EXO / Courtesy of SM Entertainment

Short story "EX-VISION," written by Lee Hee-joo, is included in EXO's latest album "REVERXE." Captured from Instagram

K-pop's fictional universes are no longer confined to music videos and album teasers. From science fiction writers to bestselling poets, some of Korea's most respected literary voices are turning up inside idol group album packages — commissioned to write short stories, lyrics and narrative passages to accompany their releases, in one of the more unlikely creative collaborations the industry has seen.

When boy band EXO released its eighth album, “REVERXE,” on Jan. 19, the group included a short story titled “EX-VISION,” written by novelist Lee Hee-joo, whose fictions such as “Holy Boy” (2021) and “Creamy(nal) Love” (2025) frequently draw on K-pop fan culture.

The story places the members in everyday scenes — Sehun and Chanyeol preparing food, D.O. handling the music, Lay and Suho arriving with a custom-made cake — with references to symbols long associated with the group's lore, such as the tree of life, the red force and the full lunar eclipse.

For Lee, the creative process was familiar but the audience was not.

“When I work on my own novels, my personal style matters a lot, but for the story featuring EXO, I made sure to weave in the group’s existing lore and its fans,” Lee told The Korea Times. “The writing process was pretty much the same, but it was cool knowing exactly who the readers would be. EXO fans loved it, so I’m very satisfied.”

SM Entertainment, EXO’s management company, said it chose to work with the author in an effort to add narrative depth to the group’s identity and expand content related to the idol group.

“In particular, with EXO’s eighth full-length album ‘REVERXE,’ we began planning by connecting the meaning of the word ‘reverse’ to a new turning point in EXO’s universe,” Mo Na-ri, the leader of SM Entertainment’s Culture Universe Development Unit, told The Korea Times. “I thought this collaboration would be a great way to compile that planning and the narrative EXO has built so far into the form of a short novel.”

A scene from the music video for "DANCING ALONE," a digital single by K-pop girl group KiiiKiii, in which novelist Lee Sull-a wrote the lyrics. Captured from YouTube

Source: Korea Times News