainment for years. Even now that he has “debuted,” G.Soul appears to be/have been struggling with various mental health issues and only releasing music sporadically. (Is it the Hitman’s fault? No, but certainly it couldn’t have helped having your debut tank like this.)

The messy rollout of Syndrome certainly didn’t help anything either; fans complained about different upload times depending on which platform you were reading on, that the OST was distracting, and that at a certain point, the manhwa aspect was dropped and real photographs of the actors were subbed in instead. There was supposed to be a live action adaptation at a certain point but demand was so low that it never happened and the entire Syndrome project was quietly swept under the rug.

But the seeds of the Hitman’s worldview are here in this project. 

An interview from June 29, 2006, has him saying this: 

“우리는 이제 시스템을 수출해서 현지화 하는 것 등을 생각해봐야 한다…이번 ‘신드롬’ 프로젝트는 전세계인이 공감할 수 있는 콘텐츠이며, 국가의 색깔이 느껴지지 않아 이질감도 느끼지 못할 것”이라고 말했다.”

Translation via Google [emphasis added by me]: “We should now think about exporting the system and localizing it…[t]his Syndrome project is content that people all over the world can relate to, and since it doesn’t have a national color, there won’t be any sense of incongruity.”

Hitman Bang: pushing K-Pop without the K since at least 2006. 

You can also see in Syndrome, the seeds of BTS’s Most Beautiful Moment in Life extended universe, as well as other attempts at spinning off his idol IP into fictional universes. But what I find the most fascinating looking back at Syndrome in the wake of the Hybe monitoring report fiasco is just how Hitman Bang was fixated on netizen feedback from the very beginning. 

Can you craft art, music, and performances that can connect with an audience by monitoring everything the audience says online in minute detail and then attempting to give them something along those lines? My experience says… no. It’s also pretty telling that there is nothing in the Hybe document leaks (at least so far) that concerns, you know, the music part of the music industry. (You do get to hear about what went on at EXO Chen’s wedding though!)

It’s somehow fitting that the year of Hybe’s reputation crashing and burning is also the year of the rebirth of G-Dragon, rising up once again to save K-Pop from itself. “Power” is not like anything on the market and it’s certainly not a song or concept that has been workshopped, focus grouped, and run past the Netizen Monitoring Department of a major conglomerate. Like it, love it, or hate it, “Power” is G-Dragon putting his own vision out there and K-Pop needs that injection of pure artistic vision. While we can never forget that the music industry needs to make money and there will always be commercial concerns, the money part needs to be counterbalanced by the music. That is something that has been forgotten as Hybe rose to become the “Big One” of K-Pop. Crafting a product to suit the tastes of outspoken online netizens is ultimately a losing strategy. Nobody wants to be pandered to and eventually the audience will figure it out and move on.