ZEROBASEONE’s Seok Matthew and Park Gunwook take over GQ Korea’s November 2026 pictorial. It reads like a manifesto in black wool and leather.

The frame holds for exactly one breath. Both hands are clamped over the mouth, the eyes cut sideways, and a body is folded into black wool like a secret that’s about to get out.

Flip to the other frame. It’s monochrome, with a leather jacket as slick as wet asphalt and a chin resting on knuckles. A plaid scarf is the only thing out of line, and the grain is thick enough to hear.

This is ZEROBASEONE’s Matthew and Gunwook in GQ Korea’s November 2026 pictorial. What hits first isn’t a smile or a pose. It’s the quiet, and it’s on purpose.

The Sound of a Cut-Off

Start with the name. The duo’s unit, ZEROBASEONE EMP, is named for Electro Magnetic Pulse, the blast that silences every surrounding sound and leaves a space where only their music exists. The acronym also stands for “Extra MTT PGW,” a nod to their initials and to going beyond the ordinary.

That’s a thesis statement. In an era of maximalist idol content, they chose subtraction.

Their first release, EMP Mixtape Vol.1: We the Extra, dropped on September 21 with four tracks (EMP, Pina C, Woofer and In your rain), all written, composed and produced by Matthew and Gunwook themselves. A hip-hop unit born inside a nine-member pop machine used to be a side project. Here it’s a statement of authorship.

Zero, Again

The 2023 origin story is well documented. ZEROBASEONE came out of Boys Planet and sold 1.24 million copies of its debut EP on day one, the first K-pop group to become a million-seller on its debut day. Records like that usually freeze a group in amber.

What matters now is the pivot. In February, Matthew and Gunwook signed exclusive contracts with WAKEONE after consulting their previous agencies, framing it as a fresh start in a more stable environment. Matthew had come from MNH Entertainment and Gunwook from Jellyfish Entertainment.

GQ Korea’s November issue has a name for this chapter. The magazine runs a feature titled “FROM ZERO,” about Matthew and Gunwook’s music starting over from zero, inside an issue themed around being yourself and staying unbothered.

Zero used to be the group’s origin myth. Now it’s a creative position: strip it back, own the signal.

Style as an Argument

Look at what the GQ pictorial refuses to do. There’s no glitter and no costume-party concept. The wardrobe argues instead.

In the squatting frame, the silhouette is oversized black, with trousers that pool like ink around glossy cut-out shoes.

A burgundy turtleneck sits at the collar, with a pale blue cuff and a white sleeve peeking out as small, deliberate interruptions. Nothing is loud, and everything is placed.

The monochrome frame goes the other way. Leather and knit are stacked, the scarf tangles, and the film grain makes it feel like a photo found in a drawer from a future that hasn’t happened yet.

This is the point of the shoot. The clothes, the pose and the sound are one language, and the pictorial wears the same restraint the mixtape hears. Quiet is the aesthetic, and it’s confident enough not to explain itself.

Written, Composed, Produced

The idol industry runs on an old assumption, that the artist is the face and the system is the brain. EMP quietly reverses it.

Gunwook had already shown the instinct, earning praise for “Customize,” a track he composed himself on ZEROBASEONE’s sixth mini-album Ascend-. Matthew, per the same report, has kept building his songwriting and composition skills in the studio.

Put the two together and you get what the “extra” in the name promises, a unit where the people in the shot are also the ones behind the board. Even the release rollout fits. A “Pina C” sketch film landed on YouTube at the same moment as the mixtape, so the sound, the visual and the identity all arrived together.

That’s the real shift. It isn’t a new look. It’s a new chain of custody for the look.

The Heat on the Timeline

Fandom doesn’t observe moments like this. It mobilizes around them. ZEROSE, the ZB1 fandom, treats a unit announcement like a drop. A logo reveal becomes a decoding session, a tracklist becomes a map, and a single GQ frame becomes a screenshot, an edit and a wallpaper within the hour.

The language of the fandom has changed, too. The old question was when’s the comeback? The new one is closer to what are they building? People aren’t only asking to see their favorites. They’re asking to watch them make decisions.

This is where idol culture, fashion systems and digital fandom stop being separate industries. A magazine pictorial is a fashion object, a streaming-era marketing beat and a fan-edit template all at once.

A pair of artists who control the sound and the image can speak to all three audiences in the same breath.

The Bigger Picture

K-pop’s global expansion has run, for a decade, on scale: bigger stages, bigger numbers, bigger concepts. The next phase may run on authorship. As the genre’s fifth generation matures, audiences abroad aren’t only consuming the choreography and the visuals. They want to know who wrote the song, who chose the jacket and who decided to go quiet.

Matthew and Gunwook land squarely in that conversation. They sit inside a major group’s infrastructure and a global fashion-media pipeline, and they use both to say something specific and self-made.

Is that “the defining force” of K-pop’s evolution? Make the case yourself, but the pieces are hard to ignore: a record-setting group, a self-produced unit, an agency reset and a premium magazine placing them at the center of its issue. It’s one of the clearest signs yet that the idol is becoming an artist-producer-stylist hybrid, and that this version travels.

What Comes After Zero

The trajectory is already moving. A follow-up digital single from the duo is planned for November, which means the pulse has a second beat on the way. otakukart

Watch for three things. First, whether EMP’s sound keeps evolving or settles into a signature. Second, how the unit’s visual language, the black, the grain and the restraint, spreads into the group’s wider identity. Third, whether other idols read this as a template and start cutting their own signal out of the noise.

Back in the squatting frame, the eyes are still cutting sideways, still half-daring you to follow. Matthew and Gunwook have never looked more like they know exactly where they’re going.

You should probably keep up.

Behind the Frame: The GQ Creative Team

We found no published interviews, bios or behind-the-scenes accounts for this crew, so we haven’t invented any. Here is what’s verifiable:

  • Feature Editor @ GQ Korea, Shin Ki-ho (신기호): shapes the story in print. The issue’s “FROM ZERO” feature frames the music as a restart.
  • Photographer, Lee Tae-kwang (@leeetaekwang): the monochrome frame is all grain and contrast, and the color frame uses a steel-blue gradient and a low, cropped angle that flattens the floor into a stage.
  • Stylist, Lim Jin (@58jin): built the black-on-black architecture. The burgundy collar, pale blue cuff and white sleeve are the few intentional breaks.
  • Hair, Lee Young-jae (@yonnlee_): the soft, wind-caught fringe in one frame and the sharp, slightly lifted crown in the other.
  • Make-up, Kim Min-ji (@m_j108): skin kept luminous and bare against the dark wardrobe.

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Credits & Rights

Published by Kpoppie Magazine, Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited (Japan / New Zealand).
Hero image AI-adjusted for aspect ratio and web formatting only.
Editorial Attribution: All featured pull quotes are original thematic commentary created by Kpoppie Magazine to reflect the aesthetic direction of the release.

GQ Korea Credits & Rights: Feature Editor 신기호 (Shin Ki-ho) · Photographer 이태광 (Lee Tae-kwang) @leeetaekwang · Stylist 임진 (Lim Jin) @58jin · Hair 이영재 (Lee Young-jae) @yonnlee_ · Make-up 김민지 (Kim Min-ji) @m_j108
Original photography © GQ Korea (Doosan Magazine) / WAKEONE. All rights remain with their respective owners.

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