A mailed mixtape led to Ateez, the K-pop band built around a pirate treasure hunt
Before Ateez existed, Kim Hongjoong sent KQ Entertainment a letter and a sample mixtape asking to train there. He became the company's first official trainee and spent six months as its only one. That lone applicant went on to lead an eight-member group that has sold over eleven million physical albums.
The lineup settled as Hongjoong, Seonghwa, Yunho, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung and Jongho. Four of them tested themselves on the survival show Mix Nine in late 2017, and on May 18, 2018 a YouTube dance video showed all eight together for the first time. A reality series, Code Name Is Ateez, premiered on Mnet that July 20. The name stands for A TEEnager Z, meaning everything about being a teenager from start to finish.
Their debut EP, Treasure EP.1: All to Zero, arrived on October 24, 2018 with the singles Pirate King and Treasure, and sold 23,644 copies that year. The Treasure concept ran through a string of releases. In 2019 the group toured five US cities and ten European ones, including London, Lisbon and Warsaw, with shows reportedly selling out. Fans voted Wave as a lead single, which won the band its first music show prize on M Countdown on June 20. Their first studio album, released on October 8, became their first to top the weekly Gaon chart.
The pandemic halted their second world tour after two Seoul dates in February 2020, so they switched to a free online concert on May 30 that drew over 1.4 million viewers. Their Fever series followed, and a cover of Turbo's The Black Cat Nero on Immortal Songs made them the first fourth-generation group to win that program. Another win in February 2021 with Rain's It's Raining left them the only K-pop boy group with multiple victories there. An official Twitter survey ranked them the fifth most tweeted-about musicians in America in 2020, after BTS, Kanye West, Beyoncé and Drake.
Korea's culture ministry called them Next Generation Leaders in 2020, and in 2025 they received a Prime Minister's Commendation. By June 2026 their catalogue ran to fourteen Korean EPs and two Korean studio albums, plus three studio albums in Japanese.
Source: Ateez
