CLOSE YOUR EYES

CLOSE YOUR EYES group profile

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

Jeon Minwook

Leader · rapper · vocalist
BAE173 veteran, lyric contributor and the steady head in a fast-moving project group.

Ma Jingxiang

Center · performer
PROJECT 7’s first-place finisher and the Chinese member who gives formations scale.

Jang Yeojun

Dancer · vocalist · MC
Three survival programs, years of trainee history and a debut that finally stayed.

Kim Sungmin

Vocalist · visual
A modeling background and the lineup’s clearest public performance-growth curve.

Song Seungho

Rapper · vocalist
The bridge between rhythmic sections, melodic phrases and the full-group formation.

Sakurada Kenshin

Vocalist · rapper · performer
Japanese signal-song center with instinctive stage energy and choreography promise.

Seo Kyoungbae

Vocalist · youngest
A largely self-taught start turned into one of the group’s central vocal stories.

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

Open the complete official CLOSE YOUR EYES video channel ↗

Start here

1. “All My Poetry” for the debut identity and the reason the group initially stood apart.
2. “Snowy Summer” for the prettier, stranger middle ground.
3. “X” for the harder edge and Minwook’s lyrical participation.
4. “SOB” for the Imanbek collaboration and the moment their awards-stage ambition stopped being subtle.
5. 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

• Korea JoongAng Daily: debut showcase and the literary concept
• The Korea Times: “Snowy Summer” interview
• Korea JoongAng Daily: the move from bookish to bold
• Rolling Stone Korea: member roles in blackout, writing and choreography
• StarNews: 2026 OVEREXPOSED interview
• Official Japanese profile

Return to Top ↑

August 2026 checkpoint: the next comeback is announced, not released

UNCORE announced on August 10, 2026 that CLOSE YOUR EYES was preparing a new album with a late-September comeback as the target. That makes “POSE,” released in April, the latest completed release as of August 27. The September project belongs on the watchlist, but this profile will not invent an album title, concept or track list before the company publishes one.

The timing matters. A late-September return would arrive roughly five months after “POSE” and continue a schedule that has already moved through three 2025 EPs, a 2026 single, touring and international festival dates. The group is no longer proving it can launch. It is deciding which parts of the literary debut, the colder summer mood and the darker blackout confidence belong to a recognizable long-term identity.

Exact official-video tracker

The previous tracker had the five titles shifted onto the wrong links. These are the corrected official IDs:

• All My PoetryDaily+1.7KTotal views25.3M — 7dVwqwzavgg
• Snowy SummerDaily+143Total views121.1K — Ev-8EXy9OFQ
• XDaily+3.4KTotal views31.4M — D5ljl9pNAmc
• SOB — 2025 KGMA Mega Crew performanceDaily+317Total views1.4M — uf_5eKmzXYk
• POSEDaily+1.3KTotal views3.1M — O8dR2eWKq8A

The exact “SOB” performance is connected to the Iconic by Mistake deep dive. Future Reacts should be reconciled by exact video ID rather than title similarity.

How to follow CLOSE YOUR EYES from outside Korea without losing the plot

The international problem is not that CLOSE YOUR EYES has no promotion. It is that the promotion trail is split. Korean comeback notices, Weverse posts, music-show stages, Japanese fan-club updates, international tour announcements and member messages do not always arrive in one language or one place. A fan can know a song exists and still miss the schedule that explains when it was released, which upload is official, or whether a clip is a music video, performance film, awards stage or dance practice.

Start with the official CLOSE YOUR EYES YouTube channel for released video, Weverse and the group’s official Korean accounts for notices, and the Japanese fan-club site for Japan-specific dates. Use translated entertainment coverage to bridge the language gap, then follow its link back to the agency statement when the subject is health, contracts or a schedule change. Fan translators are often faster than publications, but speed does not turn a screenshot into a complete source.

CVM Sekai’s job is to keep the trail readable. The hub records the seven canonical member pages, each release chapter, the exact official-video IDs and the React that belongs to a specific upload. That structure matters because “SOB MV,” “SOB performance” and “SOB KGMA mega crew” are related phrases but not interchangeable videos. International discoverability improves when the site names the object precisely instead of tossing every clip into one glittery pile.

The international calendar already exists

CLOSE YOUR EYES began touring outside Korea during its first year, including Japanese fan meetings and stops elsewhere in Asia. The first Beyond Your Eyes tour expanded that footprint in 2026, with dates across Asia and North America announced around the group’s growing catalog. The important editorial point is not to copy every date forever. It is to record the shift from survival-show project to a group building audiences in several markets at once.

That global movement also changes what the member profiles need. Ma Jingxiang’s Chinese background and Kenshin’s Japanese identity should connect to real language and market activity, not decorative nationality labels. Minwook and Yeojun’s broadcast work, Seungho’s communication role, Kyoungbae’s vocal development and Sungmin’s performance growth become easier to judge when fans can see full concerts and official stages rather than only Korean music-show close-ups.

Release map: what each era contributes

• ETERNALT (April 2025): the literary debut, “All My Poetry,” and the soft vocal identity that separated the group from louder survival-show launches.
• Snowy Summer (July 2025): seasonal contradiction, brighter surfaces and proof the debut mood could stretch without disappearing.
• blackout (November 2025): “X,” “SOB,” heavier R&B/club pressure and the first decisive move away from one fixed rookie image.
• “POSE” (April 2026): a digital-single checkpoint that treated performance confidence as the subject instead of pretending the group was still brand new.
• Late-September 2026 target: announced by UNCORE, but still a planned comeback as of August 27; title, format and track list remain pending official confirmation.

What should happen when the September comeback lands

The official upload should be added to the hub tracker with its exact video ID, release date and format. Every member profile should receive only the evidence that belongs to that member: credited writing, choreography, a distinctive performance responsibility, a health-status change or a documented interview statement. If RaeRae writes an Iconic by Mistake React, its featured image, hero image, landing card, Open Graph image and Twitter image must all use one unique local canonical attachment.

That workflow keeps the ecosystem from becoming eight copies of a press release. The group hub explains the release as group history. Member pages explain individual contribution. The React explains what the music video or performance actually did. Tea and rants remain optional and require a real editorial question, not a manufactured scandal because the content calendar looked lonely.

RaeRae’s group verdict

They are not under-promoted; they are internationally fragmented. CLOSE YOUR EYES has music, stages, travel and a surprisingly fast catalog. The fan problem is following the official thread across markets. The solution is not louder hype. It is cleaner links, consistent English-language context, exact video labeling and a site that remembers which member did what after the teaser cycle ends.

The group’s next test is identity. Three mini albums and one digital single already proved they can move quickly. The late-September comeback needs to prove those moves belong to the same act. If the music connects the literary tenderness of “All My Poetry” with the confidence of “X,” “SOB” and “POSE,” the project clock will feel less like a countdown and more like a concentrated career.