#이달의소녀 #희진 #LOONA #HeeJin LOOΠΔ www.loonatheworld.com

>Every day, there's a flash in my heart, a shining rainbow
The same black and white movie is boring
Will you change it with your fingers?
Red, orange, yellow, green, more vivid, be okay?

HeeJin and LOONA's Inception

On the 31st of August, 2016, a photo teaser would be released by a new company named BlockBerry Creative (BBC). This teaser featured a young girl, age 15, from Daejeon, Korea, named Jeon Hee-jin. It would be the teaser that would officially kickstart what I’d consider one of the most ambitious and artistically unique projects in all of K-Pop: Girl of the Month, LOONA.

Initially, Heejin had been attending a dance academy, and she later became a trainee under Polaris (most notable for their girl group, Ladies’ Code), for approximately one year, after being rejected by several other companies. Their parent company at the time eventually transferred her over to the newly-formed Polaris subsidiary, BBC, for the purpose of participating in the LOONA project.

The budget of the LOONA project was one of the most intriguing factors. What immediately stood out about Heejin’s teasers is that she was flown out to Paris for them. The four members who followed would also go to different international locations for their solos as well. Polaris wasn’t exactly raking in truckloads of money at the time, so for a while, it was a bit of a question mark as to where the budget for that could possibly come from. People soon learned that BlockBerry and Polaris were both owned by Ilkwang Group, a massive corporation who most notably was responsible for arms manufacturing. Because of this, many people assumed and believed for the longest time that BlockBerry was an extremely wealthy company, with the main rumor being that around 10 billion won (~7.5 million USD today) was spent on the predebut alone. A bit more on that later, though.

The girls who became members themselves went through a survival show-type evaluation process, a process that continued until the final subunit, yyxy, where members Yves, Chuu, Go Won, and Hyeju (fka Olivia Hye), were all chosen outside of that system, in a much more rapid manner. While the second member, Hyunjin was training at Polaris/BBC the longest, Heejin was chosen first. According to Jaden Jeong, the creative director behind LOONA, she was chosen to be first to basically initiate the entire project as she had a certain high quality factor to her, which would set the right, extremely important first impression about the project.

A ViViD Debut

Onto the music itself, the single album, aptly named HeeJin, features two tracks: ViViD, and ViViD (Acoustic Mix). ViViD is an upbeat, jazzy, electroswing/pop track, in which Heejin discusses how a potential love interest brings a rainbow of vivid colors to a dull, repetitive world. The standout of the track is the “Oh my god, yes! Say ‘oh my goodness!’” hook within the chorus, where she further emphasizes the thrill and surprise of these newfound colors.

The track was written and composed by GDLO, Park Jiyeon, G-High, and Choi Youngkyung, all part of MonoTree, a music production company founded by former Sweetune members (another music production company known for work with acts like KARA and Nine Muses). MonoTree would become regular contributors to LOONA’s discography up until 2019, last appearing on [X X] (not including a Japanese version of Hi High). They would not reunite until 2022, where Heejin, alongside three other LOONA members – Yves, Choerry, and Hyeju – and Brave/BB Girls member Eunji, performed “Tell Me Now,” a song produced for MNet’s Queendom 2. MonoTree’s work with the girls is extremely revered by fans and casual listeners alike, ViViD being no exception. Although LOONA would work with a multitude of producers/teams throughout the years, most fans commonly associate the “LOONA sound” with MonoTree’s production work. 

(Fun, but not-so-fun fact, MonoTree was set to reappear in their discography as the composers and lyricists of “Comet,” from the boycotted and forever shelved [0] Origin Album.)

The acoustic version replaces the jazzy electro instrumental with a guitar. Not much to say about this, but there is a video of Heejin singing and playing it on the guitar.

Onto the video itself, it’s an excellent representation of the song title and theming, and it also, either intentionally or unintentionally, introduces several core elements of LOONA’s lore and branding that’d become popular among fans. The world starts out grey, but as the song kicks in, it’s a near-instant transformation into a world of intense colors. I won’t go into full LOONAverse analysis like many Orbits have in the past, but essentially, the video can be interpreted as a girl trapped in a mundane and colorless world creating or imagining a colorful…vivid… world of excitement and oddity. Near the end, we see the world and Heejin get overtaken by paint strokes of all the colors in the rainbow. Not only does this represent how each girl following her would build the LOONAverse, but it also foreshadows the very gay fanbase the group would attract :) By the end, we see Heejin back in a normal world, cleaning, looking outside. It could mirror how her journey would lead to the formation of the first of LOONA’s iconic subunits: LOONA 1/3, the group’s Christian horse girl subunit that resides on our Earth within the LOONAverse.

Ironically enough, while a majority of LOONA’s music videos thereafter would be developed by Digipedi, who helped bring many of the visuals, story elements, and symbols that’d represent LOONA to life, ViViD’s MV is one of the few LOONA MVs to not be a Digipedi creation. It was instead produced by VM Project Architecture.

Commercially, HeeJin, the single album, was a failure at release. On Gaon, now known as the Circle Chart, it was 2016’s worst selling album, only registering 657 purchases. Nonetheless, the LOONA project would continue, with HyunJin and HaSeul both releasing their single albums in the last two months of the year.

Heejin would continue to develop and demonstrate her star idol quality as LOONA continued to form. Prior to the debut of LOONA as a full group, and outside of being a member of 1/3, she'd feature on the solo albums of members HyunJin, HaSeul, and Yeojin (though not on a track with Yeojin), had a "secret" rap feature in JinSoul's Singing in the Rain, and would rap once more on member Hyeju's B-side, Rosy, featuring Go Won as well.

It was also Heejin's face that made Jinsoul want to join and stay at BBC, as a face that pretty could only be at a decent agency (but sadly...).

Besides activities within LOONA, she'd also participate on the cursed-but-stacked-with-talent YG survival show, MIXNINE, along with Hyunjin and Haseul. She would make it to the final girls' lineup, but literally no actual group ever came out of that show. She also filmed a commercial for LG.

The LOONA Project's Outcome and HeeJin Now

As this is a post focusing on Heejin and the start of the LOONA project, I won’t delve too much into the other members debuts and all that, but to sum it up, all 12 members of the project got to release their singles, perform as subunits (except YeoJin, due to age), and go on to participate in LOONA’s debut as a whole group. While the group has never officially disbanded, their operation under BlockBerry Creative would come to a grinding halt in November/December 2022, after issues of unpaid wages to not only the girls, but the company’s collaborators and other creatives, exploitative contracts, and the attempted removal of Chuu from the group arose and led to successful fan boycotts of all future LOONA activity under the label. I’ll save that for 2028, though.

Heejin is still very active as an idol now, as part of ARTMS, a group formed by Modhaus, a K-Pop agency established and led by Jaden Jeong, also featuring members HaSeul, Kim Lip, Jinsoul, and Choerry. Before ARTMS officially debuted, she released a solo mini-album, K, under the agency. It sold 17k its first week, a commendable number, especially considering how much HeeJin sold. The title track, “Algorithm,” features a reference to ViViD in its choreography. Her most recent solo release though is 2025’s sAviOr, a rock track in which she’s back to playing guitar.

She’s performed the track as recently as 2025 for ARTMS’ Lunar Theory World Tour, a tour centered specifically around LOONA songs. Also, to promote that tour, the company recreated the teaser made for her debut/ViViD back in 2016. In the first ever video teaser for LOONA, we see a pre-debut baby HeeJin walk up to one of many adverts for her single plastered around Korea. In ARTMS’ X2 teaser for the Lunar Theory tour, HeeJin is in Paris yet again, dressed in the same white look from her solo single’s cover. She walks up to a bus stop ad, which is another recreation of one of her original teasers. Pretty neat to see all the references to her journey in such a short video!

In 2026, Heejin, Kim Lip, Jinsoul, and Choerry are about to embark on ARTMS’ 4th World Tour, Art of Blue Blood, as part of the promo for the group’s second mini album, Hyper-Ego. If you're in Canada, the US, or Europe, you may be able to go see them!

Some discussion questions:

1. Which song got you into LOONA, and which song is your personal favOriTe?
2. Where does ViViD rank for you among the LOONA solos, or their discography in general?
3. Many of LOONA’s tracks are often praised for their timeless quality. Now being ten years old, how do you think ViViD holds up, whether it be in comparison to other LOONA songs, or on its own?
4. Do you have a favorite Heejin moment? Favorite LOONA moment?

To end, here's current day Heejin doing ViViD! Happy 10th to the best first girl!!