Lee Heeseung to leave ENHYPEN, pursue solo career
In a lengthy statement on the platform Weverse, “4th gen ace” Lee Heeseung announced his departure from the seven-member Korean boy group ENHYPEN on Tuesday, March 10, 2026.
He cited his desire to pursue a solo career outside of the group, writing:
After thinking about it for a long time, I made a big decision to approach ENGENE in a better way according to the direction the company suggested.
As you all know, I’ve been working on my personal work, and I’ve spent a lot of time hoping to show it to ENGENEs. There were a lot of things I wanted to show, but I also didn’t want to put my greed ahead of the team.
I am well aware of your concerns and various stories. I will prepare hard to meet you again as soon as possible. The desire to come back with a better appearance is more sincere than anyone else.
As it was ENGENEs that always gave me constant love and affection for me, I feel sorry for knowing the feelings of surprise and concern. I think that’s how much you care about me. I will be the one who runs with what ENGENEs have given us so far in mind.
Translated by Weverse’s auto-translate features; minor edits made.
ENGENEs (ENHYPEN’s fandom) responded immediately, inciting public protests across various countries, taking donations to fund protest trucks, and creating a petition to have the statement retracted. At the time of writing, “ENHYPEN is 7” and “Bring Heeseung Back (to ENHYPEN)” are trending globally on X/Twitter. The petition quickly gathered over 1.2M signatures.
Fans also quickly disseminated several conspiracies, including a cropped, blurry Weverse post supposedly written by ENHYPEN’s leader Jungwon that was “quickly taken down” by the platform, as well as unverified reports of Heeseung “crying” and “fainting” (among others).
Some ENGENEs have made claims that “they [BELIFT] forced him” to make this statement due to the brief line about Heeseung following the company’s suggestion. Others have called for “death wreaths” to be sent to BE:LIFT’s headquarters, claiming that sending protest trucks “is nothing.”1
Based on currently available information, it is very much possible that ENGENEs are themselves “forcing” a position on Heeseung rather than the company. For instance, K-Pop fans have long criticized internal decisions like “unequal line distribution,” to which Yoon Keeho of the six-member group P1Harmony clarified that “we do our own line distributions.”2
Is it only “worker exploitation” when it’s a Global North country? Where was this energy for Palestine?
Many have noted the disproportionate amount of time and money spent on calls to “bring Heeseung back,” while previous calls to donate to starving Palestinian families were largely ignored. It seems fans have the money to donate to a protest truck, but not to those being bombed right now.
While fans’ unrest is expected, and something Heeseung himself noted in his statement, fans that have never once spoken about Palestine, about Sudan, or about the Democratic Republic of the Congo have suddenly become outspoken activists when it involves an artist with a net worth of $3-5 million.
Fans’ claims that Korean labels “mistreat” artists are not entirely untrue (though these claims are often based on white, Western norms rather than Korean ones), but it is ironic that they seem to have no problems with the worker exploitation actively occurring in the Global South (which, by all metrics, is much more severe).
Protest trucks and death wreaths are a large part of the “culture” of K-Pop fans in Korea, or “K-fans.” Trucks with large signs are driven in front of labels’ headquarters, and wreaths are placed in front of the buildings, mirroring funeral processions.
This may not be the case for all groups, as P1Harmony is under FNC Entertainment, a smaller label. BE:LIFT LABS is a subsidiary of HYBE Entertainment, one of the “big three” companies in K-Pop.
Why do you post about Kpop, which is one of the most highly commercialized and incredibly capitalist industry on “Voice of the Proletariat”? Pretty ironic that you call yourself a Marxist while promoting one of the most apparent consumer culture built through labor exploitation.