ZEROBASEONE’s Seok Matthew and Park Gunwook take over GQ Korea’s November 2026 pictorial. It reads like a manifesto in black wool and leather-based.
The body holds for precisely one breath. Each palms are clamped over the mouth, the eyes minimize sideways, and a frame is folded into black wool like a secret that’s about to get out.
Turn to the opposite body. It’s monochrome, with a leather-based jacket as slick as rainy asphalt and a chin resting on knuckles. A plaid shawl is the one factor out of line, and the grain is thick sufficient to listen to.
Two pictures, one pulse. That is ZEROBASEONE’s Matthew and Gunwook in GQ Korea’s November 2026 pictorial. What hits first isn’t a grin or a pose. It’s the quiet, and it’s on function.
The Sound of a Lower-Off
Get started with the identify. The duo’s unit, ZEROBASEONE EMP, is known as for Electro Magnetic Pulse, the blast that silences each and every surrounding sound and leaves an area the place best their track exists. The acronym additionally stands for “Additional MTT PGW,” a nod to their initials and to going past the peculiar.
That’s a thesis commentary. In an period of maximalist idol content material, they selected subtraction.
Their first unlock, EMP Mixtape Vol.1: We the Additional, dropped on September 21 with 4 tracks (EMP, Pina C, Woofer and For your rain), all written, composed and produced by way of Matthew and Gunwook themselves. A hip-hop unit born within a nine-member pop device was once an aspect venture. Right here it’s a commentary of authorship.
0, Once more
The 2023 starting place tale is definitely documented. ZEROBASEONE got here out of Boys Planet and bought 1.24 million copies of its debut EP on day one, the primary K-pop staff to change into a million-seller on its debut day. Information like that in most cases freeze a gaggle in amber.
What issues now’s the pivot. In February, Matthew and Gunwook signed unique contracts with WAKEONE after consulting their earlier companies, framing it as a contemporary get started in a extra solid atmosphere. Matthew had come from MNH Leisure and Gunwook from Jellyfish Leisure.
GQ Korea’s November factor has a reputation for this bankruptcy. The mag runs a characteristic titled “FROM ZERO,” about Matthew and Gunwook’s track beginning over from 0, within a subject themed round being your self and staying unbothered.
0 was once the crowd’s starting place fable. Now it’s an artistic place: strip it again, personal the sign.
Taste as an Argument
Have a look at what the GQ pictorial refuses to do. There’s no glitter and no costume-party idea. The cloth cabinet argues as an alternative.
Within the squatting body, the silhouette is outsized black, with trousers that pool like ink round shiny cut-out footwear.
A burgundy turtleneck sits on the collar, with a light blue cuff and a white sleeve peeking out as small, planned interruptions. Not anything is loud, and the whole lot is positioned.
The monochrome body is going the wrong way. Leather-based and knit are stacked, the headscarf tangles, and the movie grain makes it really feel like a photograph present in a drawer from a long run that hasn’t came about but.
That is the purpose of the shoot. The garments, the pose and the sound are one language, and the pictorial wears the similar restraint the mixtape hears. Quiet is the classy, and it’s assured sufficient no longer to provide an explanation for itself.
Written, Composed, Produced
The idol trade runs on an outdated assumption, that the artist is the face and the gadget is the mind. EMP quietly reverses it.
Gunwook had already proven the intuition, incomes reward for “Customise,” a monitor he composed himself on ZEROBASEONE’s 6th mini-album Ascend-. Matthew, in step with the similar document, has saved development his songwriting and composition talents within the studio.
Put the 2 in combination and also you get what the “further” within the identify guarantees, a unit the place the folks within the shot also are those in the back of the board. Even the discharge rollout suits. A “Pina C” caricature movie landed on YouTube on the similar second because the mixtape, so the sound, the visible and the identification all arrived in combination.
That’s the actual shift. It isn’t a brand new glance. It’s a brand new chain of custody for the glance.
The Warmth at the Timeline
Fandom doesn’t follow moments like this. It mobilizes round them. ZEROSE, the ZB1 fandom, treats a unit announcement like a drop. A symbol disclose turns into a interpreting consultation, a tracklist turns into a map, and a unmarried GQ body turns into a screenshot, an edit and a wallpaper throughout the hour.
The language of the fandom has modified, too. The outdated query used to be when’s the comeback? The brand new one is nearer to what are they development? Folks aren’t best asking to peer their favorites. They’re asking to look at them make choices.
That is the place idol tradition, vogue techniques and virtual fandom prevent being separate industries. {A magazine} pictorial is a way object, a streaming-era advertising beat and a fan-edit template suddenly.
A couple of artists who regulate the sound and the picture can talk to all 3 audiences in the similar breath.
The Larger Image
K-pop’s world growth has run, for a decade, on scale: larger levels, larger numbers, larger ideas. The following section might run on authorship. Because the style’s 5th technology matures, audiences out of the country aren’t best eating the choreography and the visuals. They wish to know who wrote the track, who selected the jacket and who determined to move quiet.
Matthew and Gunwook land squarely in that dialog. They sit down within a significant staff’s infrastructure and a world fashion-media pipeline, and so they use each to mention one thing explicit and self-made.
Is that “the defining power” of K-pop’s evolution? Make the case your self, however the items are onerous to forget about: a record-setting staff, a self-produced unit, an company reset and a top class mag hanging them on the middle of its factor. It’s one of the vital clearest indicators but that the idol is turning into an artist-producer-stylist hybrid, and that this model travels.
What Comes After 0
The trajectory is already transferring. A follow-up virtual unmarried from the duo is deliberate for November, because of this the heartbeat has a 2d beat at the means. otakukart
Wait for 3 issues. First, whether or not EMP’s sound helps to keep evolving or settles right into a signature. 2nd, how the unit’s visible language, the black, the grain and the restraint, spreads into the crowd’s wider identification. 3rd, whether or not different idols learn this as a template and get started slicing their very own sign out of the noise.
Again within the squatting body, the eyes are nonetheless slicing sideways, nonetheless half-daring you to persist with. Matthew and Gunwook have by no means appeared extra like they know precisely the place they’re going.
You must most probably stay up.
At the back of the Body: The GQ Ingenious Staff
We discovered no revealed interviews, bios or behind-the-scenes accounts for this group, so we haven’t invented any. Here’s what’s verifiable:
- Characteristic Editor @ GQ Korea, Shin Ki-ho (신기호): shapes the tale in print. The problem’s “FROM ZERO” characteristic frames the track as a restart.
- Photographer, Lee Tae-kwang (@leeetaekwang): the monochrome body is all grain and distinction, and the colour body makes use of a steel-blue gradient and a low, cropped perspective that flattens the ground right into a level.
- Stylist, Lim Jin (@58jin): constructed the black-on-black structure. The burgundy collar, light blue cuff and white sleeve are the few intentional breaks.
- Hair, Lee Younger-jae (@yonnlee_): the cushy, wind-caught fringe in a single body and the pointy, fairly lifted crown within the different.
- Makeup, Kim Min-ji (@m_j108): pores and skin saved luminous and naked in opposition to the darkish cloth cabinet.
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Credit & Rights
Revealed by way of Kpoppie Mag, Speed Leisure Inc. Restricted (Japan / New Zealand).
Hero symbol AI-adjusted for side ratio and internet formatting best.
Editorial Attribution: All featured pull quotes are authentic thematic statement created by way of Kpoppie Mag to replicate the classy route of the discharge.
GQ Korea Credit & Rights: Characteristic Editor 신기호 (Shin Ki-ho) · Photographer 이태광 (Lee Tae-kwang) @leeetaekwang · Stylist 임진 (Lim Jin) @58jin · Hair 이영재 (Lee Younger-jae) @yonnlee_ · Makeup 김민지 (Kim Min-ji) @m_j108
Unique pictures © GQ Korea (Doosan Mag) / WAKEONE. All rights stay with their respective house owners.
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