K-Pop

YG Ent.’s Yang Hyun-suk envisions Babymonster to have 5 members, final lineup reveal on 12 May

There are 7 trainees vying for 5 highly coveted spots in YG Entertainment’s newest girl group Babymonster.

Ashley Cheah

| April 28, 2023
HallyuSG - Babymonster
Babymonster. Photo: YG Entertainment

Babymonster, YG Entertainment’s latest girl group, is in the works. They are ready to meet the world soon.

Except, not everyone gets to debut.

There are seven trainees: Ruka, Pharita, Asa, Ahyeon, Haram, Rora and Chiquita. But only five of them will make it into the final lineup.

As to why this is so, YG Entertainment’s founder Yang Hyuk-suk offered an explanation.

“Ever since we started planning [for Babymonster], the number of members I had in mind for the group was five”, Yang said.

He added: “Honestly, YG [Entertainment] has never created girl groups with lots of members”.

The girl groups that they produced, like Blackpink or the now-defunct 2NE1, both contained four members.

HallyuSG - Blackpink
Blackpink playing at Coachella 2023. Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella

So the 53 year-old music executive wants to continue the agency’s usual practice.

Babymonster currently stars in an online reality series Last Evaluation, available for viewing on YouTube. 

The series brings fans through their pre-debut journey, documenting their practice sessions and test evaluations.

Currently, the series just released its eighth episode yesterday (27 Apr). It is likely to have 10 episodes in total, with the last on 12 May. The final lineup will be revealed then.

It’s worthy to note that not all seven trainees are from South Korea. In fact, only almost a half of them are. Ruka and Asa are Japanese while Pharita and Chiquita are from Thai.

Also, YG Entertainment are no strangers to eliminations as some of their groups are products of such elimination survival reality programmes.

This includes Winner, iKON, and a newer boy band Treasure which debuted in 2019.

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