ShinHwa, the Legendary Boy Band for 14 Years

This video clip is from the latest performance of Shinhwa, one of the most successful boy bands in Korea since the late 90s. As all the six members of Shinhwa had made a promise with their fans, the band just made its comeback to Korean pop music scene last month.

Venus, the song in his video, is also the lead track of Shinhwa’s comeback album The Return. Venus is a pop-electro song composed by Andrew Nelson and lyrics by Shinhwa’s member Min Woo.

The name Shinhwa was given by the company when the band was initially formed. The word Shinhwa means myth or legend in Korean; interestingly, the band also became the oldest boy band (or idol group) in Korea with its several remarkable contributions to k-pop.

As I mentioned before, I started to listen to K-pop when I was in junior high school; Shinhwa introduced me into the world of Korean pop music. I loved the title song T.O.P. of their second album so much that I even could not stop listening to it. The album was considered Shinhwa’s first milestone and it won the group’s first major music award, the "1998's Best Music Video from a new male pop group" award from M.Net. T.O.P. was absolutely a hit; it also helped them shape their band's image as well as their future positioning in Korean music industry.

Shinhwa is considered as the first generation of K-pop, and the only male group that lasts for 14 years in Korea. That is also the reason why people always mark “legendary” on Shinhwa.

Being significant among k-pop groups, Shinhwa was the first group that each of the members could pursue their own solo careers while keeping  Shinhwa as a whole.

After four years of hiatus, all the members finished serving mandatory military services; the legendary Shinhwa has just came back to us by bringing another excellent masterpiece. Yes, they kept the faith with all their fans and the media that they would not disband; they wanted to sing and dance for another 10 years, 20 years, or more.

Another legend created by Shinhwa was that they became the first K-pop group to have their own entertainment company. The “Shinhwa Company” was established as a joint venture agency for them to perform and to manage the group as a whole, at the same time all the members are still allowed to keep their individual activities under their respective agencies.

For their new album, I really love Venus, but I also highly recommend Hurts, a sad love song showing this experiential group their best art of singing.