It was during the night of April 14th that SM Entertainment announced via an official post on the LYSN application, an important announcement concerning the future of NCT DREAM.
As a reminder, NCT DREAM is a unit of NCT. The concept of this unit, made up of 7 adolescents, is that once one of the members has reached the age of majority, that is to say 20 years of Korean age, he sees himself graduated. This system is called graduation. We know that to date only one member, MARK LEE, had been able to “graduate” last year. The effect of this graduation therefore allows the member in question to have access to other NCT units such as NCT 127 or NCT U.
The situation was rather vague regarding the maintenance of this system knowing that the next members to be graduated soon are 4 members born in 2000. Since the departure of MARK LEE, NCT DREAM were only made up of 6 members. But if the 4 members born in 2000, RENJUN, JENO, HAECHAN and JAEMIN were also to “graduate”, they would only remain 2 members in the DREAM unit which are CHENLE and JISUNG.
It was then that a wind of protest took place from the fans of NCT, called NCTZENS. The fans asked that SM Enteratinment abolish the graduation system in order to keep the 6 members remaining together knowing that NCT DREAM have been activated for 4 years now, together, and that according to the fans they would be much too difficult to see divide in this way. The movement claiming to keep the 6 members together was called NCT DREAM FIXED UNIT.
It is therefore on April 14th, 2020 that SM Entertainment finally decided on the uncertain future of NCT DREAM via an official press release.
In it, SM Entertainment first announced, to the great surprise of all, that NCT DREAM will release a new album called “RELOAD” this April 29th, 2020 and that it will be composed of 5 new songs. The 6 current members of NCT DREAM will participate in this comeback.
After the boys have finished their promotion time with this new album, the 7 members of NCT DREAM so with MARK LEE included, will be reformed into a unit having a system similar to NCT U, with the difference that there will be no more graduation system. Having a system similar to NCT U means that current members will be able to participate in the next comebacks according to a rotation system and not necessarily 7 fixed members. That is to say that with each comeback, there could be different combinations of members, so there is nothing fixed. Thanks to this new system, RENJUN, JENO, HAECHAN, JAEMIN, CHENLE and JISUNG will be able to join other units in the future in addition to the current one.
This announcement greatly surprised NCTZENS who were mostly delighted. Admittedly, it is not really question exactly what they asked for, that is to say the NCT DREAM FIXED UNIT, but the fact of seeing the former member MARK LEE alongside the 6 other boys all together, was the argument that made everyone agree. The proof is that ‘NCT DREAM‘ was the second most searched search on Twitter worldwide at the time of the announcement and that ‘Fixed 고정’ (Dream Fixed) was in fourth place in searches in South Korea followed by ‘4월29일 ‘(the date of the comeback therefore April 29) just behind in fifth.
One thing is certain, it is that NCT DREAM have proven a lot during the last 4 years and that we wish all members the best success for their future project and especially a very good comeback!
NCTZENS get ready because the pre-orders of the album have already started!
Journalist: Assia
Translator: Shawn
Source: SNS, LYSN
