Apparently Sponge Entertainment thought the Korean boy band well was drying up so they decided to announce a new boy band called “R-eal”. Hyphenating mid-word is such a typical Korean band name trend not to mention using an English word. So much for being original. Anyways like typical boy bands (*cough* Super Junior and their 13+ members), there are 5 band members: Yoon – 25, Jin Woong – 20, Chang Hyun – 20, Insuk – 20 and Sang Il – 18. It’s a step up from Shinee who has a bunch of jail bait members (14 – 18).

They haven’t even debuted yet their fan base is already at 10,000. They say it’s because they’re “r-eal”, whatever that means. Regardless they were featured on a Japanese radio program, a popular TBS show called “Trust in Ako” and were even in a spread for a Japanese music magazine “Ticketpia”.

They’ll release their 4 song album at the end of this month including their recent song “Make Love”. What happen to artists creating 10+ song albums? Also at the end of June, they plan to promote themselves in Korea and move on to Japan by 2009.

The band members are considerably hot which is more than I can say for the other Korean boy bands - uhh Suju-Happy curly afros only work on real pimps. They have also been praised for their “cute choreography” but what else do they have to offer? Oh and I’ve watched their choreography, I guess it’s cute if they were girls. You know there are so many boy bands but are any of them actually talented dancers, can they write their own songs or even dress themselves? Korean media entertainment needs to stop spitting out half-assed boy bands and actually give us something original, jeh su hamida.

Sang Il and Jin singing

R-eal performing “Make Love” credit: r-eal.net, r-ealcity.co.nr

R-eal Elle photoshoot