On November 22nd, Seunghan, a member of SM’s newest kpop group, RIIZE, was announced to have an indefinite hiatus. Many were surprised and confused, so why did he go into an indefinite hiatus?
This all started on August 28th, before RIIZE even debuted. On August 28th, a user on Twitter revealed pictures of Seunghan with a woman that he seemed very close to. The user captioned those pictures as, “RIIZE Seunghan brought his minor girlfriend to a hotel.” Nobody knew whether that was true or not, but haters brought those words and spread it. A bit after the controversy was spreading, the user that revealed the pictures and started the rumors confessed to lying about his girlfriend , being a minor, when he was not. On the next day after the rumors started, Seunghan didn’t participate in the show that RIIZE was supposed to go on that day. Then, on August 30th, Seunghan posted an apology on his group’s instagram account.
You might think that that was the end of his controversies but that wasn’t it. On November 17th, footage of an instagram livestream that Seunghan did with Soobin, of the group Tomorrow x Together, was revealed. The instagram live was long before Seunghan’s debut. In the instagram live, Seunghan said to Soobin, “You can’t dance, sing, rap and you got so excited because you were the MC for Music Bank and you met our Eunchae.” After that, Soobin flipped Seunghan off using his toes to reply to the diss that Seunghan jokingly said. Many were surprised that they were friends but others were angry. Soobin is three years older than Seunghan but in the video, Seunghan wasn’t using any honorifics or respect. In Korea, honorifics and respect towards elders is seen as very important so fans were very angry.
Now, you’re probably thinking that must be it right? Nope. A day after that video was revealed another video of Seunghan was revealed. In the video, Seunghan was seen to be smoking. Since Seunghan is a legal adult and is technically allowed to smoke, people were less angered but fans were still disappointed after so many controversies of him were revealed back to back. An anonymous source has constantly been revealing pre-debut pictures and videos of Seunghan and they still seem to have more. It hasn't even been 100 days since RIIZE debuted and all of this really brought down RIIZE’s reputation.
And finally, on November 22nd, SM Entertainment announced that Seunghan would be having an indefinite hiatus. Many fans are afraid that this means that he will be leaving the group because the last time SM said a person would be having an indefinite hiatus, the member got kicked out. On RIIZE’s official instagram, they even removed Seunghan’s instagram highlight, which is a collection of instagram stories with Seunghan in it. Do you think Seunghan will get kicked out? Do you think he was rightfully put in an indefinite hiatus?