50 Fun Facts About SM Entertainment

Which former singer opened a small Seoul studio in 1989 that grew into SM Entertainment?

Lee Soo-man named that first studio after his own initials, then sold most of his stake in the company in 2023.

What does the number in NCT 127's name represent about the city of Seoul?

Its longitude, 127 degrees east, marks NCT 127 out as the unit of the group that is based in the South Korean capital.

Which aespa hit remakes a song from the soundtrack of Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw?

Next Level reworks a track by the singer A$ton Wyld, and it won Song of the Year at the 19th Korean Music Awards.

Which K-pop girl group sang in Pyongyang, North Korea, at an inter-Korean concert in April 2018?

Red Velvet's trip made them the first SM Entertainment act to perform in North Korea in fifteen years.

Which SM act, billed as the Avengers of K-pop, topped the Billboard 200 with its 2019 debut EP?

SuperM became the first Asian artist to top that chart with a debut release, uniting seven members of SHINee, EXO and NCT units.

Which Girls' Generation hit topped the Music Bank chart for nine consecutive weeks in 2009?

Gee also ended the decade as the top-performing song of the 2000s on the Korean music platform Melon.

Which Korean tech company beat Hybe in 2023 to become SM Entertainment's largest shareholder?

Kakao and its entertainment arm ended up with about 40% of SM after Hybe withdrew, saying the bidding war could damage shareholder value.

A 2012 documentary followed 32 SM Town artists to their concert at which New York venue?

Madison Square Garden hosted a stop on SM Town Live's world tour, and the film I Am follows the performers on their way to that stage.

Which singer debuted at thirteen and became the first Korean pop star to break through in Japan?

BoA went on to sell over a million copies each of her Japanese albums Valenti and Best of Soul.

Which band, whose 1996 debut single attacked school bullying, is called the first K-pop idol group?

H.O.T. followed that debut with the bubblegum hit Candy, and the band's formula became the model for later K-pop groups.

Which trio debuted in 1997 with the album I'm Your Girl as SM Entertainment's first girl group?

S.E.S. is an acronym of the members' stage names, Sea, Eugene and Shoo, and the trio disbanded in 2002.

Which group quit SM in 2003, fought to keep its name and became K-pop's longest-running boy band?

Shinhwa, named after the Korean word for myth or legend, kept all six members together when they signed with a new agency.

Which SM act was the first foreign artist to headline Japan's Nissan Stadium?

TVXQ began as a five-member group and has continued since 2011 as the duo of U-Know Yunho and Max Changmin.

Which SM girl group became the first K-pop act to perform at SXSW in Austin, Texas?

f(x) took its name from the maths notation for a function, where the result changes with the value of x.

Which boy group debuted in September 2023 with Get a Guitar and includes two former NCT members?

Riize features Shotaro and Sungchan, who left NCT to join what became SM Entertainment's new boy group.

Which eight-member girl group, SM's largest since Girls' Generation, debuted in 2025 with The Chase?

Hearts2Hearts was first revealed in a surprise trailer at the end of SM's 30th-anniversary concert in Seoul.

Which Chinese boy band debuted in January 2019 as the fourth sub-unit of the K-pop group NCT?

WayV, short for We are your Vision, is managed by SM Entertainment's Chinese sub-label, Label V.

Which R&B duo, pairing Brian Joo with Hwanhee, did SM Entertainment form in late 1998?

Fly to the Sky started out marketed as idols before growing into one of South Korea's most popular R&B acts.

Which supergroup, the first unit of SM's Girls On Top project, debuted in 2022 with Step Back?

Got the Beat drew seven singers from across SM's roster and first performed the song at an online New Year's Day concert.

Which NCT unit launched in 2016 with teenage members meant to graduate on reaching adulthood?

NCT Dream scrapped the graduation system in 2020 and carried on as a fixed line-up instead.

Which Girls' Generation leader launched her solo career in 2015 with an EP titled I?

Taeyeon's title track from that EP reached number one on South Korea's Gaon Digital Chart.

Which SHINee member, the youngest in the group, released the solo records Ace and Move?

Taemin went solo in 2014, and the title track of Move drew attention for its distinctive choreography.

Which EXO singer's 2020 EP Delight was South Korea's first million-selling solo album in 19 years?

Baekhyun had already scored the 2010s' best-selling album by a Korean soloist with his debut EP, City Lights.

Which Canadian rapper passed an SM audition in Vancouver and debuted with NCT in 2016?

Mark waited until 2025 to release a solo album, The Firstfruit, nine years after his group debut.

Which aespa member was scouted by SM after competing on a children's TV singing show?

Ningning, born in Harbin, sang on China's Let's Sing Kids, then trained for four years before being revealed as aespa's third member.

Which singer from SM's first idol boy band was appointed a director of SM Entertainment in 2005?

Kangta was the first member recruited for that band, after the company's founder spotted him at an amusement park.

Which hip hop singer, who debuted in 1990 with the act Wawa, was the first artist signed to SM?

Hyun Jin-young had hits, but a drug arrest damaged his career and pushed SM toward carefully trained, clean-image idols.

Which 2013 EXO single was the breakthrough hit released alongside the album XOXO?

Growl helped XOXO sell over a million copies, making EXO the first Korean act to do that in twelve years.

Which 2008 single was SHINee's debut song, sharing its title with the group's first EP?

Replay's Japanese version later sold over 100,000 copies, then a record for a Korean group's debut single in Japan.

Which Girls' Generation debut single was later adopted as an anthem by South Korean protesters?

Into the New World returned in 2016 when Ewha Womans University students sang it while facing police during a campus protest.

Which aespa single from the album Armageddon led Korea's Circle Digital Chart for eleven weeks?

Supernova went on to win Song of the Year at both the MAMA Awards and the Melon Music Awards.

Which song did NCT U release alongside Without You in April 2016 to launch the NCT project?

The 7th Sense made the rotational NCT U the first of the group's units to debut, three months before NCT 127.

The name aespa blends the word aspect with the initials of experience and which other word?

Avatar and experience supply the opening letters, echoing a storyline in which the singers have virtual counterparts.

After several line-up changes in 2011, EXO took its name from which astronomy term?

Exoplanet also runs through the group's concert tour titles, beginning with The Lost Planet.

EXO debuted as two units, EXO-K singing in Korean and EXO-M singing in which language?

Mandarin versions let the two units promote the same songs in South Korea and China at once, a split kept until 2014.

Which US music channel's heyday inspired SM Entertainment's founder while he studied in California?

MTV was turning performers like Michael Jackson into superstars, and he set out to build a similar pop industry in Korea.

SM Town Live's 2010–11 world tour played two nights at the Zénith arena in which European capital?

Paris was the only European stop on a tour that also visited Seoul, Shanghai, Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Which app from SM affiliate Dear U lets fans subscribe to personal messages written by artists?

Bubble grew out of SM's experience running fan clubs, paired with a partner firm's messenger technology.

In aespa's storyline, the group journeys into which fictional universe in search of the Black Mamba?

Kwangya is pictured as a digital world in a parallel dimension, and SM has since staged online concerts under its name.

Which pre-debut team did SM create in 2013 to show off trainees who had yet to join an idol group?

SM Rookies let fans follow trainees before they debuted, and most of its members went on to join NCT.

Which Japanese record label joined SM in 2001 to set up SM Entertainment Japan?

Avex Trax helped launch the venture with the television company Yoshimoto Kogyo, giving SM's artists a base in the Japanese market.

SM Entertainment is traditionally grouped with which two rival agencies as K-pop's Big Three?

JYP and YG joined SM as the three biggest labels by sales, though Hybe's growth has led some to speak of a Big Four.

In 2000 SM became the first entertainment company listed on which South Korean stock market?

KOSDAQ trading later let SM turn 47 of its own recording artists into shareholders, handing them stock in 2012.

Which online concert series did SM launch with Naver in 2020 as the pandemic halted touring?

Beyond Live streamed on Naver's V Live app, and its opening show sold over 75,000 virtual tickets to fans in 109 countries.

Girls' Generation's I Got a Boy beat Psy and Justin Bieber to Video of the Year at which ceremony?

YouTube Music Awards made its debut that year, so the group took Video of the Year at the first ceremony ever held.

Girls' Generation made their US television debut in 2012 on whose late-night talk show?

David Letterman hosted the group on the Late Show, the first of two American TV appearances in two days.

Which virtual character from aespa's storyline did SM launch as a solo act in 2024 with Done?

Naevis was created with generative AI and first appeared in 2020 in the world-building videos around the group's debut.

Which agency, home to the boy band Infinite, did SM's subsidiary SM C&C acquire in 2013?

Woollim Entertainment ran as an SM C&C label for under three years before the music business was spun off again in 2016.

Which Chinese e-commerce giant bought a 4% stake in SM Entertainment in February 2016?

Alibaba paid about US$30 million for the minority stake, two months before SM unveiled the first unit of NCT.

SM Classics, launched in 2020, reworks SM songs for symphonic performance with which ensemble?

Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra signed the partnership with SM at its own practice room in the Jongno district.