Lee Soo-man returns with a question — and two new idol groups

Free from his non-compete, Lee Soo-man unveils 15-member boy group A2O SOUL and 9-member girl group A2O LITE

Debut show centers on 4D Gaussian Splatting technology and a new vision for K-pop production

'From a camera that records to a camera that creates'

Lee Soo-man, key producer at A2O Entertainment, delivers opening remarks at the global debut show "Welcome to Soulite From A2O SOUL A2O LITE" held at Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, on Monday. [Yonhap]

Lee Soo-man, the 74-year-old producer widely credited as the father of K-pop, is back. His return to the domestic stage as a producer comes more than three years after he departed SM Entertainment. The question he posed at his comeback showcase was "What's the Difference?" — and his answer was split evenly between technology and song.

Lee took the stage Monday as a keynote speaker at the global debut show "Welcome to Soulite From A2O SOUL A2O LITE," held at Hall 2 of Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. He unveiled two groups for the first time: the 15-member boy group A2O SOUL and the 9-member girl group A2O LITE. Both groups are set to make their official debut Tuesday at 6 p.m., releasing "SUPERSTAR" and "NEON," respectively.

The return was not entirely unexpected. In February 2023, Lee transferred his stake in SM Entertainment to Hybe and agreed to a non-compete clause barring him from producing albums in South Korea for three years. That agreement expired at the end of February this year.

While the domestic market was off-limits, Lee built his operation abroad. He founded A2O Entertainment, headquartered in Singapore, and in 2024 launched A2O MAY, a girl group composed of five Chinese members. Last year he opened a Korean branch in Seoul's Cheongdam-dong, and in the first half of this year he launched a public audition program called the A2O Zalpha Audition. The debut show marked the first public-facing result of that gradual homecoming.

In the first year after his non-compete expired, Lee made a bold move by launching a boy group and a girl group simultaneously. But the debut show was more than a simple introduction of new acts.

Lee devoted most of his presentation to technology. The filming technique he highlighted, 4D Gaussian Splatting (4DGS), was first introduced in academic circles in 2023. Samsung Electronics, named as a collaborator at the event, released its first extended reality (XR) headset, the Galaxy XR, last October. Lee said his concept of "culture technology" extends to "constantly searching for, experimenting with, and executing" the right technology — even building it from scratch if it does not yet exist — no matter how long that takes.

Girl group A2O LITE performs at the global debut show "Welcome to Soulite From A2O SOUL A2O LITE" held at Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, on Monday. [Yonhap]

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the debut of H.O.T., the idol group Lee produced. He has long systematized the idol production process — casting, training, producing and marketing — under the banner of "CT," or culture technology. In 2016, he took the stage alone to announce "New Culture Technology" and introduce NCT. Monday's event, which bundled new groups, new technology and a fan communication platform into a single presentation, echoed that moment a decade earlier.

The 4DGS technique Lee presented works by capturing an artist's movements simultaneously with multiple cameras, then combining that data to reconstruct the scene in three-dimensional space. Conventional video preserves only what a single camera sees from its fixed position, but 4DGS captures an entire performance moment in full, allowing viewers to revisit it from any angle or vantage point after filming ends. Lee summarized the shift as moving "from a camera that records to a camera that creates."

He traced the roots of the technology to his own past — specifically a "Matrix Camera System" he said he developed and used in music videos for Girls' Generation, SHINee, TVXQ and BoA. That system used multiple still cameras firing simultaneously to create the illusion of time frozen while the camera orbits the subject.

Lee said he had long wondered what would happen if the same effect could be achieved with video cameras rather than still cameras, and that "about 16 years later" he has begun realizing that possibility in actual content. The music videos for A2O SOUL and A2O LITE incorporate 4DGS alongside what A2O calls the "INFINITE filming system." In collaboration with Samsung Electronics, the company will also present an XR experience that lets audiences view artists from any perspective they choose.

Lee described 4DGS as "recording reality itself as it existed — the reality within that moment in time and space" and suggested it "could become the final form" of the camera as a recording device. He added that the data captured this way can serve as training material for AI, and that AI-equipped robots could use it to learn human movement and spatial awareness.

Boy group A2O SOUL performs at the global debut show "Welcome to Soulite From A2O SOUL A2O LITE" held at Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, on Monday. [Yonhap]

4DGS was not developed by A2O. The technology was introduced in a series of academic papers published in 2023 by research teams at China's Huawei, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Fudan University, among others. A2O did not disclose the number of cameras used in its production or the names of its technology partners.

After his technology presentation, Lee shifted to the subject of songs. "As long as K-pop groups are called singers, I believe the most important starting point is ultimately the song," he said. He added that everything flowing from the song — the choreography, the music video, the performance — "must feel different from what has come before."

He then drew a line. Stressing that "being different alone is not enough," Lee said the work must go further — to the point where many people genuinely like and love what is different. He asked the audience to "feel that something is good first, before trying to identify what is different or how it is different."

The two debuting groups will connect with fans through their songs, performances and 4DGS-produced visuals. Lee also introduced new features for Bloomtalk, a fan communication platform that A2O MAY has used since last year. A video talk session is scheduled for later this month, with an "interactive live talk show" — where fans and celebrities share the same virtual space — to follow.

Lee also reflected on how technology should be used. He said the question going forward must move beyond "what technology can do" to "what we choose to record and what we leave for the future." In a world where AI and robots live alongside humans, he said, "how wisely we use that technology will matter just as much as how far it advances."

shee@heraldcorp.com