Super Junior has released and contributed in 20 different kinds of records with varying degrees of success. Over the years, they have been divided into smaller sub groups, simultaneously targeting different music industries and audiences. Largely due to Super Junior’s success as entertainers, other Korean entertainment managements began to train their music groups in other areas of entertainment, such as acting and hosting. In addition to their commercial success, Super Junior has earned seven music awards from the M.net Asian Music Awards, eleven from the Golden Disk Awards, and is the second singing group to win Favorite Artist Korea at the 2008 MTV Asia Awards after JTL (consisting of Jang Woo Hyuk, Tony An and Lee Jae Won of H.O.T) in 2003.
Pre-Debut
In 2001, the company held their first overseas casting auditions and discovered Han Geng in Beijing, who was chosen among three thousand applicants. That same year, Yesung was discovered under Seoul’s casting system. Sungmin and Donghae were also selected to be trainees after their appearance in an SM-sponsored contest. In 2002, Heechul and Kangin were recruited along with Kibum, who was discovered in Los Angeles. Siwon was recruited in 2003 and Ryeowook in 2004, in which the later was discovered through the Chin Chin Youth Festival singing competition. In 2005, Shindong was selected. The last member, Cho Kyuhyun,was then discovered after he won third place at the Chin Chin Singing Competition in 2005.
Not long after boy band TVXQ’s debut in 2003, news about Lee’s unprecedented plans of forming another boy band quickly spread on the Internet. In early 2005, Lee confirmed the news and announced that an all-boy project group of twelve members would debut near the end of the year, promoting this singing group to be “The Gateway to Stardom of Asia.” Lee announced that that most members in this group were chosen because of their performing experiences as actors, MCs, models, and radio hosts prior debut. Heechul and Kibum were already established entertainers, and most of the other members had already made various kinds of appearances on television and media.[9][10][11] Highly inspired by the rotational concept of Japan’s girl group Morning Musume, this group would also experience line-up changes, with new members replacing some selected members every year to keep the group constantly young and all-rounded. This concept was then newly introduced to the K-popmarket.
For a while the group was rumored to be called O.V.E.R, the acronym for “Obey the Voice for Each Rhythm.”[12][a] However, before the group settled with their current name, SM simply referred to them as Junior, a representation of the members’ young ages when they first became SM trainees. After the members’ showcased their different talents to the company at a picnic, the company finalized their concept name to Super Junior. The group thereafter became officially Super Junior 05, the first generation of Super Junior.
Super Junior 05 made their pre-debut on the Korean channel Mnet on September 11, 2005. At the showcase, they performed various styles of hip hop dancing. The group danced to B2K’s “Take It To The Floor.” Han Geng, Eunhyuk, and Donghae also performed a separate dance away from the group, dancing to Usher’s “Caught Up.” However, the performance did not air on television until May 16, 2006 as a segment in the Super Junior Show, the group’s first television documentary.
2005–2006: The Super Junior project
Super Junior 05 debuted on SBS’s music program Popular Song on November 6, 2005, performing their first single, “TWINS (Knock Out).” A digital single with “TWINS (Knock Out)”, “You are the one”, and three additional tracks were released online on November 8. A physical CD single was scheduled to be released the following week but a more complete album, SuperJunior05 (TWINS), was released on December 6, 2005 instead. Their debut album sold 28,536 copies in the first month of release and debuted at #3 in the monthly chart of December 2005. In that same month, they released “Show Me Your Love,” a collaboration single with TVXQ. “Show Me Your Love” became the best-selling record of December 2005, selling 49,945 copies that month.
In February 2006, Super Junior 05 began performances for “Miracle”, the second promotional single from their debut album. “Miracle” was the group’s first single to peak #1 in online music charts of South Korea as well as the music charts of Thailand, drawing interest from international markets. As promotions for “Miracle” came to an end, SM Entertainment began selecting new members for Super Junior’s second line-up project, Super Junior 06. The company even prepared a list of chosen members that were to graduate from the group. However, no members were taken out and a thirteenth member was added instead in May 2006. The line-up project has been abandoned since then, and the group became known as just Super Junior, without the suffix “05″.
2006–2007: Don’t Don & Breakthrough Success
On May 23, 2006, SM Entertainment revealed the thirteenth member Kyuhyun, who was discovered through a singing competition in 2005. They released their single “U” online for free download on May 25, 2006 in their official website. “U” had over 400,000 downloads within five hours of release and it ultimately exceeded 1.7 million downloads, crashing the server. The physical single of “U” with a total of three tracks was released on June 6, 2006, eventually selling over 81,000 units. The single became one of Korea’s most popular songs of the year, yielding #1 spots for five consecutive weeks on two of Korea’s top music programs. By the end of the year, Super Junior collected over seven awards in five of South Korea’s top music award ceremonies, winning the title as Best New Group of 2006.
Super Junior’s first sub-unit, the ballad-singing trio Super Junior-K.R.Y., debuted on November 5, 2006 with a performance of Hyena theme song “The One I Love” on KBS music program Music Bank.[21] A second sub-unit arrived in February 2007 called Super Junior-T. The trot-singing group released their first single “Rokkugo” in February 23, 2007 and made a debut performance on Popular Songs two days later.
Super Junior’s second official album was intended for a late 2006 release, but due to several accidental setbacks, Don’t Don was not released until September 20, 2007. Within the first three days of release, offline album sales for Don’t Don passed the 11,000 unit mark, debuting as #1 in all available offline charts. It finished the September monthly album sales as #1. 60,000 units were shipped by the first week of release and additional copies were printed. Although Don’t Don received rather bland reviews from critics, the album sold more than 160,000 copies by the end of the year, becoming the second best-selling record of 2007. The album also found success in Taiwan; it broke the record for being the highest ranked Korean album on the G-music Combo Billboard Chart, surpassing the albums of TVXQ and Shinhwa. Super Junior’s album also ranked above Taiwanese boy band K One, whose album debuted at #6.
Supported by the release of Don’t Don, Super Junior was nominated in seven separate categories at the 2007 M.NET/KM Music Festival that was held on November 17, 2007. Super Junior won three of those categories including “Netizen Choice Award” and “Mobile Popularity”, being the biggest winner of the night. The group also won “Best Artist of the Year” (Daesang), termed by many as the highest recognition of the ceremony. Super Junior collected two more awards on December 14, 2007 at the 2007 Golden Disk Awards. Although defeated by SG Wannabe in winning the “Daesang”, Super Junior won a “Bonsang” and the “TPL Anycall Popularity Award”, which were reported as expected wins for the group by the media after the success of Don’t Don.
2008–2009: Beyond Korea & SORRY,SORRY
On October 2, 2007, SM Entertainment announced a third Super Junior sub-unit Super Junior-M, a subgroup designated for the Chinese market. While the creation of the subgroup created a briefcontroversy between the fans and the management, Super Junior-M became a phenomenal success in China, having the opportunity to have two sold-out concerts in Hong Kong, top weekly ratings with their appearance on variety programs, and becoming the idol group with the most endorsement contracts in China. With the absence of almost half of the members in Korea, a fourth Super Junior sub-unit was created that same year to prevent Super Junior from disappearing in the Korean music industry. With five members from Super Junior-T and Yesung, they formed the subgroup, Super Junior-Happy. Super Junior-Happy released the EP Cooking? Cooking! on June 5, 2008, and promotions ended on September 7, lasting for four months. In November 2008, Super Junior-T returned, this time as a singing group in Japan, called SuperJunior-TxMoeyan; this group added Moeyan, a famous two-woman comedy group in Japan.”ROCK&GO”, a Japanese-language version of “Rokuko”, debuted at #19 on the Oricon Daily Charts and jumped to #2 three days later.
Super Junior’s first major tour, Super Show, commenced on February 22, 2008 in Seoul. The tour covered three countries and had shows on six different cities, including Bangkok, Shanghai, and Beijing. From July 8 to July 9, 2008, Super Junior held their first fan meeting in Japan, at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, as a celebration for the grand opening of their official Japanese Homepage, which was launched on April 1, 2008. 12,000 tickets to the fanmeeting were all sold out in several days. The group released a compiled Japan single the following day, entitled “U/TWINS”, which includes the Japanese version of “U” in the limited release, to complement the event. The single peaked at #4 on Japan’s Oricon Daily Chart in its first day of release, and dropped down to only four places in its second. The single broke a new record for being the first Korean single to have made within top 10 on Japan’s Oricon Weekly Chart. On August 2, 2008, Super Junior expanded their routes to Genting Highlands, Malaysia, being one of the top guest performers at the MTV Asia Awards 2008 along with other international performing artists such as OneRepublic and the Jabbawockeez. They are the third SM artist to win Favorite Artist Korea at the MTV Asia Awards after Kangta of H.O.T and BoA, and the second musical group to win the award after JTL in 2008.
Super Junior’s third album, Sorry, Sorry, was released on March 12, 2009 with acclaimed reviews. The title single of the album, “Sorry, Sorry” was digitally released on March 9, 2009. In less than a week after preorders were announced, over 150,000 copies were pre-ordered. Sorry, Sorry was their first album to debut at #1 on the Hanteo Charts, and it sold over 29,000 copies the first day, defeating Seo Taiji’s record of 25,000. Promotions for the album started March 13 with the performance of “Sorry, Sorry” and “Why I Like You” on Music Bank. Two weeks later, “Sorry, Sorry” became the number one song of the week on the same program. During the group’s performance on music program Popular Songs on March 15, ratings went up to as high as 14%, the highest in recent years. From March to May, “Sorry, Sorry” collected a total of ten #1 awards with consecutive wins in Korea, having the single becoming a national and international success. After only a month of release, the album became South Korea’s best-selling album of 2009. Sorry, Sorry was also a critically and commercially successful hit in other Asian countries, opting the group to become the only overseas representative for the second time at Taiwan’s annual Golden Melody Awards. “Sorry, Sorry” was also #1 for a record-breaking 33 weeks in Taiwan. Sorry, Sorry was a best-selling Korean-language album in Taiwan, Thailand, China, and the Philippines, in which the latter listed the album to be the first K-pop album to reach #1 in music charts from the country. Super Junior won three awards in the 1st MNET Asian Music Awards – Overseas Viewers Award, Mobile Popularity Award and CGV Popularity Award despite not attending. Super Junior’s Sorry, Sorry won Daesang at the 2009 Golden Disk Awards.
2010-Present: BONAMANA
On May 6, 2010, the teaser for their fourth studio album, Bonamana, was released through SM Entertainment’s YouTube page. The full music video of the lead single of the same name was released on May 12 and full album was released on May 13 in South Korea. The album was released by the group with only 10 members, without Han Geng who has terminated his contract with SM Entertainment,Kibum who is involved in acting career and Kang-in who had enlisted himself in to the Korean army. Their fourth album also broke a personal record for the group by having over 200,000 pre-orders. On May 14, Super Junior had their comeback stage on KBS Music Bank, performing title track “미인아 (Bonamana)” and “나쁜 여자 (Boom Boom)”.
On May 17, 2010, music video for the song, “Victory Korea”, which was used for the 2010 FIFA World Cup was released through SM Entertainment’s YouTube page.
On June 28, 2010, Super Junior released their repackaged album with three new tracks – “No Other”, “All My Heart”, “A Short Journey” – and the remixed version of “Shake It Up!”. “A Short Journey” was composed by Donghae and the lyrics were written by Eunhyuk. “All My Heart” was composed be Leeteuk and SJM member Henry. On July 2, 2010, Super Junior had their first live performance of “No Other” on Music Bank. The music video for “No Other” was released on July 7, 2010. According to Hanteo, the album has sold over 200,000 copies to date.
The group kicked off their third Asian tour, Super Show 3 on August 14 and 15, 2010 at the Olympic Gymnastics Arena in Seoul. The tour also made a stop in Qingdao on August 28, 2010, Beijingon October 23, 2010, and Nanjing on November 13, 2010.
On September 4, 2010, Super Junior took part in the SM Town Live ’10 World Tour along with fellow SM labelmates at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. This marks the first time SM Town has performed outside of Asia. On September 23, 2010, Super Junior released their original soundtrack “Angel” for Haru: An Unforgettable Day in Korea, an omnibus drama that promotes Korea’s tourism.
On November 24, 2010, Avex Entertainment, as well as SM Entertainment Japan, released a statement about the renewal of contracts of SM artists signed to Avex.
April 19 Accident
On April 19, 2007, Kyuhyun, who was sitting behind the driver’s seat when the accident occurred, was severely injured with a fractured hip, pneumothorax from broken ribs, and deep scratches and bruises. Kyuhyun was slipping in and out of consciousness for the next few days after the accident occurred. Besides Kyuhyun, Leeteuk, Eunhyuk, Shindong, two of their managers were also in the accident. The accident occurred when they were commuting back to their apartment after Kiss the Radio (SuKiRa) in Kangta’s van and not their own. Leeteuk had severe scratches on his back and face, and had to receive a total of 170 stitches. Kyuhyun was released later on July 5, 2007, but didn’t fully recover until February 2008. The other two, Eunhyuk and Shindong, suffered only minor injuries.
Controversies
Expansion To China
After the subgroups Super Junior-K.R.Y. and Super Junior-T, on October 2, 2007, SM Entertainment announced the birth of another Super Junior sub-unit project that would begin activities in China starting 2008. Zhou Mi and SM Entertainment’s new Chinese-Canadian trainee Henry Lau, who was also featured in the music video of “Don’t Don”, were said to be two of the core members for the subgroup.
The announcement brought in a huge wave of dissatisfaction and opposition from fans of Super Junior after the announcement of two new members. Initially, fans were planning to boycott the company’s products, however, most fans agreed on a silent protest instead. Thousands of fans from Super Junior’s official fanclub E.L.F. silently sat in front of the SM building and held signs that supported the group to have only thirteen members.
After more rumors regarding adding a Chinese member to the subgroup, the fans decided to gain a legal representation as part of SM Entertainment’s stockholders. As of March 20, 2008, Super Junior fans purchased 58,206 stocks of SM Entertainment, holding 0.3% of the company’s entire stock. They released a statement that they will obtain all chances to prevent SM Entertainment from adding new members and to keep Super Junior as only thirteen.
Conflict with MBC
A time-slot dispute occurred between SM Entertainment and MBC when SM insisted to have Kang-in stay on SBS’s Explorers of the Human Body instead of MBC’s Sunday Night Dong-An Club (동안클럽) where Kang-in has been a regular host. MBC temporarily banned the rest of Super Junior from appearing in any future performances and shows hosted by MBC. Kang-in also lost his MC jobs to T.O.P. of Big Bang for the music show, Show! Music Core and also two more variety shows, which both soon canceled after Kang-in left due to low ratings. MBC demanded an apology from SM Entertainment in order for Super Junior to appear on shows hosted by the channel again. However, MBC concluded that Super Junior’s ban was never official, but just a decision for shows’ producers to decide.
Han Geng’s Lawsuit
On December 21, 2009, one of the members, Han Geng, filed for contract termination with SM Entertainment, label company of the group. The following day, Han Geng’s lawyer stated the claimed reasons behind the action: provisions were in SM Entertainment’s favour, unlawful 13-year contract length, unfair sum of money to end the contract, not allowed to request to revise his contract, forced to do things that were not in his contract, forced to do things against his will, fined if he disobeyed the company, missed any events or even was late, and there was uneven profit distribution. Along with this, it was disclosed that because of SM Entertainment’s refusal to give him a day off in over two years, he had developed gastritis and kidney disease.
Han Geng’s current manager, Sun Le, also submitted a statement to the court of South Korea citing SM Entertainment’s violation of Han Geng’s rights. Sun Le’s statement contended that: Han Geng was forced to wear a mask due to company’s ill handling of the visa issue, company purposely discriminated against Han Geng and his family, company refused to cooperate or listen to any of Han Geng’s suggestions, company purposely turned down individual activities for Han Geng (including Ariel Lin’s “Fireflies” music video, which later starred two other Super Junior members) and that the company treated Han Geng’s potential endorsers poorly.
Conflict During Expo 2010
On May 26, 2010, organized by South Korea Pavilion of Expo 2010, many Korean pop stars including Super Junior were invited to the “South Korean classical and pop concert” which was planned to be launched at Expo Cultural Centre on May 30. As the tickets were not for sale to the public, visitors who want to enjoy the show could only exchange the ticket via expo ticket in the west door of the Expo Cultural Centre on May 30. The total ticket number is 5000, while 2500 of which would be assigned to Korea visitors for free which caused the actual available number to be 2500. Super Junior fans collected in the entry of the Expo Cultural Centre, and the strong emotion led to the occurrence of violence, resulting in casualties. A local armed police said that this is his first time to see such a “crazy” situation in Expo 2010 since the Expo park was opened.
