Why is coed K-pop group KARD ending its journey?
The group's mixed lineup didnt serve its favor when K-pop is driven by fandom
Coed K-pop group KARD / Courtesy of DSP Media
KARD, one of the few coed groups in the current K-pop landscape, will end its 10-year run the way it spent most of it — as an exception.
The quartet filled venues across Europe and the Americas for years, yet never converted that momentum into comparable recognition at home. The first full-length album of its career, out July 28, will also be its last.
DSP Media announced Monday that the group will disband after releasing "Where To Now? (Part.2): NOWHERE" and wrapping a final world tour, closing a journey that began with the pre-debut single "Oh NaNa" in December 2016.
"After careful discussions with all four members, we have agreed to conclude KARD's journey following these activities," the agency said, asking fans to support BM, J.Seph, Somin and Jiwoo as they move on to individual careers.
That a group could tour the world for a decade before releasing a full-length album says much about how KARD operated, and about the market that barely made room for it.
Modern K-pop runs on fandom. Physical album sales, music show votes and concert revenue are driven by "superfans," the deeply engaged listeners HYBE Labels Chairman Bang Si-hyuk has credited with powering the genre's global growth, whose devotion is fueled in part by the parasocial intimacy idols cultivate. A lineup of two men and two women complicates that fantasy by design.
Coed K-pop acts like Cool, Koyote and S#arp were hitmakers in the 1990s and early 2000s, when television exposure and singalong choruses decided success. But as the industry reorganized around fandom economics in the 2010s, the format slowly disappeared.
When KARD debuted, it was the first major coed idol group in roughly seven years.
Members of coed K-pop quartet KARD pose with the audience during their "WILD KARD" tour in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2019. Captured from KARD's X account
Rather than fight that structure, KARD rerouted around it.
Its three pre-debut singles each cracked the top five of Billboard's World Digital Song Sales chart, powered by a reggaeton and moombahton sound that K-pop's domestic hit machine had little use for, but Latin American listeners embraced instantly.
The group toured 11 cities across North and South America before it had officially debuted in Korea. Its debut EP "Hola Hola" reached No. 3 on Billboard's World Albums chart in 2017, and Billboard would later call KARD one of the most successful coed K-pop acts to ever exist.
The mixed lineup, a liability at home, became the group's signature abroad. Paired choreography between the members, flirtatious in a way most idol groups avoid, read as confident rather than risque in markets raised on Latin pop. The fandom, Hidden KARD, grew largest in Latin America; as recently as January 2025, the group sold out its Puerto Rico concert with crowds singing along in Korean.
The model had costs. J.Seph's mandatory military service froze group activities for 22 months from 2020, a structural hazard coed groups absorb unevenly. Local promotion stayed thin, and the group's Korean chart presence never matched its passport stamps.
From left, BM, Somin, Jiwoo and J.Seph, members of coed K-pop band KARD, pose in Denver, Colo., during the 2022 "WILD KARD" tour. Captured from KARD's X account
The irony is that KARD exits just as the market it bet on is opening.
AllDay Project, entertainment label The Black Label's five-member coed group, debuted in June 2025 and did what no mixed-gender act had done in the fandom era — it topped local charts within days and took a music show trophy in just 10 days after debut.
KARD, asked about the newcomers last year during a roundtable interview with Korean press, said it felt no rivalry. Another coed team debuting was "a good sign," the members had said, adding that the world had changed a great deal from years ago.
A major reason for this change was because KARD spent a decade proving a coed K-pop group could sustain a global career at all. The album series that closes its discography posed a question, "Where to now?" and answers it with "NOWHERE." For the group, that is literally true.
For the format it kept alive through K-pop's least hospitable decade, the answer looks more open than it has in 20 years.