XngHan on His U.S. Fan Sign Tour & Memories He Wants to ‘Leave a Record Of’: Exclusive Photos

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The erstwhile RIIZE subordinate recalls highlights from traveling the U.S. and yet gathering the fans who person supported him done hard times.

XngHan is nervously fidgeting with tiny rubber bands.

The vocalist and former member of K-pop lad radical RIIZE arranges the ripped-up pieces of 1 into a smiley face: 2 consecutive eyes, a chemoreceptor and dopey grin. Then, giving it an elastic halo, helium points retired the show to his manager similar a kid seeking support from a parent, laughing, earlier snapping backmost into concern mode. For the amended portion of the past hour, the squad has been sleepily lasting by successful an L.A. creation workplace portion students successful the adjoining abstraction prime up the choreography from his precocious released solo debut, “Waste No Time” — an acquisition he’s going to headdress by making a astonishment cameo.

This U.S. trip, which consists of 3 “fan sign” events successful New York, Dallas and Los Angeles, is astir arsenic acold retired of the soft-spoken 21-year-old’s comfortableness portion arsenic it gets. After chatting one-on-one and signing albums during the meet-ups, helium models for “photo time,” wherever fans seated wrong the edifice ballroom outcry retired a drawstring of hand-heart and cat-ear airs requests. (“It’s a beauteous awkward clip for him, but it’s beauteous entertaining for us,” 1 of his reps quips.) Yet the wide code is 1 of celebration, the lightness of coming retired the different extremity of something.

“Seeing them successful idiosyncratic is what made maine happy,” XngHan (born Hong Seunghan) tells Billboard a mates of days aboriginal successful aboriginal September. “I’m truly shy, truthful I’d ever [thought I] preferred talking to our fans online.” Back home, he’s utilized to playing the shrinking violet, helium explains, “But here, I noticed our fans were adjacent shyer than me. It truly seemed similar they wanted to accidental something, but they were truthful tense that they weren’t capable to accidental what they wanted to say.”

For bully reason, emotions ran high. When XngHan was enactment connected indefinite hiatus successful 2o23, with his aboriginal arsenic a K-pop idol fundamentally becoming a elephantine question mark, fans successful the West were peculiarly vocal supporters for his reinstatement, remaining relentlessly by his side. Even now, astir the country from the instrumentality sign, the pinkish partition of SM Entertainment’s aged Koreatown bureau has been plastered with uplifting messages directed astatine XngHan. (By the extremity of the month, a rainbow of sticky notes besides went up adjacent the company’s main HQ successful Seoul; helium near an idiosyncratic reply to each and each one.)

“I received a batch of vigor from the fans,” helium reflects connected the trip’s past day. “They were precise sincere, truthful I thought that I would privation to conscionable them again soon.” Below, the vocalist recounts highlights from the milestone instrumentality motion circuit he’d similar to “leave a grounds of” and shares exclusive polaroids. Watch much moments here.