Earlier this evening, South Korea's newest survival show - "The Origin - A, B, Or What?" - was finally broadcast.
The survival show is jointly produced by Kakao Entertainment and Sony Music Solution for IST Entertainment, broadcast on South Korean television channel MBN. IST Entertainment currently known for their groups Apink, Weeekly, Victon, and The Boyz.
"The Origin" was originally intended to premiere last month, but was delayed due to cases of coronavirus spreading amongst the trainees.
How does "The Origin" work?
Each week, the trainees will be randomly assorted into two groups - Team A and Team B - and will perform two different songs.
A jury panel of experts - including GOT7's JayB, 2NE1's Minzy, INFINITE's Kim Sunggyu, and Just Jerk's Kwak Yoon Young and Hwang Kyu Hong - chooses the "ace" and the "death" member of each group, while the in-studio audience chooses their favourite performance.
Through this series of "balance games", trainees will be eliminated until the finale, during which an undisclosed number of competitors will be selected to form the final group.
Episode 1 Recap
After the thirteen competing trainees performed "RUN", the theme song for "The Origin", the audience was introduced to how the show will work (see above) and the mentor panel (also see above).
This first episode featured the first round of the first "balance game", and showed the two competing performances.
Team A consisted of trainees Donghwa (as the leader), Rakwon, Junmin, Jinwook, Wonbin, and Jaehoon performing BTS' "Mic Drop". The experts selected Junmin to receive the "ace" card, and Wonbin to receive the "death" card.
Team B consisted of trainees Junseok (as the leader), Seunghwan, Yeonkyu, Daehyun, Junho, Minseo, and Hyunjun performing ATEEZ's "Hala Hala". The experts selected Junseok to receive the "ace" card, and Daehyun to receive the "death" card.
After the audience voted, Team B was selected as the winning team. However, the first balance game isn't over, as this was revealed to be only round one.
A second round will see the same teams compete once again, and one trainee will be eliminated from the losing team over both rounds.
Don't worry - we'll release an article covering the thirteen competing trainees in more detail very soon!
And you can watch the first episode of "The Origin" with English subtitles below:
Have you watched episode one of "The Origin"? Are you on Team A or Team B? And who is your favourite trainee so far? Let us know by commenting on our socials @KpopWise.