Nine finalists announced on 'Boys Planet' K-pop audition show

Zhang Hao finished first place on the final episode of Mnet's audition show ″Boys Planet.″ [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The nine finalists of Mnet’s “Boys Planet” were announced during the audition show’s final episode livestreamed on Thursday night. The winners will go on to form project group ZeroBaseOne (stylized as ZEROBASEONE or ZB1), which will be active for two and a half years.

Contestants Zhang Hao, Sung Han-bin, Seok Matthew, Ricky, Park Gun-wook, Kim Tae-rae, Kim Gyu-vin, Kim Ji-woong and Han Yu-jin — from first to ninth place in that order — made it on the list. The episode continued into the early hours of Friday.

Shortly before the winners were announced, the group's name ZB1 was also announced on the live episode.

Cable channel Mnet has aired many popular audition shows, and the temporary project K-pop groups produced by the shows have seen great commercial success. Most notably, the four seasons of the “Produce” franchise — from “Produce 101” in 2016 to “Produce X 101” in 2019 — created girl groups I.O.I and IZ*ONE, and boy bands Wanna One and X1.

“Boys Planet” started airing on Feb. 2 and has aired 12 episodes in total. The 12-week journey saw a total of 98 contestants perform in group missions and slowly get eliminated by viewers’ votes each week. Divided into the “K Group” of Korean contestants and “G Group” of global contestants, consisting of 49 each, “Boys Planet” saw more than 200 agencies in 84 countries submit hopefuls.

Viewer votes from Korea accounted for 50 percent of the tally, and the other 50 percent was determined by votes from abroad.

The 18 contestants who made it to the semifinals performed on Thursday’s final episode, streamed live from the Jamsil Indoor Stadium in southern Seoul.

BY HALEY YANG [yang.hyunjoo@joongang.co.kr]