XngHan is nervously fidgeting with small rubber bands.
The singer and former member of K-pop boy group RIIZE arranges the ripped-up pieces of one into a smiley face: two straight eyes, a nose and dopey grin. Then, giving it an elastic halo, he points out the display to his manager like a kid seeking approval from a parent, laughing, before snapping back into business mode. For the better part of the past hour, the team has been sleepily standing by in an L.A. dance studio while students in the adjoining space pick up the choreography from his recently released solo debut, “Waste No Time” — an experience he’s going to cap by making a surprise cameo.
This U.S. trip, which consists of three “fan sign” events in New York, Dallas and Los Angeles, is about as far out of the soft-spoken 21-year-old’s comfort zone as it gets. After chatting one-on-one and signing albums during the meet-ups, he models for “photo time,” where fans seated inside the hotel ballroom yell out a string of hand-heart and cat-ear pose requests. (“It’s a pretty awkward time for him, but it’s pretty entertaining for us,” one of his reps quips.) Yet the overall tone is one of celebration, the lightness of coming out the other end of something.
“Seeing them in person is what made me happy,” XngHan (born Hong Seunghan) tells Billboard a couple of days later in early September. “I’m really shy, so I’d always [thought I] preferred talking to our fans online.” Back home, he’s used to playing the shrinking violet, he explains, “But here, I noticed our fans were even shyer than me. It really seemed like they wanted to say something, but they were so nervous that they weren’t able to say what they wanted to say.”
For good reason, emotions ran high. When XngHan was put on indefinite hiatus in 2o23, with his future as a K-pop idol basically becoming a giant question mark, fans in the West were particularly vocal supporters for his reinstatement, remaining relentlessly by his side. Even now, around the corner from the fan sign, the pink wall of SM Entertainment’s old Koreatown office has been plastered with uplifting messages directed at XngHan. (By the end of the month, a rainbow of sticky notes also went up near the company’s main HQ in Seoul; he left an individual reply to each and every one.)
“I received a lot of energy from the fans,” he reflects on the trip’s last day. “They were very sincere, so I thought that I would want to meet them again soon.” Below, the singer recounts highlights from the milestone fan sign tour he’d like to “leave a record of” and shares exclusive polaroids. Watch more moments here.
While the singer is now a soloist, he performs collectively as part of XngHan and Xoul with dancers Jang Yul and Gu Kyohong. They may not have accompanied him to the U.S., but the trio had a chance to travel together to SM Town Live in Tokyo earlier this year. His favorite part of hitting the road with them? “They eat really well,” he laughs. In the pair’s absence, XngHan has been doing the same, sampling the usual suspects in each city: In-N-Out, southern barbecue, pizza (pictured above). When in a new location, “I usually like challenging myself to eat the foods that are there,” he says, though he regrets not making it to BCD, a Korean tofu house in L.A. that serves spicy soup.
Travelling with a small crew this go-around, XngHan got to be more spontaneous. In New York, he went with the flow, sipping whisky in a West Village jazz bar and snapping photos of pop art at the Whitney. “But I have to say that it was the time I spent in L.A. that really left an impact on me,” he says. “Not only getting to see how people style themselves, but also getting a glimpse of life through their eyes. That free-spirited attitude.” These vibes weren’t only limited to the people he met. “There was a bunny in Dallas, just doing its own thing,” he recalls. “The tiniest, cutest bunny, but it looked so free, you know? Just munching on grass and hopping around.”
XngHan isn’t really one for crying; while he’s watched The Notebook at least 12 times, he claims to end each viewing with dry eyes. “I’m more so the one who consoles others,” he explains, a disposition that came in handy at the fan signs. “There was someone who told me that I had brought her a lot of comfort when she was going through a tough time in her life,” the singer says. “It really stuck with me because it was the first time [a fan had cried] in-person.” Because his signature mirrors a four-leaf clover, he feels like he’s sending off each person with a good luck charm of their own: “In a way, it’s me saying, ‘Have a great day that makes you smile!’”
When XngHan became a trainee at SM in seventh grade, “I thought I was going to learn all the K-pop dances,” he says. “But instead they taught me hip-hop choreography.” The dance novice started doing his own “research” on YouTube, which brought him to G-Dragon, the Super Bowl 50 halftime show with Beyoncé and Bruno Mars, and dance videos from Ian Eastwood, who XngHan linked up with while in Los Angeles. Later that same day, when he watched the class of dancers take on his single’s choreography, “It gave me a sense of euphoria,” he says. “I wanted to capture it all in that moment, leave a record of it somewhere to treasure and look back on.”
