KYUNGMIN spoke calmly and thoughtfully about how much consideration goes into every measure and dance move of every song. He followed his heart, then one day, he found himself chasing his dream. Throughout our conversation, he radiated the kind of passion, zeal, and indefatigable energy that only someone pursuing their dreams can possess.

How does it feel now that you’re just about to make your debut?

KYUNGMIN: The main thing I feel is nervous and excited. I’ve dreamed about this moment ever since I was little! Sure, it’s nerve-racking, but I’m not scared at all. I’m curious by nature, so it’s more like a fun, exciting adventure to me. Now that I’ve grown accustomed to it, I genuinely enjoy it. Plus all that content we shot is coming out piece by piece! It makes me so proud to see how happy it’s making everyone I know. I have a friend I’ve known since I was just one year old, and we’re still close, and we never feel awkward around each other. I became friends with them because our parents met at a playground one day and said, “Let’s be friends” (laughs). That friend recently contacted me for the first time in ages and said, “You are so cool.”

When did you first dream of becoming an idol?

KYUNGMIN: I made up my mind in second grade. I saw people on TV singing and dancing on stage and they just looked so happy. Then I saw BTS performing “Not Today” and it was so awesome that I was determined to cover it myself. Ever since then, I cover every one of their songs when they come out. The first SEVENTEEN song I memorized the choreography for was “CLAP.” From there, I kept practicing choreography on my own by watching mirrored videos on YouTube, and I slowly built up the number of songs I could perform.

It couldn’t have been easy practicing so much all on your own.

KYUNGMIN: It didn’t even occur to me whether it was easy or hard at the time. I just got into it because I loved it. I just did it whenever I felt like it. I started pushing myself to master songs the same day I started learning them and gradually cut down my time until I could memorize a whole song in the space of an hour. It was thanks to that experience that I was able to keep up even after joining the label. Practicing choreography, performing at a school talent show and getting applauded by my peers—it was so exhilarating that it made me want to practice even harder. Even though I practiced by myself, my parents recorded videos for me and found auditions to send the videos to. My entire family put their support behind me. My brothers and my grandparents were always there to cheer me on.

For your TWS: Think About Us! profile, you wrote that you feel especially happy when “seeing [your] parents,” and for your bucket list, you put down “buy my parents a home” and “send my grandparents on a vacation.”

KYUNGMIN: Just being with my family makes me super happy. Going home and eating home-cooked meals, seeing my siblings—isn’t that what being happy’s all about? I’m the oldest kid in the family—I have two younger brothers, who are four and eight years younger than me. We always hang out together and take care of each other. When I was growing up, my family spent every weekend playing catch or playing baseball. My mom studied athletics in university and my dad’s good at baseball, soccer, and basketball. Maybe I’m emotionally similar in age to my brothers (laughs) because I never really noticed the age difference. Now, being five years younger than SHINYU and seeing how much more mature he seems, I realize that there’s quite an age gap between me and my brothers.

You seem to derive happiness from relationships with the people closest to you. What about your friends in school?

KYUNGMIN: I loved hanging out with my friends and I think I was sort of like the leader. (laughs) I was student vice president in fifth grade, and I became class president when I went to middle school. Taking on these leadership roles meant having to speak in front of others, which helped me become accustomed to being onstage. Of course, I enjoyed dancing, too. I remember dancing to “Butter” by BTS in middle school, but that was during the pandemic, so my friends had to watch remotely from their classrooms. I’m sure they were cheering for me from the classroom, but it’s hard when it’s dead silent in the auditorium, as you can imagine. I remember being on stage with my mask on and dancing all alone. (laughs)

So performing had already come naturally to you by that point. (laughs) How did life change after you became a trainee in middle school?

KYUNGMIN: Honestly, I don’t think I ever found being a trainee too rigorous. Becoming a trainee was one of my goals, so just achieving that alone made me happy. I cherished the process of going to school in the morning, seeing my friends, and then taking lessons. Before joining the label, all my interest was directed toward dance—I never once learned how to sing. But then, the coaches kept complimenting me on my vocals, and I thought, “Maybe my future is in singing,” (laughs) and from then on I worked really hard on my singing. I started off by practicing songs I already loved. I like pop music, so I tried imitating the original singers of those songs, and then worked on making their styles my own.

Your vocals in the opening of the lead single “plot twist” are quite distinctive.

KYUNGMIN: I agree that the sound of my voice is one of my better assets, and lately, I spend a ton of time thinking about how to sound even better—practically all day, really. Naturally I felt some pressure, being the one to do the opening for the single, but on the other hand, I felt like I could pull it off—I was going to make sure not to embarrass myself—so I tried hard to capture those straightforward lyrics in a way that made them sound good: “Look at my expression in the mirror / Feeling so good, the D-day I’ve been waiting for.” Whenever I go to recordings, I always ask myself what I would do if I was in the situation of the song’s protagonist. For instance, in “BFF,” I sang the line, (sings) “No more cheesy lines,” by drawing out the sound in a way that would give listeners butterflies. Then I sang the next line like I just don’t care, like, “We’re. Past. That. Now.” I think all the little details, like when I breathe and where I place emphasis, come together quite nicely.

In “Oh Mymy : 7s,” the parts where you are in the center—like the chorus, and the formation towards the end with the members standing in a circle around you—are quite memorable, as you demonstrate this explosion of energy using very big movements. 

KYUNGMIN: I feel a song’s energy only comes across properly if the feeling, dancing, singing, facial expressions, and gestures are all there. So I made big movements, and practiced to get every gesture and expression right down to the second. For the last part—boom! “The two of us become three, then four / Our name keeps getting bigger”—first I (demonstrating each move) smile, then give a fierce look, then wink, punch to the side, look sideways, and smile while turning. I had to work really hard to make that sequence look natural. The two parts you talked about in particular are where our group formation is emphasized, so I felt I had to nail my facial expressions to make it feel powerful.

How did you practice the group choreo?

KYUNGMIN: There’s really only one way: practice, and repeat. I might be exaggerating, but I think we rehearsed the chorus for “Oh Mymy : 7s” around 200 times … maybe more. (laughs) We worked on the details every time, and if even one thing was off, we didn’t just redo that part—we said, “Again! Start from the previous part” And started again until we had the muscle memory down. When I first learn a song, it’s so hard that I wonder if I can even do it at all, but I think you can always tell when you’re improving. I watched old videos and couldn’t bear it. (laughs) You know you’re improving when you’re not just ironing out details through the feedback you get from the coaches but when you can feel the difference yourself. The TWS members know that, so they’re very vocal about their ideas when it comes to our performances. I say things like, “Guys, the rhythm seems off. Why don’t we think about an easier way to get in sync?” Even if we have different opinions at first, we keep talking it over until we get everything right.

It’s amazing you’ve fostered that kind of atmosphere as a newly debuting group.

KYUNGMIN: I don’t think anyone finds it easy to voice their opinions. You’re responsible for the outcome of those ideas, and they might not even get used, so it comes with a lot of pressure. But I don’t think you can have good choreography without that sort of process. I think we’re sharing our opinions even more actively, now that we’ve seen the kind of improvements it brings.

There’s also that part in “BFF” where you get up and strike a pose on the table. It seems to capture the same free spirit you showcase in your FIRST TIME video.

KYUNGMIN: It actually wasn’t that hard—I love amusement park rides, so I had fun with it. The lyrics go, “riding a kickboard,” and I actually got up on the table, which made it more fun, I think. There’s a part in my personal trailer where I’m lying down on a slide. I don’t anymore, of course (laughs), but I used to love that stuff when I was little—hanging upside down on the swings, flipping over the bars, stuff like that. So it brought back a lot of memories. There’s also a part where I give the other members some gum, which I thought reflected how I’m always offering them food.

What’s it like being the youngest in the group? I’m pretty sure I heard someone in the TWS Prologue: “Oh Mymy : 7s” video saying, “KYUNGMIN, wake up!” (laughs)

KYUNGMIN: Yes, right. I oversleep a lot (laughs) so the others often have to wake me up. I share a room with HANJIN, and he never sleeps in, so he helps me get out of bed often, and YOUNGJAE looks out for me in general. Since I’m the youngest, they cut me some slack on mistakes and try to take care of me. I’m so lucky to be able to get so much love and attention from such amazing guys. YOUNGJAE was saying yesterday how I only pretend to be “on top” and that I’m actually quite well-behaved. I think I’m good at boosting their energy when we’re practicing, like saying, “Let’s get it!” And keeping things light.

It must not always be easy living together, and I’d assume there would be times when somebody gets upset. How do you address those situations when they come up?

KYUNGMIN: We can all read each other like a book now, so we just talk it out. If one of us seems like they’re having a hard time, we start up a conversation, or we all talk about it together. We have this thing we call our fireside time. We haven’t done it as much lately because of how busy we’ve been, but we used to hold it once a week. It’s an idea we came up with ourselves for working through any hard feelings anyone had in the practice studio or about any feedback the group got. We came up with so many options for the name, like “the campfire,” “the ball of yarn,” and—it’s really random—“the eraser,” as in, “erase any bad feelings.” (laughs) YOUNGJAE suggested “fireside,” which we felt sounded cozy and warm, so we said, “Let’s go with that!” There’s also one more rule: What’s said at the fireside stays at the fireside.

That sounds like a very healthy way to communicate. It’s clear how much you trust in each other—which reminds me of something you said in the TWS Prologue video: “We felt a sense of certainty.”

KYUNGMIN: That’s all thanks to how much we’ve practiced. We naturally got to know about ourselves and each other while practicing, and that gave us a sense of certainty that we could do well. But nobody knows my weaknesses better than me, so I wouldn’t actually say I’m 100% self-confident yet. But I am confident in the flair I have when I’m on stage, and in my ability to put the other members in a better mood by goofing around cheering them up.

In your profile for TWS: Think About Us! you mentioned wanting to come across to fans as “regular old Kyungmin Lee.”

KYUNGMIN: I don’t want to overthink things, but just do it—just be free to show off my vocals, dance skills, personal style, and what makes me uniquely charming. So if I can showcase the regular old Kyungmin Lee properly, that’d be great. Sometimes cute, sometimes taking the lead—there are many different sides to me. (laughs)

I’ll be cheering you on, KYUNGMIN the “unplugged boy.” (laughs)

KYUNGMIN: I already have so many fans cheering me on. I think if I enjoy what I do and keep showing improvement, that in itself will be a source of pride for them. I’m incredibly grateful and want to repay the love they give me. TWS means “24/7 WITH US.” I can’t wait to find happiness with the fans.