Five members. One name. An entirely new altitude. How ZEROBASEONE rewrote the rules of reinvention and made the climb look effortless

They were born from a survival show with a built-in expiration date. What they built instead was a legacy — and right now, in June 2026, five young men are still standing, still ascending, and still redefining what it means to be a K-pop group in the fifth generation.

The Beginning of Everything

On July 10, 2023, nine young men stepped onto a stage and introduced themselves to the world as ZEROBASEONE. They carried a name that meant something specific: a glorious beginning, starting from nothing and becoming one. What nobody could have fully predicted was just how seriously they would take that promise.

Their debut mini album Youth in the Shade shattered expectations before the ink had dried on any forecasts. 1.82 million copies sold in its first week — the first K-pop debut EP in history to clear that threshold. ZEROBASEONE did not arrive quietly. They arrived like a seismic event, and the reverb has not stopped since.

Formed through Mnet’s Boys Planet survival program under WAKEONE Entertainment, ZB1 entered the scene as a multinational project group with an asterisk attached: a built-in 2.5-year contract. An expiration date, in plain language. The K-pop industry has seen this model before — Kep1er, Wanna One — and while those groups left indelible marks, the timeline always loomed. For ZEROSE, the devoted fandom that rallied around ZB1 from their earliest Boys Planet episodes, that clock was never background noise. It was the drumbeat underneath everything.

A New Configuration

When the dust settled in early 2026, four members — Zhang Hao, Ricky, Kim Gyuvin, and Han Yujin — returned to their parent agency YH Entertainment, preparing their own chapter as AND2BLE. And five remained. Sung Hanbin, Kim Jiwoong, Seok Matthew, Kim Taerae, and Park Gunwook chose to continue under the name ZEROBASEONE, with WAKEONE formalized as their unified home following membership transfers from MNH Entertainment and Jellyfish Entertainment in February.

The announcement on February 12, 2026 was both clinical and quietly electric. “Under the name ZEROBASEONE,” WAKEONE stated, “the musical legacy the nine members have built together will not stay at a single point in time; it will continue its vitality as it expands in diverse ways and possibilities.” That’s corporate language doing something rare — actually meaning what it says.

The encore run of their world tour, HERE&NOW, concluded at KSPO DOME in Seoul across March 13–15. Nine members on stage for the last time together. If you’ve seen the fan footage circulating across social media — Hanbin gripping the microphone through the final encore, Jiwoong’s voice carrying notes that felt like they were meant for the rafters — you understand why the word “bittersweet” doesn’t quite cover it. It was more complicated than that. It was a graduation ceremony and a coronation, simultaneously.

Starting from zero and ending at one — ZEROBASEONE have always been a metaphor for becoming. The ‘Ascend-‘ era proves the climb was never really about the nine. It was always about what the five would do with everything they’d built. — Kpoppie Magazine Editorial

Ascend-: The Sound of a New Altitude

On May 18, 2026, at precisely 18:00 KST, ZEROBASEONE released Ascend-. Their sixth mini album. Their first as five. Seven tracks. And a title track called TOP 5 that does something brilliant in its very name — it’s a statement of intent, a declaration of ranking ambition, and a wink at the group’s new configuration, all at once.

The sound of TOP 5 is deliberately grown-up. Early 2000s hip-hop and R&B textures, a groovy instrumental spine, and speak-rap delivery that transforms the hook into something hypnotic rather than brash. It’s the kind of track that doesn’t announce its confidence — it simply occupies the room. Concept photos released in late April had already signalled the tonal shift: business-professional silhouettes dissolving into casual cool, the five members channelling what one reviewer called “subdued maturity and charisma.” The suits-and-ties styling in the Cover Story concept shoot was minimal in palette, maximal in intention.

The album’s architecture is equally intentional.

The ‘Intro.’ track opens with a bright, fast-paced brightness before pivoting to rock textures and crashing into a hip-hop beat — a sonic walkthrough of ZB1’s entire timeline compressed into minutes, bridging everything that came before to what comes next.

Closer ‘Zero to Hundred’ is familiar ZB1 DNA: dense synth-pop with vocal harmonics stacked like architecture.

And in the middle, ‘Changes’ — a piano-led R&B ballad where Jiwoong’s vocal texture arrives like something you weren’t expecting to need.

The album confirms what perceptive listeners already knew: ZEROBASEONE’s secret weapon has always been their voices.

In an era where many fifth-generation boy groups default to visual dominance over sonic substance, ZB1 lead with melody. They always have. Ascend- doubles down on that instinct.

The title ‘TOP 5’ is perfect. Not a top-five list. Not a ranking. Five members at the top — and a group that’s been there since day one, just in a new formation. — Kpoppie Magazine

Fashion as Identity Language

To understand ZB1 in 2026, you have to understand how they wear themselves. Hanbin has always carried a leader’s gravity in how he dresses — structured lines, measured colour, nothing accidental.

Jiwoong commands attention through the opposite approach: softness deployed with precision, the kind of styling that makes editorial rooms pay attention.

Matthew brings the multiculturalism that defined ZB1’s original nine-member identity into every visual frame — a reminder that K-pop’s fifth generation is more globally fluent than any before it.

The Ascend- campaign concept photos confirm a group that has graduated from K-pop’s coming-of-age codes into something more singular. Gone is the colour-saturated youth concept that defined albums like Youth in the Shade and Melting Point.

In its place: textural sophistication, controlled palettes, and the quiet authority of men who know exactly who they are. KNIGHT Magazine’s decision to feature ZB1 on the June 2026 cover is, read correctly, a statement about where K-pop fashion is heading — toward editorial seriousness, away from spectacle for its own sake.

Taerae’s vocal presence and Gunwook’s dancer’s posture both translate visually in ways that make styling them easy — or so it might appear. The reality is that ZB1 have an unusually strong collective visual identity for a group that was assembled through competition. They look like they were always meant to be in the same photograph.

ZEROSE: The Fandom as Creative Force

No story about ZEROBASEONE is complete without ZEROSE. The fandom that mobilised around ZB1 from Boys Planet audition cuts and pre-debut snippets has consistently operated at a level that defies casual description. They were streaming, voting, trending hashtags, and flying fan support banners before ZB1 had released a single note of official music. By the time Youth in the Shade dropped, ZEROSE was already a coordinated, passionate, globally distributed force.

The contract extension negotiations of late 2025 revealed something important about this fandom: they don’t just support, they advocate. When WAKEONE and ZB1’s respective agencies began discussions about the group’s future beyond January 2026, ZEROSE mounted campaigns across every major platform simultaneously. The extension to March 2026 was welcomed as a partial victory.

The February 2026 announcement that five members would continue was met with an emotional outpouring that flooded social media timelines across time zones.

What ZEROSE understood before anyone else was this: ZEROBASEONE was never just nine people. It was a philosophy of beginning. And philosophies don’t expire on schedule.

What the Ascent Looks Like Now

Sitting with Ascend- in the context of ZB1’s complete catalogue, a through-line emerges. Every era has been about adding a dimension: Youth in the Shade introduced them, Melting Point tested their emotional range, 

You Had Me At Hello leaned into sweetness, Cinema Paradise went cinematic, Blue Paradise reached toward intimacy. Ascend- does something different. It looks inward and arrives at clarity.

The album’s title — with its trailing dash — is not an accident. Ascend-. The incomplete punctuation implies continuation, a sentence not yet finished, a story still being written.

For a group that was supposed to end by now, there is no more fitting grammatical metaphor.

ZEROBASEONE is, in the summer of 2026, at once a legacy act and a debut. They carry the record-breaking weight of everything they built as nine, and they carry it forward as five, lighter on their feet, more deliberate with every step. The world tour filled arenas. The music moved millions. And the fashion told you, if you were paying attention, exactly where they were headed.

The name still means what it always meant. Start from zero. Become one. Repeat, if necessary, at higher altitude.

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Credits & Rights

COVER STORY: “ZEROBASEONE — From Zero to the Top”
Published in: KNIGHT Magazine, June 2026 Issue

OUR EDITORIAL PRODUCTION
Editorial Direction: Kpoppie Magazine Editorial Team
Published by: Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited (Japan / New Zealand Edition)
Operating Platform: kpoppie.com

RIGHTS & COPYRIGHT
© 2026 Kpoppie Magazine / Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited. All rights reserved.
This article is protected under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, or stored in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without prior written permission from Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited.

ARTIST CREDIT
ZEROBASEONE (제로베이스원) is managed by WAKEONE Entertainment, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
All artist information, member names, music titles, and group branding remain the exclusive intellectual property of WAKEONE and respective rights holders.

EDITORIAL DISCLAIMER
This feature is an editorial/creative journalistic work. All characterisations, descriptions, and quotes attributed to Kpoppie Magazine are editorial in nature and represent the views of the publication. No affiliation with WAKEONE or affiliated agencies is implied or claimed.

Inquiries: editorial@kpoppie.com | Velocity Entertainment Inc. Limited, Japan / New Zealand

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