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K-Pop Group Breakdown

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Like any pop group, there are specific roles assigned to members. The majority of K-pop groups consist of five members. Recently, more have debuted with between four and six members and a rare few have eight or nine. Super Junior is the largest K-Pop group, sporting twelve. No matter how many members are in a group, here are the roles you should expect to find:

LEADER

The leader of the group is the most responsible and is meant to take care of their fellow member. Usually the leader is the oldest member of the group but in some cases there is a voting system within the group.

MAKNAE

The maknae is the youngest member of the group. They are slave to their hyungs/noonas and must do whatever they ask of them. It sounds scary, but the maknae actually gets a lot of love from the older members.

MAIN VOCAL

The main vocalist of the group can actually sing! They take the harder parts of the song and deliver the hard hitting notes that make songs memorable. They have the LEAD VOCAL there to do harmonies and take parts that they can not do.

VISUAL

Yes, this is actually a role. The visual of the group is not necessarily the most talented, but they have a great face and body and they are the face of the group. They do the most interviews and TV shows and you see them the most in the media.

MAIN RAPPER

This is the person who does most of the rapping in the songs and is not required to sing. The LEAD RAPPER

does background raps and supports the main.

MAIN DANCER

This member is usually the best dancer in the group and is in the middle of the stage during the dance sections when performing.

The list of roles goes on and on, but these are the main ones. It is common that members have multiple roles within their group, but it is easy to figure out once you’ve seen a couple of MVs and watched them on variety shows.