The K-pop boy band competition TV show “Kingdom: Legendary War” premiered on April 1 on Mnet after facing controversies including dispute over stage design budget and one of its hosts stepping down pending investigation for violating social distancing rules.
“Kingdom” features K-pop boy bands BTOB, iKON, SF9, The Boyz, Stray Kids and ATEEZ. Based on debut date, BTOB is the oldest among the competing groups. They celebrated their ninth anniversary last month since debuting on March 21, 2012. ATEEZ is the youngest, debuting in October 2018.
On the show, BTOB performed “Beautiful Pain,” Stray Kids had “Miroh,” The Boyz showcased “The Stealer,” ATEEZ performed “Wave,” iKON had “Rhythm Ta”; and SF9 had “Good Guy.”
No boy band will be eliminated and the contestants will be ranked based on the following criteria: self-evaluation, 25 percent; experts’ assessment, 25 percent; fan votes, 40 percent; and video views, 10 percent.
In the first episode, the partial results of the votes were revealed. BTOB ranked third with 540,621 votes; SF9 placed fourth with 533,458 votes; and ATEEZ grabbed fifth place with 504,215 votes.
Votes recorded totaled 3,332,262 and the full results will be revealed to know which among iKON, Stray Kids and The Boyz will rank first, second and sixth.
The boy bands also revealed why they decided to compete in “Kingdom.”
“Ten years into our career, we hope to unveil the talents we have built from our various experiences. Like our theme for the show ‘Dreamers Don’t Die,’ we hope to showcase different aspects of ourselves with every stage,” said BTOB’s leader Eunkwang, the Korea Herald reported.
According to iKON’s Jinhwan, “It’s not easy to go on stage these days and we wanted to take the chance to show ourselves.”
“We strengthened our abilities of embodying a certain story into our performance during ‘Road to Kingdom,’ and we hope that viewers can also follow us in ‘Kingdom’ by guessing our stories,” said The Boyz’s Sang-yeon.
Stray Kids said, “Our biggest strength would be that our members write, compose and arrange our own songs. Such asset definitely makes our music more genuine.”
“We decided to take part hoping to broaden our horizons through learning from other more experienced groups,” adding “we always try to make a stage that delivers our energy to the audience and hope we can do so here as well,” commented ATEEZ’s Hong-joong.
SF9's Youngbin said, "We believed we would be able to take a leap if we went head to head against other fabulous singers. It is a bit embarrassing to say this, but SF9 members have frequently been praised for physical appearances. Through the program, we want to show that we are also musically talented," according to the Korea Times.