CLOSE YOUR EYES
Seven PROJECT 7 survivors, three nationalities, one three-year clock, and a debut year that moved like somebody forgot rookies were supposed to be nervous.
Meet the members
Quick file
Formed through: JTBC’s PROJECT 7
Finale: December 27, 2024
Debut: April 2, 2025
Management: UNCORE
Members: 7
Planned activity: 36 months
Fandom: CLOSER
What the name means
The official idea is music persuasive enough to work with your eyes closed, plus the ambition to become the group people imagine whenever they close them.
Nationalities: Korean, Chinese and Japanese.
Current era: OVEREXPOSED
In April 2026, CLOSE YOUR EYES returned with the digital single OVEREXPOSED. The title fits a group whose entire origin was public evaluation. Instead of staying inside the soft literary mood of “All My Poetry,” they kept pushing toward a sharper identity. In interviews, the members credited Minwook with helping the team settle into stronger internal habits while they tried to prove their fast rookie success was not one lucky launch.
Performance worth opening your eyes for
Read the full “SOB” performance review
PROJECT 7 did not build seven blank slates
PROJECT 7 began with 98 contestants and sold itself around assembly. Viewers were encouraged to consider combinations, not only individual rankings. The finale produced Minwook, Jingxiang, Yeojun, Sungmin, Seungho, Kenshin and Kyoungbae after a season watched and voted on globally.
The members did not arrive with equal experience. Minwook had already debuted in BAE173 and understood the less glamorous machinery behind idol work. Jingxiang had survived Boys Planet. Yeojun had spent years moving through trainee systems and competition programs. Kenshin held the PROJECT 7 signal-song center. Kyoungbae entered with unusually little formal training. Sungmin’s development happened in public. Seungho brought the compact, flexible skill set survival shows reward.
Who does what when the song starts
Minwook anchors
He carries leadership, rap weight and experience. His history gives the group somebody who understands both a stage and the anxiety of having a company plan change around him.
Jingxiang holds the center
He is visually immediate, but reducing him to a face misses his real job. He stabilizes formations and sells the transition between the group’s softer and harder concepts.
Yeojun organizes movement
His dance experience and sub-leader role make him one of the members who turns seven different training histories into one performance language.
Sungmin shows the growth curve
He entered with less polish than some teammates. That is not an insult. His improvement is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the group is still developing rather than merely redecorating.
Seungho connects lanes
Rap, vocals and performance all sit comfortably within his range. He can move between parts without making the handoff feel like a personnel change.
Kenshin supplies instinct
He was memorable before the debut lineup existed, then began contributing to choreography. That movement from performer to maker is worth watching.
Kyoungbae carries the vocal ceiling
The youngest member is also a primary vocal reference point. He gives the group room to choose songs that need more than atmosphere and facial expressions.
The first year moved absurdly fast
April 2025: ETERNALT arrived with “All My Poetry,” a literary R&B debut that refused the standard rookie method of shouting the group name over a siren. They won a music show only six days after debut.
July 2025: Snowy Summer made summer feel deliberately cold and ghostly. The release won three trophies and passed 200,000 first-day sales.
November 2025: blackout shifted into darker R&B and club production through “X” and “SOB.” The album sold more than half a million copies in less than a week, pushing cumulative sales beyond one million.
April 2026: OVEREXPOSED continued the move away from one fixed rookie mood. By then the question was no longer whether they could debut successfully. It was whether they could build a recognizable identity before the project clock ran out.
The music is building a story, not one costume
“All My Poetry” introduced a bookish, emotional vocabulary. “Snowy Summer” kept the softness but placed it inside a stranger seasonal frame. “X” and “SOB” pushed the group toward confidence, jealousy and club pressure. The switch is fast, yet it is not random. Each era tests whether CLOSE YOUR EYES can keep its vocal color while the production gets bolder.
Member participation has begun early. Minwook contributed lyrics. Kenshin worked on choreography. Interviews around blackout also framed different members as music-video protagonists, which gave the group a simple way to distribute narrative attention without pretending seven people can occupy the same center at once.
The three-year clock matters
CLOSE YOUR EYES is a project group. That changes how every milestone feels. A permanent group can spend two years discovering what it is. A 36-month group loses a large piece of its life doing that. UNCORE has promoted quickly, but speed creates its own risk. Too many releases can turn development into content delivery.
The members also came from different agencies and contractual situations. That made the pre-debut dispute more than gossip. It exposed the conflict built into project groups: the new team needs full commitment, while original agencies may still have plans for the same person. Fans do not need to choose a corporate hero. They need clear schedules, safe artists and agreements made before anybody starts filing missing-person reports.
Official music video library
This is the official-video shelf, not a fan-upload pile. Every embed comes from CLOSE YOUR EYES’ official artist channel, stays silent until the reader presses play, and opens the exact release instead of a recycled group image.
POSE
OVEREXPOSED · April 21, 2026
X
blackout · November 11, 2025
Snowy Summer
Official performance MV · July 27, 2025
All My Poetry
ETERNALT · April 2, 2025
Start here
- “All My Poetry” for the debut identity and the reason the group initially stood apart.
- “Snowy Summer” for the prettier, stranger middle ground.
- “X” for the harder edge and Minwook’s lyrical participation.
- “SOB” for the Imanbek collaboration and the moment their awards-stage ambition stopped being subtle.
- OVEREXPOSED for the 2026 version that knows rookie innocence has an expiration date.
Tea with receipts
The pre-debut contract fight: UNCORE, PocketDol Studio, dual-activity claims and the missing-person report that made everybody stare at the group name differently.
The Jang Yeojun rumor cycle: vaping accusations, cryptic favoritism messages and UNCORE’s March 2026 legal warning.
Receipts rule: the contract dispute involved public company statements. The Yeojun story contains allegations and fan interpretation. They are not the same evidence level, and the tea posts label that difference.
Official links
Receipts and further reading
YouTube video tracker
Live tracking history for verified CLOSE YOUR EYES group uploads. The silent official-video shelf remains above; these records supply current total views and daily movement.