Most of the comments from Korean netizens think that transferring the center position to a more famous member is a reasonable decision.
In order to prepare for the comeback after more than 1 year of absence, NCT 127 is, in turn, releasing a lot of “teasing” products for the new album called “STICKER”. Starting from the end of August, the SM boygroup revealed a series of individual teaser photos, track videos for B-side songs, along with group teasers for the upcoming album.
However, the most recently released images have sparked a debate around the question of whether NCT 127 has changed the center. Since his debut until now, Taeyong is still known as the center of NCT 127 in particular and of the whole NCT system in general. However, in this comeback, many people pointed out that it seems SM Entertainment has decided to transfer the center position to Jaehyun.
This topic is currently generating a debate in the NCT fan community as well as on online forums in Korea. While some fans were annoyed because they thought that Taeyong had been “robbed” of his original center position, for Korean netizens, most of them enthusiastically supported it. Compared to Taeyong who was in a scandal and wasn’t really popular even when SM pushed hard since NCT’s debut, many netizens thought that Jaehyun or Mark would be more suitable for the center position.
The line in the picture: “Even though Lee Soo Man has abandoned his artists many times, this is the first time I’ve seen SM decide to change the center of a group just because of popularity.”
Some comments of Korean netizens:
- “The odd thing here must be Lee Soo Man’s obsession with the Chinese dream. But it’s not strange to push the main visual and also the most popular member of the group, on the contrary, it is even with ‘Lemonade’, Jaehyun is the member that’s the most popular overseas, not to mention he’s even top trending…”
- “Whether it’s overseas or in Korea, Jaehyun’s popularity is overwhelming. If I were SM, of course, I would push Jaehyun”
- “Why does it have to be Taeyong as the center? “
- “Jaehyun is much better as the center”
- “But Jaehyun is the most popular among the NCT members… Isn’t it natural for the company to push the most popular member?”
- “But in this picture, Mark is the center, right? No matter how much SM pushes, Taeyong can’t be popular so the company has to replace the famous person as the center”
Meanwhile, NCT 127’s 3rd studio album “STICKER” will be officially released on September 17.
