pink-blooded: thirty years of SM entertainment.
i am not shy or quiet about the fact that I love SM. i started my ~journey~ with k-pop almost thirty years ago with H.O.T., the first idol boy band, and have stayed largely with SM ever since, so it is the company I know best. i do sometimes wonder if i would love k-pop as much as i do, if i would have stayed with k-pop as long as i did, as consistently as i did, had it not been for SM.
SM entertainment was founded by lee sooman in 1995, and it is the company that launched k-pop as we know it today. their first boy band, H.O.T., debuted in 1996 and set the formula for idol boy bands that is still more or less followed. they debuted the first girl group, S.E.S., in 1997. SM sent boa to japan a year after her debut, where she blew open the japanese music market and dominated the charts, paving the way for korean idols to access the world’s third-largest music market (at the time) and helping launch the hallyu wave, and SM debuted 소녀시대 (SNSD), or girls’ generation, the nation’s girl group for, lol, a generation. SM is the reason we have multiple versions of albums (thanks to 동방신기 [TVXQ]), why photocards are a thing (SM started circulating studio photos of their artists during boa’s early years, but SNSD was the first to launch photocards in albums in korea with their second studio album, oh! [2010]) (TVXQ had photocards in their tohoshinki summer [2007] album in japan), and why there are giant groups (super junior had twelve members when they debuted and added a thirteenth; SNSD had nine). SM took its SMTOWN concerts to the U.S. and europe before psy’s “gangnam style” exploded stateside and bangtan started their global rise. exo’s xiumin originated the “ending fairy” trend in 2013 that was then popularized by IOI in 2016. when it comes to music, SM has also not been risk-averse, willing to try different genres (see: the traxx) and creating subs that explore other musical forms (see: SM classics). not everything SM does succeeds, but i like them because they at least try.
SM isn’t perfect; it is very flawed, exploitative, and, in some ways, incredibly short-sighted; and thirty years of following the company means i am very aware of how terrible SM can be. SM is as known for their vocalists and foundational contributions to k-pop as they are for their abusive contracts, multiple lawsuits brought by and against idols, and their tendency to blacklist artists who leave on contentious terms. we lost jonghyun and sulli in large part because i believe SM failed them, indicative of how SM (and entertainment companies at-large) are more than happy to exploit young people for as much profit as possible but fail to provide them proper support and protection from the ways fame makes them vulnerable. i really hope the litigation fees are worth the ongoing suit with exo’s CBX because i would love to be compensated for my elevated blood pressure, and, in 2023-24, SM fumbled the riize situation, capitulating to fandom and letting the hate get out of hand. i genuinely cannot begin to fathom how the company could mess up so badly that they had to cancel taeyeon’s solo concert in japan in april 2025.
the company has been suffering from shitty management for, well, years, and, in some ways, we’ve been seeing this impact the company creatively, too, specifically since the board unceremoniously ousted lee sooman in a dramatic moment that eventually ended, in what felt like should have been a FTC violation, with hybe getting its hands on roughly 8% of SM’s shares (which have since been sold to TENCENT, a chinese corporation). in my opinion, riize and hearts2hearts reflect this hole in creative vision created by LSM’s ouster, and i worry that SM could drift down the way of following trends instead of setting and/or disrupting them. beyond that, i’m pretty pissed at how SM’s current management has no respect or regard for the company’s veteran artists.
SM isn’t the only terribly flawed company, though, even if it is the easy punching bag for many k-pop fans (hating on SM, at this point, is grabbing low-hanging fruit); there is generally a rot that unavoidably seems to exist at the core of entertainment — i mean, the entertainment industry, whether in korea or in the U.S. or elsewhere around the world, thrives on exploitation and the manipulation and sexualization of minors, particularly young girls. i think part of why i love SM so much, though, is that i am able to love them with my eyes open. SM means a lot to me personally as a human being who grew up with their idols, but, at the end of the day, i know that SM is a corporation, and it’s a business. it answers to shareholders and has to pay their hundreds, thousands of employees. all their artists are contractors (this should really change, though; labor laws should be amended to protect idols better), and they are not all best friends. they don’t need to be.
at the end of the day, i love SM because i equally love their artists and deeply admire the creative work SM employees and staff do. much of that love is intensely personal — when i was so lonely through my adolescence and twenties, isolated from the world because of body shaming, i had SM. i loved SM. i wanted what SMTOWN portrayed to the public — that camaraderie, that sense of belonging, that connection to other people. i’m hyper-aware that entertainment companies are a business, that idols are technically coworkers, that the illusion of closeness is also branding and marketing, but i also know that these idols were thrown together at young ages as trainees, that they have gone through a certain kind of pressure-cooker life that is out of the norm, that SM artists have and continue to show up in support for each other. SM kids, especially from the second and third generations, have to carry loss and grief in ways most other idols in other companies do not, and they have to fight for each other, to be with each other. they are a part of something that is bigger than they are individually, included in a built-in system where they can receive support from each other, and they have somewhere to belong and people to lean into. when i was a young person, that kind of community was all i wanted.
so, here is a series of posts about [almost] every group and artist that SM has debuted since 1996, arranged by year of debut. i only included groups that came from SM proper, not from any of their subs (so, no shinvi), and i didn’t include every single soloist who debuted from the different groups. this whole project is almost 17,000 words, so including everyone’s solo work and going into SM’s subs would make this a book. i would love to write a book about SM; i very intentionally had to limit how many SM artists i focused on when i was writing my book about k-pop, i’ll love you forever.
(i want to note that groups generally do not debut with a fan club name and/or official fan color. those are announced later. lightsticks are the norm now, but first-gen k-pop had balloons in fan colors, which became simple glow sticks [in fandom colors] during second gen, which then became light sticks after big bang launched theirs. now, pretty much every group has a lightstick, but those are released some time after the group’s debut.)