Super Junior (Korean: 슈퍼주니어), often referred to as SJ or SuJu (슈주), is a boy band from Seoul, South Korea, produced and managed by Lee Soo Man, the founder of SM Entertainment. With a total of thirteen members, they are the largest boy band in the world.[1] The members are Leeteuk (the leader), Heechul, Han Geng, Yesung, Kang-in, Shindong, Sungmin, Eunhyuk, Donghae, Siwon, Ryeowook, Kibum, and later, Kyuhyun. The Chinese member, Han Geng, was chosen among three thousand applicants through auditions held in China by SM Entertainment in 2001.[2] Super Junior has released and contributed in 19 different kinds of records with varying degrees of success.[3] Over the years, they have been divided into smaller sub groups, simultaneously targeting different music industries and audiences. Largely due to Super Junior's success as entertainers, other Korean entertainment managements began to train their music groups in other areas of entertainment, such as acting and hosting.[3] In addition to their commercial success, Super Junior has earned four music awards from the M.NET/KM Music Festival, another four from the Golden Disk Awards, and is the second singing group to win Favorite Artist Korea at the MTV Asia Awards after jtL in 2003.[4]
Subgroups
Since debut, SM Entertainment has created four subgroups for Super Junior. Every member was put into different sub groups, Kibum being the only member not involved in any sub group activities due to his busy acting schedule. The intentions of the subgroups were part of SM's strategy to not limit Super Junior's activities,[91] and the goal was to show that the group could accommodate different musical genres. However, this strategy was later challenged by critics, as it has influenced an overwhelming amount of music groups to create official and unofficial subgroups alike.[92] SM announced that Super Junior will form more subgroups in the future, and possible focuses of these subgroups include a variety of genres such as rock and hip hop.[93] Previous Super Junior subgroups will also make comebacks in the industry along with appearances of new subgroups. [93]
