K-pop’s most diverse newcomers Katseye aim to push boundaries in the music scene

“Growing up in Switzerland and as a mixed girl, I didn’t see a lot of teams in entertainment who looked like me,” Katseye member Manon said at a press conference held Wednesday at HYBE’s headquarters in Yongsan, central Seoul, in the group’s first meeting with local reporters since its debut.

“I had a hard time believing that this could become a reality for me,” she continued. “Being in a girl group where any single girl could look at us and see herself in us is inspiring to me. I am grateful to be able to show them girl power and that hard work is possible to fulfill their dreams.”

Rather than simply taking a homegrown K-pop group abroad with an English track or world tour, the BTS agency teamed up with Geffen Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, to cast talented youngsters from all over the world and make them compete for a spot in a new girl group to debut in the United States.

The band made its official debut on June 28 with the single “Debut,” seven months after the six members won “The Debut: Dream Academy” audition program held last year. Only one member of Katseye holds a Korean passport. Sophia is from the Philippines; Lara, Megan and Daniela are from the United States; Manon is from Switzerland and Yoonchae is from Korea.

The Katseye members highlighted the group’s international makeup as a strength when interviewed by reporters during “The Debut: Dream Academy” audition process in November 2023. The very same diversity was highlighted once again during Wednesday’s press conference.

Member Sophia said that “one of the differences” Katseye displays in the K-pop scene is its “diversity and different cultural backgrounds.”

“The benefit of that diversity is being able to make us have a broader audience, and I feel like we can push a lot of boundaries. And with pop artists, with the amazing structure of the K-pop methodology that we went under, we have synchronized choreographies and we’re able to work with each other in harmony as a team,” she added.

After months of rigorous training at HYBE, Katseye released its first EP “SIS (Soft Is Strong)” on Aug. 16 with five tracks, including double lead tracks “Touch” and “My Way,” followed by B-side tracks “I’m Pretty” and “Tonight I Might,” as well as the debut single, “Debut.” The girl group landed on top of Billboard’s Emerging Artist chart, and its album landed at No. 119 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for the week of Aug. 31.

“I feel like the number one thing that I really learned was the discipline and how hard you really have to work to achieve what you want,” Lara said. “I think that we really learned time management. We learned that we have to practice for extra hours and just relentlessly work to achieve what we want.”

“I feel like one of the biggest differences of K-pop as a genre compared to a lot of the other genres is the process you go through, that we were able to go through, as trainees. It really did prepare us for our career as Katseye,” Sophia said, echoing her bandmate.

The reception toward Katseye has been lukewarm so far — at least according to the numbers. The girl group has 493,000 subscribers to its YouTube channel as of Wednesday, apparently smaller than other HYBE girl groups: 7.67 million for NewJeans, 5.46 million for Le Sserafim and 1.70 million for ILLIT.

Not only was the whole audition program for the group streamed on YouTube, Weverse and Japanese streaming service Abema at the same time, a docuseries on the audition process and Katseye members’ training days was released on Netflix under the title, “Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE” on Aug. 21. The K-pop agency has also been putting out promotional material highlighting the girl group’s success.

“We came to Asia first because at the end of the day, we are highly inspired from K-pop, and it just felt right to come here first,” Manon said.

This doesn’t mean that Katseye only aims to conquer the Asian market, however.

“Because we are global, we want to give importance to all parts of the world,” Lara said. “There is no specific market that we are mainly trying to target. We are able to showcase our group throughout many different cultures and countries.

To make its global efforts worthwhile, Katseye says that it has prepared something for the audiences in other regions. The girl group plans to hold a promotional tour in the Philippines and Japan after taking part in television music programs in Korea.

“I’d say one of the biggest things to look forward to is definitely our performances, but we also did prepare something very special,” Sophia said. “We have versions for each country that we’re going to of ‘Touch.’ We have a Korean version, we have a Tagalog version that I was able to write myself and we also have a Japanese version of ‘Touch.’”

Afterward, the girls are ambitious to take the larger stages.

“We really want to perform at the head stage of Coachella,” Manon said when asked about the girl group’s dream performance.

“I want to perform at Lollapalooza India,” Lara said, “and the Rolling Loud [festival] in India as well.”

BY YOON SO-YEON, WOO JI-WON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]