How JUSTB Could Change the K-Pop Industry Just By Being Themselves

When BAIN came out as gay onstage in LA in April, JUSTB’s members found themselves with something they’d never received before: Industry attention. But is the K-Pop industry ready to accept a group as outspoken as this one?

For the past four years, JUSTB has played the long game in K-Pop. They participated in several competition reality shows, released a handful of (often indistinguishable) EPs, and toured the world — all without very much recognition. 

Then on the last stop of their North American tour in April, BAIN announced that he was gay. “I’m so fucking proud to be part of the LGBTQ community,” he told a crowd of shrieking fans. 

And just like that, JUSTB began to blow up.

For the past two months, the group has given more interviews than they ever did in four years. BAIN has also participated in several solo interviews, graciously recounting the night in painstaking detail. (Did he know he was going to do it? Yes. Did the members know? Of course.)

Now, back in Korea, with two months of space between them and that night in Los Angeles, I was curious how the group was processing how fast things had changed for them. 

JUSTB is formally led by LIM JIMIN, a tall, athletic idol who proudly told me he came from Gyeongsongam-do Province. When JIMIN was a teenager, he told me, he was a soccer player who injured himself. “My dad asked me if I wanted to learn dancing,” he said, and he quickly landed a spot in a training academy. He is cheerful - the kind of guy who laughs with his full body - and more than once made me laugh out loud.

But JUSTB is informally led, especially when they are in English-speaking countries, by GEONU. Officially, GEONU is JUSTB’s lead vocalist but in North America, he has taken on several leadership roles. He has a hand in managing the group and, as the member most fluent in English, he frequently translated parts of our conversation so that all of the members could be included. 

GEONU told me that he originally wanted to be a basketball player, “but I wasn’t tall enough to be one and I wanted to know what I was really interested in.” Eventually, he chose to be an entertainer. 

GEONU could also largely be credited with rebranding the group. He is the member who originally pitched the idea of JUSTB leaning into hyperpop, as he was inspired by artists like Charli xcx. Hyperpop, which he categorizes as music that comes from the underground, is a genre that hasn’t broken into K-Pop and GEONU wondered if JUSTB could stake a space for themselves off that sound.

“But I was wondering,” he mused, “who  are the male artists making cool underground music?” 

JUSTB, he thought, could be a leader of the hyperpop movement. The genre is already known for making space for auteurs: bold artists like SOPHIE or 100 gecs who are not constrained by their sexuality or musical boundaries.

“We were searching for what underground music is coming up and also [asking] does the sound match with us?” GEONU explained.

But the point, SANGWOO, the maknae and lead rapper told me, wasn’t necessarily to be transgressive. “The important part is that we are not trying to break boundaries,” he said. “We just wanna make cool music.”

“If we do something that’s really opposite from the system, which is what most of the people are doing,” GEONU surmised," then everyone can see that we are breaking boundaries.” 

Depending on when you came into the JUSTB fandom (ONLYB is their fanbase), you might not recognize what their music has evolved into. 

GEONU bulit a roster of creative producers, including LEE YE JUN and tonser, to create their new EP JUST ODD. The lyrics are punchier (“Fuck you, I’m just a kid,” they sing in the opening track) and the beats are broader than anything they’ve covered before.

You can hear the sound best on the lead single “CHEST”,  a track that builds into a pop crescendo by the chorus. It stands as the most innovative track, not just in the group’s discography, but in the K-Pop industry, too. 

“There are idols who don’t follow their own ideas and thoughts but we’re not like this,” JIMIN said. “The important point is to pull out our own story and to make a difference.”

But the group acknowledges that this newfound creative freedom comes from their company BLUE DOT ENTERTAINMENT The CEO, the guys told me, has placed no restrictions on what they can talk about or sing about. JUSTB operates with the understanding that they know what’s best for themselves and the company doesn’t interfere.

“Doing things our way is important but in order to do that, we need a label and CEO who listens to our thoughts and ideas,” SANGWOO said. “They are the ones who can make that possible. There has to be respect for the idols. “

GEONU nodded as SANGWOO said this. “There needs to be an understanding for idols,” he added. 

BAIN told me that the group spent the majority of their career trying to slot themselves into the boxes an idol must prescribe to. “We just noticed that we’re not that kind of people. We really want to express more of ourselves,” he explained. “People think that idols are just following the systems; that they don’t know how to have their own personal opinion. But we’re not like that.”

This year, the focus has shifted into identifying themselves on their own terms. 

JUSTB understands, though, that the reason they are even having this level of attention on them isn’t necessarily because of their music. 

After BAIN’s announcement in LA, the group’s popularity skyrocketed literally overnight. It was ironic that the announcement came at the end of the tour because had BAIN announced he’s gay at the beginning, several dates would have likely sold out. TikToks of BAIN’s speech and the hugs he shared with the members following his speech received millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes. He was profiled in high profile publications and appeared on podcasts. 

The group, long overlooked by mainstream media, suddenly had a white hot story on their hands. 

This isn’t entirely unsurprising: Western K-Pop fans are hungry for this kind of representation and BAIN is currently the only out idol who is actively promoting in a K-Pop group. His fame was bolstered, too, by a diverse and progressive Western K-Pop fanbase. But for JUSTB, and BAIN in particular, the new group’s newfound popularity is a strange thing to grapple with. 

Growing up BAIN told me, he was a fan of second gen icons like BIGBANG and 2NE1. “I thought idols can do anything,” BAIN responded when I asked him what he loved about those groups. “They can write songs, dance and be actors. I chose to be a K-Pop idol because I thought I could do everything if I was one.” 

But could he be gay and an idol? That is the question that BAIN grappled with before coming out. 

“People are always asking, ‘Did you expect this kind of attention for coming out?’ I knew that it would be big,” he said. “But at the same time, I feel a little bit sad because my sexuality is just a personal thing.” 

He paused before continuing. “I’m glad people are supporting me and cheering me on. But at the same time, I’m surprised that this is a really huge thing. I felt a lot of pressure as a ‘first’ K-Pop boy band to come out.” Now, he said, he is doing his best to enjoy it and to have fun. 

GEONU looked back at BAIN, who was sitting behind him. “It was an important first step,” GEONU added supportively. 

But the trickier part is that JUST B has always been here, hiding in plain sight. Their music might not have been as self-assured as it is now but they have always been the outspoken guys that never cared what others thought of them. Maybe that’s what I find most striking about this. JUSTB has actually never been anything but themselves, so why did it take this to make people care about them? 

As happy as JUST B is to represent allyship and queerness, they also want to be known for their music. “I still don’t feel comfortable letting someone call me an artist,” DOYUM told me when I mentioned that they are artists more than they are idols. “To me, someone like Michael Jackson or Prince is an artist which is why I’ll keep working hard to get there.” 

Many of the members come from competition shows: GEONU and SIWOO competed on I-LAND, which formed Enhypen. JIMIN placed third on THE FAN. DOYUM and BAIN participated on Under 19. Only DOYUNM has won a show, but each went through the ringer of having to see how brutal the industry can be. “Although I was in the typical idol system, I discovered I wanted to share more of my emotions and feelings,” DOYUM explained. “So after debut, I got the chance to show more of myself to people and now I’m getting to live that way.” 

Seeing other groups succeed has been challenging for the members. The group has never won a music variety show and they’ve yet to be recognized widely for their music. 

“Honestly, I feel jealous when I see other idol groups winning awards or variety shows,” DOYUM told me in a surprisingly candid moment. “But for us, we try to give more value to telling our own stories in music to our own people and our fans. We are chasing that value.”

Looking back, the members told me, perhaps they should have trusted themselves more. If they could go back to the boys they were when they debuted, all of the members said that they should have believed in themselves more. “I would have told myself, it’s not going to be easy. Trust yourself. Trust your members,” JIMIN said. GEONU added that he wished he could have been more independent. “I should have shared more of my thoughts and beliefs with the members,” he said. 

BAIN felt that, in retrospect, the group should have listened to themselves more than their own company. “I’d tell myself to use your brain more and just be more open. You can do anything you want.” 

When I asked whether their current situation or their trainee period was more challenging, JIMIN answered without hesitation: “Now,” and let out a huge laugh. “We were honestly just part of the system as trainees but now we have more responsibilities and hardships. So if we want to tell our story, then we have to break down walls.” 

JUSTB is by far the most loose and expressive idol group I’ve ever interviewed. Where most groups tend to speak timidly and formally, these members are funny and sharply observant. When BAIN talked about how he learned through trial and error, GEONU sighed and looked at me. “Shit happens,” he said as a way of explanation. 

Yet the group seemed to be the most at ease when they talked about their pre-debut days. When I asked each of them to tell me stories about who they were before they became idols, the members felt the most relatable. 

SANGWOO recalled listening to Justin Bieber as a kid on Korea’s Jeju Island (“The south side,” he clarified with a smirk). “I wanted to resonate with people through music and stages rather than through the image of an idol,” he said. I learned that GEONU and BAIN attended the same training academy but missed each other by a few years. Three of the members, GEONU, BAIN and DOYUM, all came from Daejeon – a place that GEONU compared to Dallas, Texas. SIWOO recalled how he grew up watching dramas and started acting young. Being an idol, he learned, required the skills of acting. 

WIth each story, a member tried to define who they were before they were an idol. “It’s all about stories, isn’t it?” GEONU asked me at one point. “It’s a storytelling world and we’re all full of stories.” 

BAIN thought back on the stories they’ve tried to tell this year. He is a big part of this one, but he would rather the focus be on the group. The past year, he said, was hard. They were pulled in different directions that maybe didn’t suit them and that took them away from their focus: the band. 

“This year we came back to JUSTB. And really, we were so happy to come back to JUSTB,” he said. “We just tried to really make a really honest album. We wanted to put our story into our album.” 

GEONU became more circumspect after he heard this. “Every single step of the experiences we’ve had from debut to this year was put into the music we released,” he said. Going abroad, meeting new fans, learning that they matter to so many people, GEONU told me, “It made us really grow up and take ourselves seriously.”

“I think we’re going in the right way,” he said. I noticed that his voice sounded a little lighter, possibly even hopeful.

“Maybe,” he added, “it’s a brand new start this year.”