Four players, one coach: the story of LNGSHOT

Photo courtesy of MORE VISION

A trainee's solo song, an email sent when there were no auditions, a rapper found on a TV show and a boy with a voice that cannot be taught. Before they play in London on 26 October, read all about the story of LNGSHOT and the man who built a group around them.

Before LNGSHOT had a name, they had a song that belonged to only one of them.

Woojin had been given it as a solo track, something to perform at one of the monthly evaluations that measure out a trainee's life. He played it for Jay Park. "As soon as he heard it he said the song was lit, and that we should make it a group song," Woojin told reporters at the group's debut showcase in January. It became the first thing the four ever recorded together. "You could almost say LNGSHOT started because of this song."

The song was Moonwalkin', and it became their debut single. Woojin explained why the title fit. A moonwalk looks like a step forward, he said, but it is really travelling backwards, and that is what it feels like to be a trainee: all that effort, set against the uncertainty of whether you will ever debut at all.

On 26 October, nine months after that debut, Ohyul, Ryul, Woojin and Louis play London for the first time, joining Jay Park on his Serenades & Body Rolls world tour at OVO Arena Wembley. It is the 22nd city on the first international journey of their lives.

"I just went by feel"

Jay Park has spent nearly two decades as a singer, rapper and founder of labels, AOMG and H1GHR MUSIC among them, before MORE VISION. LNGSHOT is the first idol group he has ever made, and at the showcase he admitted he had no blueprint. "Honestly, I just went by feel," he said. "I'd never produced an idol."

What he described sounded less like casting than gathering. "Rather than deciding I'm going to make this kind of idol and squeezing the members into it, LNGSHOT was built from friends who share my mindset, friends I can give my time, my emotions, everything to," he said. He was overjoyed, he added, to have found "amazing friends I can pour my entire heart and soul into, who honestly feel just like family to me."

Asked why a hip-hop label owner would make an idol group at all, he answered with one word first. People. "I have always found a deep sense of meaning in people," he said. He had spent his career taking on challenges others doubted, breaking through ceilings, and rather than staying the frontman forever, "I wanted to hand it all down to friends who truly deserve it."

The first trainee

Ohyul was there before anyone. He had wanted to be a pilot until 2018, when, in his last year of primary school, he heard Ed Sheeran's album ÷. "It clicked straight away," he said. "When I sing, I'm simply happy." He trained first at KOZ Entertainment and then became MORE VISION's very first trainee, which makes him the one member who has been with the label since it had nothing to show anyone.

Jay Park's showcase portrait of him was affectionate and exact: clean-cut, an attractive vocal tone, a guitarist. The swaggering concepts of Saucin' and Moonwalkin' took more work for him than for the others, Park said, "and you can clearly see that effort, that hunger." He is also, in Park's account, the athlete of the group.

On a snowy magazine shoot before debut, while the others hummed and danced in the falling snow, he was the one greeting the crew politely and looking after the staff. "I'm the youngest at home," he said, "but leading the team made me want to become someone with conviction." Before debut, he named one dream: a solo concert, built entirely from songs that are unmistakably theirs.

Photo courtesy of MORE VISION

Found on Show Me the Money

Ryul was found mid-audition. "We cast him from Show Me the Money," Park said at the showcase; it was the eleventh season of Mnet's rap competition. Ryul had decided to rap at 15, raised on old-school records like Nas and Run-DMC, and Park says he could already rap remarkably well at that age.

What Park asked of him was weight. "I always asked for more sincerity, more gravity," he said. "I told him to dig deep into hip-hop, to study the classic, timeless things." Ryul did. "He studied hard, worked on all kinds of things and became so cool. Other rappers in the hip-hop scene praised him a lot." Then, with the bluntness of a proud parent: "He couldn't dance before. Now he dances well."

The self-written profile Ryul gave Esquire Korea reads like a page from a school notebook. Childhood dream: doctor. Favourite anime: Naruto. Role model: A$AP Rocky. Favourite place: my room. Motto: push it to the end. His favourite nicknames, by his own choice, are "baby earth potato" (an affectionate nickname for someone with tan skin, a round face, or a cute, unpolished charm) and "tangerine". Before his first magazine shoot he pored over old fashion spreads and practised a serious face in the mirror, "because I usually smile a lot in photos."

Photo courtesy of MORE VISION

"My last chance"

Woojin took the longest road. He was scouted often as a child because, as he puts it, "I was really good-looking back then," and he trained at Big Hit Music. In all, he spent six years as a trainee, starting at 13.

When he decided to try MORE VISION, the label was not holding auditions. He sent a self-introduction video through Naver Mail anyway. "I was truly earnest," he said. Park still remembers him calling it his last chance.

The weight of those years is in everything he says about debut. "It was really hard for a long time," he wrote in a self-introduction, "but just like the moment my debut was confirmed, I believe the day will come when it shines." Asked how he felt in the weeks before debut, he reached for heat. "I don't know whether to call it passion or anger, something boiling in my chest," he said. "Not rebellion against the CEO or the company," he added, laughing, "but a positive fury at the world: let us show you how cool our music can be. For six years I dreamed of debuting every single day."

He wanted to be a painter as a child and still draws: the cover art for LNGSHOT's first mixtape is his. Six years of experience made him the group's informal adviser, which earned him the nickname "unofficial director". Park put it more simply. "He's always curious," he said. "Music has no right answers, but he approaches it like a student." And when Woojin dances, Park said, he dances with feel, "and feel is understanding. His understanding is quite high."

Photo courtesy of MORE VISION

"Just an angel"

Louis arrived last and moved fastest. Born in 2010, he trained for about a year and a half, the shortest stint in the group. He started piano at six, tried guitar, and taught himself to make beats from YouTube videos. Most of his inspiration, he said, he finds on his own.

When Park reached the youngest member at the showcase, he did not hesitate. "Louis is just an angel. He has that natural tone," he said. "Lots of people compare him to Justin Bieber, but that's not something you can learn however much you practise."

There was a stretch when the body could not keep up with the voice. Louis grew from 170cm to 186cm in his first year at the company. Park remembered it tenderly. "It wasn't that he couldn't dance…" he said. "He grew so suddenly that he didn't know how to handle his own body." Now, Park said, he dances with the rest of them.

He calls himself the most introverted member of a group of introverts. "I'm the shyest of all of us, and I take a long time to warm up to people," he said. "But now I'm trying to express myself a lot more." Ryul backed him up: "Louis really does express himself so much more now." It was Louis, a lifelong basketball fan, who found the deepest meaning in the name Park chose for them. "I've loved basketball since I was little, so a name that means a shot that goes in from an impossible situation feels special," he said. "My position was shooting guard." And the group? "We have an underdog feel."

Photo courtesy of MORE VISION

Two of them in a room

Every member is credited as a writer on the debut EP, SHOT CALLERS. The clearest picture of how that works comes from a song called Never Let Go.

Woojin had a sketch of his own called I Want to Let Go. He played it for Louis, who asked to build something from it with him. "So the two of us sat in a room, found beats and made the hook," Woojin said. The company liked it enough to bring in a topliner. Woojin is modest about its chances. "Honestly, I don't think it'll be as popular as the others," he said. "But it's a song where the members came together musically, and it has a personal story, so I'll be attached to it for a long time." His bandmates disagree with the first part. Asked in their Esquire Korea profiles to name the song they were proudest of, Ohyul and Louis both wrote the same title: Never Let Go.

Ryul described the division of labour: the fundamentals of hip-hop from him, trendy and unusual ideas from Woojin, R&B and pop from Ohyul, "and Louis is just so talented that any genre looks good on him." Louis drew the team in basketball terms. Ohyul plays centre, he said, because he holds everyone together. Ryul is the small forward, flashy and fearless in any situation. Woojin is the point guard who calls the plays. Louis often wears a T-shirt printed with Woojin's mixtape drawing.

Nine months, four records

The releases came quickly. The pre-debut 4SHOBOIZ MIXTAPE and the single Saucin' arrived at the end of 2025, and in December, weeks before their official debut, the four performed both at the Melon Music Awards at Seoul's Gocheok Sky Dome, high-fiving Park on the way in. SHOT CALLERS followed on 13 January. IZM, one of Korea's most respected music-criticism sites, ended its review by calling the record a new face's three-point shot, aimed exactly where the game was most sensitive.

In March came Training Day, five songs recorded while the four were still trainees: a solo track for each member, Summer Eyes for Ohyul, For Us for Ryul, Boo Thang for Woojin and Good Girls for Louis, closed by a group song, Vanilla Days. In May they made 4SHOBOIZ Vol. 2: 4SHOVILLE with Jay Park himself, an eight-track mixtape with all four members credited as writers alongside him.

The numbers followed: 12 on Melon's Hot 100 and more than 300 million Spotify streams within five months. So did the trophies. At their showcase in January the group had named a single goal for the year: a rookie award. On 25 July, at the KM Chart Awards in Seoul, they won New Artist, along with the Global Rising Star award and a fan-voted prize. In September, Melon named them in the first line-up for this year's Melon Music Awards on 14 and 15 November, which sends them back to Gocheok Sky Dome, the stage they first stood on before they had officially debuted.

Park, at the showcase, had described what lies underneath all of it. "These kids are romantic, very pure," he said. "They love rapping, dancing, singing and making music, and they like each other."

The Father of LNGSHOT

In Korea, Jay Park has picked up a nickname: "Long-beoji," a blend of LNGSHOT and the Korean word for father, "abeoji". The members talk about him in a way that makes the title feel entirely earned.

Ryul passed on the advice Park gave them at the start. "It's only the beginning, so always stay humble and never forget why you started." Woojin was plainer still. "All four of us came to MORE VISION only because of the CEO," he said at the showcase, "so we want to become timeless idols like him." His hope for the year was to hear people say: "Jay Park's kids really are different."

Louis said Park dotes on him as the youngest, and often asks him to say something in French on camera. Asked to define the quality the group chases, Louis chose the word Park and the older members use most: cool. "Bold and free on stage, humble and considerate off it," he said. "Like the CEO." Then, when the interviewer laughed at the shout-out: "I mean it. There's so much to learn from him." Ohyul, who lists running as his hobby, had an update. "These days I run hard with the CEO too."

Park is protective in return. When some fans asked in June whether a first-year group should spend two months on his tour, he said the schedule lets LNGSHOT finish two official EPs, that every decision is made together with the members, and that a run like this is a rare privilege so early in a career. Next year, he wrote, they would play shows twice the size of his, without him. The next chapter already has a date. On 11 October, LNGSHOT announced a new EP, S.W.I.S.H., short for Swag With Integrity Shapes History, out on 10 November at 6pm Korea time, 9am in London. Its trailer arrived two weeks before Wembley.

At the showcase, someone asked the leader what the group was aiming for. Ohyul would not name a target. "If we keep working hard together, the goals will come naturally," he said. "And if we keep at it, the shot will go in."

Quotes are drawn from LNGSHOT's interviews with Harper's Bazaar Korea, Esquire Korea and Xportsnews, and from their debut showcase as reported by CBS NoCut News. All translations are Zutter's.

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