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Who is ABØ? Members debuting in winning group of 'The Origin' survival show revealed

IST is being slammed for the group name since it is considered a slur against the indigenous people of Australia

IST Entertainment’s ‘The Origin - A, B, Or What?’ has finally come to an end after an exciting run. Home to K-pop groups like The Boyz, Victon and Apink, the label announced that their next group would be formed through a K-pop survival show with 13 participants. The show was already pretty star-studded as they brought in huge idols to mentor and judge the show. We had the likes of Minzy of 2NE1 fame, GOT7’s Jay B and even Infinite’s Sunggyu. Minzy herself had participated in the survival show ‘Double Trouble’ and had judged on ‘Extreme Debut: Wild Idol’ with Sunggyu before. 

K-pop survival shows are one of the surest ways to form an idol group since the invested viewers in turn become fans who then root for the winners. We recently had groups like Kep1er from ‘Girls Planet 999’, TAN from ‘Extreme Debut: Wild Idol’ and CLASS:y from ‘My Teenage Girl’ that were turning heads in their pre-debut era. Well, on May 7, ‘The Origin’ aired their finale in which there were seven winners who will be debuting in the K-pop group ABØ which is short for ‘At the Beginning of Originality’.

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The finale of ‘The Origin’

Episode 8 of ‘The Origin’ took place on May 7 with the 10 participants who made it to the finale. Following the show’s concept of ‘balance’, the judges or the ‘Balancers’ had to vote for ‘ace’ and ‘death’ trainees of each team after every mission. The team with ‘ace’ trainees would get several perks while the ‘death’ trainees would be sent home. In the last round which took place in the finale, the ‘Balancers’ included viewers, the regular mentors and guest mentors like Jay Park, Apink’s Bomi and Hayoung, and Victon’s Sejun and Subin. Fortunately, those who did not make it to ABØ would go back to being trainees and debut later.

Members of ABØ

ABØ will be debuting in the second half of 2022. The seven members include:

Jeong Seunghwan - He ranked first despite having 0 points in round 1. He had the most points in round 2.

Oh Junseok - He was the only member who had been selected as ‘ace’ in both rounds of ‘The Origin’. He was also the first to sign with IST and specializes in dance, rap and martial art tricks.

Seok Rakwon - He has been a trainee for almost 2.9 years and was under SM Entertainment before. He was street-cast by Kakao M, the parent company of IST Entertainment.

Ryu Junmin - He was one of the popular participants among fans and was a familiar face as he had been a trainee under SM Entertainment.

Bae Hyunjun - He surprised the mentors by winning through fan votes as he was even a candidate for ‘death’ trainee several times on the show.

Yang Donghwa - Along with Yeonkyu, he was chosen to debut solely by the ‘Balancers’. 

Kim Yeonkyu - He is a popular trainee who was previously under YG Entertainment and had even participated in their survival show ‘Treasure Box’ that went on to form the boy group Treasure.

Group name controversy

Unfortunately, some fans are not happy with the name of the group ABØ. While the name came from the subtitle of the show ‘A, B, Or What?’ and is short for ‘At the Beginning of Originality’, it has been a slur used against the indigenous people of Australia. Many are petitioning to get the name changed. One fan tweeted, “It kinda weird for me me if the debut group name is really abo.... the origin sounds better actually.”

Another fan posted, “Even if their group name has a different meaning, let's not dismiss the fact that it shouldn't be a kpop name and ist should have thought abt it carefully... that's why a/b/o has a slash and ABO blood system comes together to distinguish the differences from the offensive word.” One fan pointed out, “Ist is a large company yet its staff clearly did not do enough research, or simply did not care, about the way this could effect indigenous australian people. if they use this slur as a name, every day they will be profiting off of indigenous australian people.”

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