How Nugu K-Pop Group H1-KEY Found Slow-Burn Success

K-Pop Talk is Paste‘s monthly column featuring interviews, features, reviews and explainers dissecting Korea’s pop music scene from an American perspective.

“A rose blossoming between high-rises / Please be alive / Thrive and grow, don’t snap.” These are the opening lyrics (translated from Korean) to “Rose Blossom,” the song that launched K-pop girl group H1-KEY from nugu to star status in Korea in 2023. Seoi, the 24-year-old leader of the four-member group, thinks it was this image of a rose blossoming in the midst of a concrete cityscape that really resonated with Korean listeners. “If you think about Korean people, they’re really known for working hard,” Seoi tells Paste, via a translator and over Zoom from Seoul. “You see buildings lit up, even during nights, because people are working up until very late,” continues Seoi, thoughtfully. “They’re just trying to continue living their lives.” (At 52 hours, Korea has one of the longest standard working weeks in the world.)

“Rose Blossom” didn’t find a huge audience in Korea right away. Released in January 2023 as part of a mini-album of the same name, the mid-tempo pop track failed to place first at any of the music shows and it took over a month for it to snag the #1 spot on Hanteo’s real-time physical album chart. The eventual success, which came from a group outside of the four big companies that dominate the idol industry in Korea—YG, SM, JYP, and HYBE—was called a “miracle” by domestic press. “When we were actually promoting our song on music shows, I did not really feel that [popularity] at all,” Yel, the group’s 19-year-old singer and rapper, says. It was only when she went to stay with her parents after the promotional period that it hit. “I could hear our song being played on the streets and in grocery stores,” Yel recalls. “That was the moment that I felt, ‘Wow, this song has become known.’”

While the members of H1-KEY may see the hardiness of the Korean character in the metaphor of a flower growing in difficult conditions, some fans see the hardiness of H1-KEY. The group experienced a rocky start after “ATHLETIC GIRL,” their 2022 debut. Originally a quartet consisting of Korean members Seoi, Riina and Yel, and Thai member Sitala, Sitala left the group four months after their debut, in May 2022. Officially for “personal reasons,” the departure came following months of pushback from Thai fans regarding the alleged involvement of Sitala’s late father in supporting Thailand’s 2014 military coup. Vocalist Hwiseo came on as a new member in June 2022; her debut came after almost a decade of life spent as a trainee at various music companies, including FNC Entertainment, The Black Label and Source Music. “There wasn’t time for me to really think about joining the group,” says Hwiseo, now 21, when asked if she was nervous coming into the group post-debut. “But when I saw the members of the group, I found that I thought it would be really fun to be with them and to embark on this journey together.”

When Korean press called the success of “Rose Blossom” a miracle, it wasn’t the group’s member switch-up that they referred to. (In an industry, and fan culture that holds idols to extremely high standards, member departures are not unheard of.) Rather, it was the fact that H1-KEY hails from GLG Entertainment (in partnership with Sony Music Korea for international promotions)—aka not one of the “Big Four” K-pop giants. In 2021, artists from HYBE, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment accounted for 60.9% of the year’s total physical album sales. This leaves roughly 40% of the market for the hundreds of small to mid-sized music companies to fight over. (In 2023, about 238 companies had K-pop trainees.)

With anywhere from 50 to 100 K-pop groups debuting each year, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. It’s not unheard of for artists from outside of the “Big Four” to make it to the top of the charts—of 2021’s top 20 best-selling albums, for example, one group from outside the “Big Four,” KQ Entertainment’s ATEEZ, made it onto the list—but it’s an uphill battle. This is where the term “nugu” comes in. A romanized version of “누구,” the Korean word for “who,” it is often used within Korea to refer to K-pop groups who aren’t known to the general public. Groups that, when someone brings them up in casual conversation, the other person will ask, “Who?” Classification of what makes a K-pop group “nugu” is subjective, and can differ between cultural contexts.

Whether H1-KEY was a nugu group or not before “Rose Blossom” is up for debate, but their success following the song is not. Last summer, Riina and Hwiseo appeared as contestants on K-pop competition show Queendom Puzzle, with the latter earning a place in El7z Up, the seven-member super-group that formed in the finale. When H1-KEY’s EP Seoul Dreaming dropped in August 2023, it became the group’s first album to sell more than 50,000 physical copies on Hanteo, selling more than 70,000 albums in its first week. (For comparison, single album ATHLETIC GIRL sold 264 copies in its first week, single album Run sold 1,940 and Rose Blossom sold 6,920.)

The EP’s title track, a synth-driven tribute to Korea’s capital called “SEOUL (SUCH A BEAUTIFUL CITY),” also nabbed H1-KEY their first music show win (and a place on Paste’s best K-pop songs of 2023 list). While TV music shows that provide major opportunities for established artists to promote new music through performances and fan interactions (like TRL) have gone out of fashion in the U.S., they remain popular in Korea. Weekly wins are calculated differently by each of the major music shows, but usually take into account metrics like digital sales, broadcast points, and voting. The week’s winner then gets to perform an “encore stage” of their song. H1-KEY’s first win was a big moment for all members, who grew up watching their role models perform on music shows. Seoi recounts, at the age of eight, watching Girls’ Generation perform “Gee” and deciding she wanted to be an idol, too.

“When our name was called out to be the first winner on the music show, it was something that we didn’t imagine at all,” says Hwiseo, who teared up on stage when The Show Choice! win was announced, the other shocked members beside her. “It was just so unreal and that continued onto our encore stage. I remember maknae [the youngest member of a group] Yel giving me a piggyback. It was such a fun moment, and I thought we should win more in order to do more of our encore stages.”

More recently, H1-KEY released their English-language single “Thinkin’ About You,” a lush break-up ballad that showcases the members’ vocal tones, and “Deeper,” a soft pop song about letting go of pain. Written by Day6 member Young K, who also penned the lyrics for “Rose Blossom,” “Deeper” returns to the theme of perseverance in the face of pain: “It’s going to be a burden, it’s time to let go / ‘Cause I know it’s time to go,” Seoi sings at the end of the song’s first verse. “I think [Young K’s] lyrics really resonated with people,” says Yel of the collaborations. “I think we have done a great job expressing them—especially because our voice tones really go well with the lyrics. I think that’s why people listen to the songs: to find solace.”

“Thinkin’ About You” and “Deeper” are the beginnings of H1-KEYNote, a project designed to send comfort through the power of music to their fans, who are known as M1-KEY. The theme of comfort comes up several times in our conversation, including when 23-year-old member Riina discusses a recent fan meet celebrating the two-year anniversary of H1-KEY’s debut: “During the fan meetup, we listened to stories from our fans,” she says. “They said ‘Rose Blossom,’ as well as other songs, have given them comfort and have given them solace to carry on with their lives. We were really grateful for that.”

From Seoi’s point of view, it’s this focus on musical comfort that makes H1-KEY special. “Something that sets our group apart from others is our ability to give comfort and solace to the people who are listening to it,” she concludes, noting that sometimes their songs will bring listeners to tears, an emotional catharsis. “I think that musical interaction is something that only H1-KEY can do. I think that’s one of our greatest strengths as a group.”

Kayti Burt is a working class journalist based in New England with more than a decade of experience covering the world’s most popular stories and songs for outlets including Paste, Rolling Stone, Vulture, TIME, the LA Times, Den of Geek and Polygon. She is particularly interested in how fandom shapes modern life, and is a member of the Television Critics Association and the Freelance Solidarity Project.