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Tiana DeNicola
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There is a version of Huh Yunjin‘s life in which she is a college student right now. She had the acceptance letter. She had paid the deposit. She had spent the better part of two months applying to schools after years of grueling K-pop training in Korea had worn her down and she decided that it was time to try something else.
The call to join LE SSERAFIM came the next day.
“It literally felt like the stars were telling me where to go,” she says, sitting down for Variety’s “Up Next” podcast on what is, notably, her very first podcast ever. (“I love to yap,” she announces immediately, by way of explanation.) Within two weeks of that call, she was on a plane back to South Korea getting ready to debut. That story, which she tells with the kind of good-humored disbelief that suggests she’s still a little amazed by it herself, has taken on new resonance this month. On June 12, 2026, LE SSERAFIM released “Iconic by Mistake,” a collaboration single with fellow HYBE girl groups KATSEYE and ILLIT — marking the first time K-pop girl groups have released an official song together without forming a supergroup. The track, a shot at the internet haters, debuted at No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100. The success, it’s safe to say, is no mistake.
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