NCT’s last unit is ‘NCT Wish’

The last unit of the group NCT took off the working title New Team and replaced it with ‘Hope’.

NCT New Team (tentative name), the final version of the NCT worldview, will officially confirm its name as NCT Wish and debut in February.

NCT Wish is an idol group consisting of 6 members, 2 Korean and 4 Japanese, with an average age of 18.3 years. It was formed through the audition program ‘NCT Universe: LASTART’ held in Japan last year. Regarding the background of naming NCT New Team as Wish, SM Entertainment, the agency, said, “We are determined to become an icon that gives strong energy of ‘hope’ to music fans around the world.”

NCT Wish’s debut ceremony is scheduled for February. Although there is no follow-up information other than the official name announcement, it seems likely that the first debut album or sound source will be released next month.

As the last member of the NCT Universe, they attracted extraordinary attention both inside and outside of K-pop and prepared to debut under the name New Team until they received the official unit name ‘Wish’. In the process, they released their pre-debut song ‘Hands Up’, which achieved significant results not only in Korea and Japan but also on global pop music charts, raising expectations for their official debut.

With the launch of NCT Wish, NCT now has five units, including NCT U, NCT 127, NCT Dream, and WayV.

NCT is the ‘unique’ expandable group platform of entertainment company SM Entertainment, and as can be seen from the meaning of NCT, Neo Culture Technology, it has established subunits based on various cultural areas. It is in this context that NCT 127, which originated from Seoul’s capital, WayV, which is based in China, and the newly formed NCT Wish were called NCT Tokyo by some.

As their activity paths are diverse, the proportion of K-pop under the NCT name is also significant. As of last year, NCT had released the 4th full-length album ‘Golden Age’ with the entire NCT participation, NCT Dream’s 3rd full-length album ‘ISTJ’, NCT 127’s 5th full-length album ‘Fact Check’, and WayV’s 2nd full-length album ‘On My Youth’. They have released four full-length albums.

Heo Min-nyeong, Sports Donga Reporter mignon@donga.com