"The Last Man Standing:" Super Junior’s 20th Anniversary & Their Success as the Longest-Running K-Pop Boy Band

Regardless of form, industry, or culture, it is difficult for bands, vocal groups, and other collaborative artists to remain active and relevant for decades. The K-pop boy band Super Junior is an exception. Debuting in 2005, the group celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year with their latest album Super Junior25 and their ongoing world tour “Super Show 10.” As the longest-running K-pop boy band, Super Junior exemplifies how teamwork, individual excellence, and a deep sense of responsibility can sustain a group’s success across generations.

Starting with thirteen members—nine of whom are still active—the group faced conflicts and growing pains early in their career. The diverse backgrounds and personalities of the members created challenges, heightened by the pressures of debuting and cohabitation in dorms. During this early stage, leader Leeteuk played a vital role in mediating disputes and uniting the group under shared goals, while Heechul, one of the older members, frequently communicated with their agency, SM Entertainment, to secure fair opportunities and recognition. Over time, members leveraged their individual strengths to raise the group’s public profile. Skilled emcees such as Leeteuk, Heechul, Shindong, Eunhyuk, and Kyuhyun often brought other members onto the variety shows they hosted, while musically focused members collaborated across projects: Kyuhyun’s “Thanks to You” featured Ryeowook and Yesung from the vocal sub-unit Super Junior-K.R.Y., and Eunhyuk invited Shindong to dance for his solo “UP & DOWN.” The members’ mutual support and professionalism have kept the group cohesive and visible even after two decades.

Equally essential to their longevity has been Super Junior’s efficient communication with their company, which helped prevent destructive contract disputes. Such conflicts—over profit sharing, scheduling, and creative control—have fractured countless groups, from The Beatles to K-pop peers like TVXQ!. It is also difficult to find a balance between individual contracts and group contracts for members who decide to run their individual projects at a different company than their group. This difficulty is not unique to Super Junior: the K-pop bands EXO and Red Velvet have recently struggled with gathering all their group members for album production and performers as some of their members signed individual contracts to new companies. Super Junior faced similar challenges when Kyuhyun joined Antenna Entertainment and Donghae and Eunhyuk co-founded ODE Entertainment in 2023 for individual activities, yet all three continue to participate fully in group activities. Kyuhyun even negotiated an arrangement with Antenna where there is a clear managerial and financial separation between his individual work and Super Junior work—an extraordinary example of inter-company cooperation. These cases highlight the group’s exceptional diplomacy and dedication: each member remains a team player who prioritizes collective harmony over personal gain.

While successful teamwork is crucial, outstanding music and performance style are also indispensable for a musical group to remain active and popular. Super Junior’s musical evolution demonstrates K-pop’s defining features of innovation, genre-blending, and strategic market expansion over the past two decades. Their music has consistently reflected and shaped the industry’s trends, from its early focus on large groups and diverse soundscapes to its later incorporation of international collaborations and mature themes. Their early hits like “Twins (Knock Out)” (2005) featured rock and edgy hip-hop as well as light bubblegum pop (“Miracle” (2006)). The group played a considerable role in promoting the spread of the Hallyu (meaning Korean) Wave in 2009 when they released their best-known song, “Sorry Sorry,” a catchy R&B tune with simple yet addictive choreography. The group’s fame peaked with “Mr. Simple” in 2011, winning all the major music awards in South Korea for Daesang (the Grand Prize) and Album of the Year that year. While one to two members at a time left the stage for a two-year mandatory military service, the group still dominated the market by continuing to experiment with various musical styles in the Western-inspired funky song “Mamacita” (2014), the fun and groovy tune “Devil” (2015), and the glorious dance-pop piece “Black Suit”(2017). In recent years, Super Junior has embraced modern K-pop trends while honoring their own legacy. The group successfully blends in the current chorus features of heavy rap and repeated lines in the chorus of “Express Mode” (2025), with songs such as “DNA” and “Say Less” in this year’s album symbolizing their classic EDM style. Despite being in their 40s, the members of Super Junior still demonstrate great control over vocal techniques and dance skills at every concert and performance, often outshining younger groups that rely on lip-syncing. Ever since their debut, Super Junior consistently proves their status as “the King of Hallyu” with spectacular performances and dedication to the stage.

Super Junior’s endurance, however, is not solely the product of skill and discipline. It is worth acknowledging that Super Junior’s longstanding relevance and consistent output today also requires luck. Finding a large group of people that can reach consensus on career plans, roles, musical ideas, and operational decisions is rare—many just end up finding more success as individual artists. Moreover, members of Super Junior are responsible citizens in general. The currently active members’ reputations as responsible, law-abiding public figures have safeguarded the group’s image—an achievement not shared by all their contemporaries. Scandals have reduced once-dominant acts like BIGBANG to partial lineups, demonstrating how virtue and professionalism are as crucial to survival as talent itself.

Watching Super Junior on stage today—smiling, synchronized, and visibly enjoying themselves—evokes nostalgia for the innocence of youth. For long-time fans, the group’s vitality makes that youth feel evergreen. The name of Super Junior’s fans is “E.L.F.,” which stands for “Every Lasting Friend.” After two decades of laughter, touring, and talk shows, Super Junior are no longer just idols—they are companions who grew up alongside their audience. Their excellent team spirit, communication skills, and musical competence enable them to remain one of the most illustrious K-pop groups of all time, and they never cease to deliver inspiring performances and happiness to the world through frequent comebacks and presence in other fields. As they once proclaimed in their song “Superman” (2011), Super Junior is indeed “the last man standing.”

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Wendi Wang is a senior in the SFS majoring in International Economics and minoring in Philosophy and Music. She is the Creative Director of the INDY.