From left are Huh Yun-jin, Kazuha, Sakura and Hong Eun-chae, members of K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM. The group's leader, Kim Chae-won, announced Tuesday that she would sit out promotional activities due to a neck injury. Courtesy of Source Music
Three years after its first full-length record, K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM is ready to tell a different story about fear.
The five-member group is set to drop "PUREFLOW pt.1," its second studio album on Friday, built around a premise that inverts the group's debut message. While the group's first record declared strength through fearlessness, this one argues the opposite — that fear, faced directly, is what makes you stronger.
"When we first debuted, the message was that we were strong because we had no fear," said Huh Yun-jin, the group's primary songwriter, said during an interview with The Korea Times in Seoul, Monday. "Now it's that we're strong because we faced our fears."
The group's leader Kim Chae-won was not able to join the interview due to a neck injury.
Eleven new songs in the "PUREFLOW" album follow that premise, across genres ranging from Latin house to punk to funk.
Formed by Source Music, a HYBE subsidiary, LE SSERAFIM debuted in May 2022 with its EP "Fearless." The group's name is an anagram of "I'm Fearless," and from the start built its identity around a unique kind of self-possession — confident and unbothered by convention.
That stance, paired with a sound that pulls from pop, Latin rhythm, rock and EDM, made them one of K-pop's fastest rising acts. "Antifragile," the group's second EP, reached No.14 on the Billboard 200 and turned them into million-sellers within months of debuting, and its first studio album, "Unforgiven," peaked at No.6 on the same chart in 2023.
K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM poses during an interview with The Korea Times at a cafe in Seongdong District, Seoul, Monday. Courtesy of Source Music
The question of why the album took three years produced answers that were more considered.
Source: Korea Times News
