What does F.T Island mean to the members?

F.T Island has returned to Korea with their 2nd mini album Beautiful Journey after a year since their last Korean release. They’ve been met with successful results in their Japanese promotions and even held their first Japanese tour concert, bringing in over 20,000 fans.

“Our Japanese promotions went a lot better than we thought. We’re satisfied on every level excluding the fact that we all gained about 6 kg (laughter).”

Song Seunghyun introduced their mini album by stating, “We haven’t changed our music color that drastically in our new album because we tried to think of the people that would consider us unfamiliar if we changed anything.”

Member Choi Jonghoon also composed and arranged a song in their new album as well, titled Don Quixote. “I wanted to show everyone that we were working hard and improving as well. Not only me but the other members participated in the album production as well.”

Then what does F.T Island mean to these individuals? The majority of them answered by saying that it’s destiny.

Choi Minhwan replied, “My existence in this team is pure luck. Being able to meet such great members and great people to form such a group seems like destiny to me.”

Lee Jaejin laughed while confessing, “I was actually able to join the group because they thought I looked good on camera. I don’t think that I’m superbly talented, actually. I just learned everything I know musically.”

Song Seunghyun asserted, “F.T Island is destiny to me as well. I think it’s just fate that I’m able to work as a musician like this. It’s been my dream since I was little. Fate to me is never passing up the opportunities that come my way.”

Lee Hong Ki stated, “I want to promote as much music possible under the name of FT Island. The members are participating in individual activities but I’d like to become a band like the Shinhwa seniors where we all come together for concerts.”

FT Island returns with mini album “Beautiful Journey”, after a break of one year.

Fan numbers decreasing in fan cafes
Ranked top 5 on Japan Oricon chart


“Until the 100,000 fans who had left, return to them…”
FT Island returns to Korea after taking a “beautiful journey” in Japan, where they had a major debut and two singles up on the Oricon chart top 5 rankings.
They are now back after a one year break, releasing their 2nd mini album “Beautiful Journey”.

“We started everything from scratch in Japan. Therefore, everything felt different to us. It seems that we had grown up a lot too.”
Vocal Lee Hongki sounded confident in saying that. However, behind the glamour and confidence they had achieved, were tears and sweat of the 5 members.

“Initially, when we had attained a certain level of popularity in Korea, we asked ourselves, ‘why do we want to go Japan and suffer?’ Times were that difficult. It wasn’t that bad during the times when we did Indie music in Japan 2 years ago.” (Lee Jaejin)
Though schedules were packed, their number of fans increased as they held more concerts. They also increased their level of confidence and gained lots of experience during their concert tour.

“It was rather stressful to perform in front of a group of new audience. But we felt amazed to see our fans increasing in numbers gradually and we have also thought of how to make our performances more interesting for the crowd. Confidence is what we have gained most during this period of time in Japan.” (Choi Jonghun)
Though they had achieved success in Japan, during this period of time when they left the Korea music industry, idol groups were ruling the music scene, whereby album promotion activities lasted for a longer time and comebacks were more frequent. It was indeed a risk and danger for FT Island to leave their positions for one year.

“Therefore we came back before it’s too late. Many idol singers came and left. We also felt worried, thinking if people will forget about us. It was sad to leave Korea and drift apart from our fans who had once supported us and like our music. What’s more, we had about 100,000 fans who left our fan cafes. To see them leaving us to support other singers was heartbreaking.” (Song Seunghyun)

FT Island understands that they had to get their fans back. Their new title song “Love Love Love” follows their original music style and will be something good for the fans who liked them.

Credits: Donga News (source) + ying1005@withtreasures (translations)