&TEAM, NiziU and XG Show K-POP's Japan Strategy Is No Longer a One-Way Street

For years, Japan was a destination for K-POP groups. Artists would debut in Korea, establish a domestic fanbase and then expand into Japan with Japanese releases, promotions and tours.

&TEAM and NiziU are increasingly showing what happens when that route is reversed as both groups were created with Japan as their starting point. NiziU was formed through JYP Entertainment and Sony Music's "Nizi Project" as part of JYP's localization strategy, &TEAM on the other hand, debuted in Japan in 2022 after being formed through HYBE's "&AUDITION - The Howling -."

Rather than building their careers in Korea before entering Japan, both groups first established themselves in the Japanese market. Years later, Korea is becoming a bigger part of their careers. A shift has become particularly clear with &TEAM.

The group released its second Korean mini-album "Mark on Me" on September 8, around 10 months after making its official Korean debut with "Back to Life." Selling 1,224,524 copies on its first day, "Mark on Me" has set a new record for the group.

Their Korean presence is also becoming more permanent as the group is returning to Korean music shows for the comeback and will hold two concerts at Seoul's KSPO Dome in October as part of their 'BLAZE THE WAY' Tour.

NiziU has taken a similar, although slower, route. Having debuted in Japan back in 2020, the nine-member group spent its first several years largely centered on the Japanese market.

In 2023, however, NiziU officially debuted in Korea with "Press Play." The group returned with Korean single "LOVE LINE" in 2025 and will now release "Sour Grapes," their first Korean mini-album, on September 28.

The move from a Korean single to a second release and now a full mini-album makes Korea look less like a one-time experiment and increasingly like another regular market for the group.

That is almost the reverse of the path K-POP fans have been familiar with for years.

Traditionally, Korean groups were exported to Japan after establishing themselves at home. However, with &TEAM and NiziU, Korean entertainment companies instead used the K-POP training and production system to create groups in Japan, establish them there first and then bring them into the Korean market.

Japanese-Global group XG shows that the relationship between Japan, Korea and the K-POP system can become even less straightforward.

All seven members of XG are Japanese and the group was created under Japanese entertainment company Avex's XGALX project. Yet since debuting in 2022, XG has built much of its promotional identity around a system familiar to K-POP audiences, including training and operating from Korea and regularly appearing on Korean music shows.

At the same time, XG has avoided defining itself simply as K-POP or J-POP as their music has largely been released in English, while its ambitions have been global from the beginning. Their first world tour eventually reached 35 cities and drew around 400,000 people, with the group expanding through major international festivals and a second world tour.

Therefore, XG represents a different side of the same change.

So, while &TEAM and NiziU show localized Japanese groups increasingly entering the Korean market. XG shows that a Japanese group can use Korea's established idol infrastructure without making either Japan or Korea the final destination.

Together, the three groups show how much more complicated K-POP's localization strategy has become. The first stage of K-POP's globalization was largely about exporting Korean artists. The next was localization: Korean entertainment companies taking their training, production and fandom systems overseas to create artists for individual markets.

Those localized artists are no longer necessarily staying within the markets they were created in. This can be seen as &TEAM can build its career in Japan and later sell more than one million copies of a Korean album in a day.

Moreover, NiziU can remain a major Japanese act while repeatedly returning to Korea with Korean releases and XG can consist entirely of Japanese members, operate through Korea's music industry infrastructure, sing primarily in English and tour globally.

In that sense, Korea and Japan are becoming less like fixed starting and ending points. Instead, they can function as different parts of the same career.

The success of these groups suggests that localization may no longer simply mean creating a K-POP-style group for another country.

Increasingly, it means creating an artist in one market with the systems needed to eventually move between several. For &TEAM, NiziU and XG, Japan may have been the starting point, however it does not have to determine where they go next.