QRIMOLE – August 2026

It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month! I was watching Idle’s Queendom performance of Lion and was genuinely startled to see Soojin. And then I thought about Enhypen, and then Katseye, and how fans automatically roll with the Enhypen is 7 and Katseye is… whatever # they are, basically [thisgroup] is [t#] if a member leaves or gets removed. And it strikes me as… pointless, because I had literally forgotten Soojin was part of Idle. And it just goes to show how disposable idols are, and how a group doesn’t crash and burn most of the time if it loses a member. Enhypen is fine, Katseye is fine, Soyeon (and friends) are fine. Were there/are there any idols so indispensable to their group that if/when they left or were forced out, their group did/would fail? i-dle would be significantly different without Soyeon as she’s a principal songwriter and producer. Also hard to imagine BigBang without G-Dragon. Such cases are rare though. If someone isn’t pulling significant weight behind the scenes then yes they are essentially disposable and that’s the way the machine wants it. “Star quality” makes no differen...