The Hospitalization, Disappearance, And Mistreatment Of Newkidd (With Petition #NewkiddAre8)

NewKidd Official

Starting with some general information (and more about the ongoing petition https://chng.it/Jyp67qzq), Newkidd is an 8-member boy group under J-FLO Entertainment. The group members are HanSol, JiAnn, MinWook, JinKwon, YunMin, Hwi, WooChul, and SeungChan, Newkidd debuted on April 25th, 2019.

Only JinKwon and MinWook will be active in Newkidd’s “Victory” promotions in 2022. JiAnn, HanSol, and SeungChan were hospitalized in April 2020, whereas the only one we have had active updates from since is HanSol. Although we have heard from HanSol some from the official account the only consensus we got that he was discharged was by fans and him being on a friend’s Instagram story.

JiAnn and SeungChan have since gotten fewer and fewer updates since the hospitalization and have disappeared. Two of the eight members have enlisted those being HaSsol on February 22nd, 2021 (he is now discharged as of November 21st, 2022), and Hwi who enlisted on November 10th, 2022.

Now let’s dive a little deeper into each member and their promotions. Two of the members YunMin and WooChul are in a Thai-Korean group called Seven Stars, they were revealed to be in the group on April 11th, 2022, and are currently actively promoting as a pre-debut group with the other Seven Star members. We found out about their promotions through Thai fans posting pictures from fan signs in October 2022.

Let’s get into pre-debut Newkidd, on November 28th, 2017 J-FLO Entertainment announced that they would be debuting a new boy group, they also announced that HanSol would be a part of the group along with releasing a pre-debut single. On November 30th, 2017 they digitally released ‘Will You Be Ma’ under the name ‘NewKidd – Lemme Spoil U (LSU). HanSol was performing on “The Unit” when all of this happened and even made it to the official lineup of the show called UNB, the group UNB disbanded January 27th, 2019 but HanSol was a part of both Newkidd and UNB during 2018-2019.

Now onto LSU subunit details, there were only 4 members of Newkidd at the time, but the album that was released for the song on January 24th, 2018 only showcased two of the members HanSol and YunMin. Fans at the time thought there would be more pre-debut projects showcasing the other two members, but that never ended up happening. In the album, there were HanSol and YunMin standees but none for the other two members JinKwon and WooChul. In the song itself there are lines by a member of Newkidd who was never showcased to the public, HanKyul, he pursued modeling instead. However, his line is still in the official audio. For ‘Will You Be Ma’ they never had any official promotions for the song, and the maknae at the time WooChul was only 15 when he joined the project.

Another pre-debut release they had was released on July 25th, 2018 with two songs ‘BBB’ and ‘Shooting Star’. This sub-unit is called Newkidd02, which introduced two new members JiAnn and Hwi. They performed on music shows with these songs, unlike the other sub-unit. JiAnn would later turn out to, together with SeungChan and HanSol, have screen time cut away in music videos and vlogs, not post any selcas, not a single solo live, and almost never appear in group lives.

SeungChan, the 7th member of the group joined Newkidd for their debut, but even after he debuted he never got an official page on the J-FLO website. The group officially debuted with 7 members on April 25th, 2019, with the single album Newkidd and two songs ‘First Spring’ and ‘Tu Eres’. When all 7 debuted they performed pre-debut songs along with their Newkidd album but SeungChan got pushed off stage during these songs: ‘Shooting Star’, ‘BBB’, and ‘Will You Be Ma’.

https://twitter.com/gwshion/status/1265013162514042881

Even though he is not technically a part of these songs he is still seen in some fan videos singing along on the sidelines. Hwi and JiAnn were not a part of the group during LSU but they still participated in the choreography and Hwi even got lines to lip-sync. JiAnn’s position isn’t much better as he is always in the back of choreographies and does not have any lines, SeungChan’s rap in ‘Tu Eres’ is 8 seconds long but he only has 2 seconds of screen time in the music video.

They released another single on November 28th, 2019 called ‘Come’, in this era SeungChan, JiAnn, and HanSol are mistreated the most in terms of screen time, lines, and solo parts. SeungChan has 0 screen time during his solo raps and in the entire music video, he does not get a single solo shot. He has about 4 frames in the music video which is only 0.16 seconds, his other solo frame is at the beginning of his rap for only a couple of frames. JiAnn also had minimal screen time, but he was at least given the center position for the 2nd chorus. But similar to SeungChan, there was only one solo shot that wasn’t an extreme closeup and it was also around 0.1 seconds. The worst part of this music video is that YunMin is lip-syncing to HanSol’s part, YunMin has the same line earlier in the song but in the second part is HanSol’s line. We don’t believe YunMin was aware at all of the situation and that it would be used for HanSol’s part.

On July 27th, 2022 J-FLO added new member Lee MinWook to Newkidd and he is currently active in promoting a new song ‘Victory’ with JinKwon.

Let’s get more into the treatment or lack thereof for the fans by J-FLO Entertainment. Before debuting, they had a makestar campaign and the makers of the campaign had to wait a really long time to get their rewards. J-FLO isn’t taking in any fan information and neglecting international fans by not letting them see the fan cafe. The hospitalization notice was posted in the fan cafe that international fans still cannot access to this day so they got the news late if at all. The statement was also vague and did not specify why or who was in the hospital. This makes us think they might have had some play in the declining health of their artists and the fact it was at the beginning of the pandemic stemmed even more worries for fans. They also had a Latin America tour around the time the members were hospitalized (It was canceled because of the ongoing pandemic) but what would they have done with the plans if they knew three of the members were in the hospital. Even in performance videos the three members that were hospitalized were hidden and edited out. J-FLO continued to post pictures of the members the day after the hospitalization statement as if nothing had happened. On March 25th, 2020 in collaboration with MyMusicTaste Newkidd asked fans to come up with a fandom name, but no word on the name has been said since the tweet.

Now let’s get more into the mistreatment of the members outside of their music and line distribution. Going off of the hospitalization, their one-year anniversary was in April and the three members were also hospitalized in April, but all of the members were able to post videos congratulating the group on their one-year anniversary. The thing that is fishy is that not everyone is in the same place, some were at the company building while others were someplace else. We have no idea if it was just how it worked out or if some of them were prerecorded. Moving on we also have some information on their sleeping situation in their dorms from around 2019 (now this information could’ve changed since this is old information). The sleeping situation wasn’t great for some members, HanSol and SeungChan were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, YunMin and WooChul shared a bed, and JiAnn and Hwi were sleeping in bunk beds. Although HanSol did get a bed at one point we don’t know if it was taken away or given after the fans saw the living situation, SeungChan never got a bed as far as we know. Even with the not-best sleeping conditions that’s not the worst of it, they were also having issues with sasaengs showing up to the dorm and invading their privacy, nothing was done about it either to our knowledge.

To build off of the mistreatment we’re going to talk about the disappearances of members and the inactivity that has caused concern since 2020.

The last time we heard from Hwi was at the fan cafe (which international fans can’t access) about his military enlistment that would happen 3 days after. The post was made on November 7th, 2022.

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Now the inactivity from each member in terms of Twitter and personal posts. We all know how idols post on Twitter with their # and name plus a message they want to put along with photos. Here we’ll put the last time each member did that along with the tweet. WooChul’s last personal post was on September 28th, 2022. YunMin’s was on September 18th, 2022, we have some reasons for their inactivity on Newkidd Twitter because they’re actively promoting as Seven Stars but we didn’t get any sort of confirmation from Twitter or the company itself that they were doing work over in Thailand.

Hwi’s last personal post was on April 2nd, 2021 there is no good reason why he hasn’t posted in over a year on Twitter and the only update we got of him recently was his enlistment on the 10th of November. JiAnn and SeungChan’s last personal post was a group photo of finger hearts showing off snow figures they had made, they didn’t even show their faces. This was on January 12th, 2021 and the last time either of them had posted individually was between September and October 2020. The fans were obviously relieved to see the two members again posting but that didn’t last for long because that was the last time we’d heard from either of them for almost 2 years. HanSol’s last personal post was on September 20th, 2020 and he enlisted 5 months after that post and has since been discharged but there has been no word from him on the Twitter account or even a statement from J-FLO that he has been discharged.

Even if the members are not active in posting themselves the official account will still post about the members birthday’s even if they haven’t been active in the last 2 years. Even if the other members are technically in the group (minus ones enlisting) JinKwon continued to post congratulations and holidays by himself like Halloween 2022 and Newkidd’s 2 debut anniversary.

Solo YouTube content is also a problem with Newkidd as JiAnn doesn’t have any apparent solo videos he’s in one video for HanSol’s enlistment message telling the fans he’s going to enlist but he’s only shown briefly. The last apparent video with SeungChan in it was a group vlog to Ukraine on February 25th, 2020.

SeungChan is shown in the February 21st, 2021 video of HanSol but he is only shown briefly and his face is covered by his hair for some odd reason.

WooChul’s last solo video on YouTube was behind the scenes for a drama he was in, he also had an “arena home” photo shoot but he has never gotten as many opportunities as JinKwon has gotten, we don’t mean to compare the other members but JinKwon is currently the only one active from the original lineup and has a lot of promotions himself. The date of WooChul’s last solo content was June 17th, 2021 which is well over a year ago. HanSol’s last content was a message video the day before he enlisted telling the fans he was going to enlist, this video showcases all the members even if for brief moments. It’s the first time we’re seeing SeungChan or JiAnn in a long time on the Youtube channel. Although all the members are shown in the message video in February of last year that’s only group content, YunMin’s last solo Youtube content is on March 3rd, 2020 with a cover of PENTAGON’s ‘Dr. BEBE’, and Hwi’s last solo content is on December 27th, 2020 with a cover of MONSTA X’s ‘Love Killa’.

Now onto more photos and Twitter posts, the last ot4 picture we have is on May 22nd, 2021 and it’s for the OntactGKpopConcert. Only JinKwon, WooChul, Hwi, and YunMin are present. HanSol had already enlisted but that doesn’t explain the absence of JiAnn and SeungChan.

The last ot7 picture we have of Newkidd is on February 20th, 2021 but the picture raised more concern about the members that were previously missing than it did ease the fan’s worries.

Newkidd did a fan meeting called the “Amigos fan meeting” where people had hopes that all 7 members would be present but that was not the case in the end, even though HanSol, JiAnn, and SeungChan did promotional videos for it only JinKwon, YunMin, WooChul, and Hwi were present. It doesn’t make sense that all the members weren’t present for this fan meeting because it was before any of the members had enlisted. The fan meeting took place on November 8th, 2020.

For the congratulatory message of 600 days since debut, only YunMin was present in the video even though it was December 15th, 2020. It’s not the first time a member solo congratulated a milestone for the group, at least recently it’s only been JinKwon who is celebrating stuff like this along with holidays

Hansol’s last post with any of the members was on October 1st, 2020 celebrating Chuseok, JiAnn, and SeungChan are still not present here.

Even though HanSol enlisted in 2021 there is barely any content of him in 2020 even though the members were releasing covers and songs, there are big gaps of no HanSol, and when he does post it’s only a few things before he goes silent again. JiAnn and SeungChan’s posts are few and far between if they even post at all and there are only a handful of personal tweets from the two even if they’ve been active since 2019. Even if SeungChan was well promoted in his first month of debut showing up in live streams with the members, posting selcas, and doing collaborations. However, it was short-lived as it started taking months for him to post with the group or even individually. JiAnn was shunned from the beginning and he barely has anything with the group after debuting.

The last ot7 content we got was all the members congratulating their 1st year anniversary of being a group and even before that there was an obvious bias toward JinKwon, YunMin, and WooChul. (There’s also something fishy with the videos but we at least got something from all of them). Their last fan meeting as a group of 7 was on January 18th, 2020.

Everything seems fine until February 2020 that’s when members start disappearing from content and releases.

We have made a petition to investigate Newkidd and save them from mistreatment linked here, more than 100 have signed at the time of writing and you can help promote the petition with a money donation. We appreciate it if you share it to your socials and give awareness to the thread of information linked below by us.

https://chng.it/Jyp67qzq

 

 

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The Hospitalization, Disappearance, And Mistreatment Of Newkidd (With Petition #NewkiddAre8)

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Newkidd – ‘Victory’ MVNov 7, 2022

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