Where Are Stray Kids From?

K-pop is continuing to dominate the music world. BTS may have been the boy band that achieved the most success internationally, but there have been dozens of similarly beloved bands who have come after them, and developed equally passionate fanbases. One of these steadily rising bands is Stray Kids. While they’ve technically been around since 2017, they’ve really exploded in the 2020s, with hit singles and multiple albums that have topped the Billboard 200.

The more popular Stray Kids becomes, however, the more fans will want to know about them. How did they get together? Are each of the members friends? And perhaps, most importantly, where are they from? They obviously hail from Korea, given their genre moniker, but the exact place in Korea will explain a lot regarding their musical and stylistic choices. We are all, to one extent or another, a product of our environment, after all.

Stray Kids Originated In Seoul, South Korea

Stray Kids was the product of a reality show of the same name. It ran for one season, and the intent of the show was to find nine male idols who could display the talent and camaraderie to make it big as a group. Seeing as the name of the show was always going to be the name of the group, there was obviously a vision that went beyond the individuals who comprised the group.

In the end, the nine members that were chosen all came from Seoul, South Korea. These talented performers included: Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin, I.N. and Woojin. The last of these Stray Kids, Woojin, quit in 2019 over undisclosed personal reasons.

Seoul is ground zero for most famous K-pop groups. BTS, Exo, BLACKPINK and pretty much every other notable group you can think of off the top of your head was formed in the Special City. It’s a South Korean equivalent to Motown in the 1960s or Los Angeles in the 1970s, in which anyone who wants to make it big as a musical artist will travel there and try their hand at being put in a group.

It makes sense, given how lucrative K-pop has been for South Korea. Seyon Park, a Morgan Stanley Research equity analyst, claimed that the financial benefits from the genre is only going to grow in the next decade. A study by Allied Market Research claimed that K-pop events market was valued at $8.1 billion, in 2021 and is estimated to reach a staggering $20 billion by 2031.

Stray Kids want to incorporate music from their youth

Stray Kids may have come out of the same location as their K-pop peers, but they’ve made a point to distinguish themselves musically. The members of the group have stated that they want to push the envelope in terms of sound, and experiment with the different styles of music they listened to when they were growing up.

Bang Chan told NME that Stray Kids aim to take risks with their sound, and ask their listeners to go on different musical journeys with them. “As artists, there’s so many ways that we can express emotions and messages through our music,” he explained. “We don’t know how the audience is going to take it in because it’s so different. Hopefully, they enjoy it.”

It’s worked out beautifully, so far. The most recent Stray Kids album, 5-Star, was their most diverse release yet, incorporating pop, R&B, hip-hop and dance music. It received positive reviews from critics, and was the second global best-selling album of 2023. 5-Star had over five-million sales, making Stray Kids just the third group in Korean history to achieve this mind-boggling number.

It seems as though the sky’s the limit for the boys from Seoul.