Jungwon

Who is Jungwon?

Jungwon is the leader of ENHYPEN, the six-member group formed on Mnet’s I-LAND. BELIFT LAB’s official profile gives his birth date as 9 February 2004 and the group’s debut date as 30 November 2020. TenAsia, reporting on the media conference for the eighth mini album on 20 August 2026, introduced him as the leader.

From taekwondo to dance

Jungwon started in sport. In its DARK BLOOD comeback interview on 30 May 2023, Weverse Magazine described the taekwondo kick as his speciality. He said in that interview that when he trained in taekwondo he had wanted to join the demonstration team K-Tigers. When he trained at an action school for a concept trailer, the teacher turned out to have come from that team, and he was able to ask the questions he had always had.

He explained his choice of the trainee path against sport, too. “As an athlete I felt my level only rose a little even when I put a lot in, but as a trainee my level shot up as much as I practised, and that was so much fun that I started,” he told the same magazine on 20 November 2024.

Expression laid on the basics

On dance he starts from the basics. “I think the basics are important and I tend to lay expression on top of them,” Jungwon said in 2023, adding that he had practised the basics a great deal as a trainee. In October 2022 he posted a cover of choreography by the dancer Alexander Chung, whom he had admired since his trainee days at BELIFT LAB; he had taken a few lessons from him after the ‘Blessed-Cursed’ promotions, and it had felt like going back to those days.

The same interview tells how Ni-Ki took part in making the choreography for ‘Bite Me’, the title track of DARK BLOOD. Jungwon said it held many moves he had never met, so he learned a lot by watching Ni-Ki and practised hard on his own. Of the line he sings as he steps forward when the intro ends, he said: “I absolutely wanted it to look cool at first sight.”

A wider voice

His voice has widened from album to album. Jungwon said he had hardly ever sung low parts at the start, but from around the ‘Future Perfect’ promotions he had been working on different tones, such as the low notes of ‘TFW (That Feeling When)’. On ‘Fate’, the opening track of DARK BLOOD, he voiced a long Korean narration. “Keeping the pronunciation clear while putting emotion into it was a little difficult,” he said; to bring out the rise in the story he read it imagining the situation as his own, and he recorded it relaxed, with all the studio lights off.

A leader who shapes the stage

His ideas go into the concerts too. During the ‘FATE PLUS’ tour Jungwon asked that, if ‘Future Perfect (Pass the MIC)’ were in the next concert, he could use a hand mic, and on the 2024 world tour ‘WALK THE LINE’ the song became one of the set list’s focal points, he said. A hand mic lets gesture and expression come more naturally, was his reason.

His idea of the leader’s role has changed as well. “I used to think, ‘I’m the leader, so if we go with my opinion I have to take responsibility,’ but these days, if someone has a better idea, I naturally trust them with that role,” he said. The motto he made after debut, “if you do it, it works”, still stands, he said.

Before the first album as six

At the media conference for the eighth mini album THE SIN : BLISS, held at the Mondrian hotel in Yongsan, Seoul, on 20 August 2026, Jungwon explained how the first album as six was prepared. “It’s always the same. Whatever the situation, we put the stage and the performance first,” he said, adding that the tour that began with the Seoul concerts in May and carried on through South and North America and Busan had given them a lot of energy from ENGENE. Of the recording he said: “Rather than thinking about the number of members, we thought about how to make the result better.”

Presenting the album as a concept album continuing from the previous one, which would feel like watching a musical if heard in order from the first track, was also his part. Asked about the team’s keyword, he answered: “Even before the rebranding, ENHYPEN had the keyword ‘connection’,” and said he wanted to make connections not only through music and the stage but through activities such as blood donation. The group had run a blood donation campaign with the Korean Red Cross that January, and its results are on the ENHYPEN hub.

What to watch

When ‘Bloody Paradise’ won on SBS Inkigayo on 30 August, completing all five music shows, Jungwon said: “Honestly, I really didn’t think we’d come first today. Thank you. Today is our last show, and thank you for giving us such a good present, ENGENE.” Those six trophies are set out in the story on the six music-show wins, and ‘Fate’, the track he narrated, is on the DARK BLOOD release page.