All four Brave Girls sign with Warner Music Korea

Gril group Brave Girls [FIRST LOOK]

All four members of Brave Girls have signed exclusive contracts with Warner Music Korea, the girl group’s new agency said in a release Thursday.

“We have had a mutual understanding with the members to put the four-member group activities as the most important goal,” said Warner Music Korea in a statement.

The agency said that discussions are ongoing on whether to keep the Brave Girls name or take a new group name.

A number of K-pop groups have had to change their group names after moving to a new agencies — like boy band B2ST (Beast), which changed to Highlight upon leaving CUBE Entertainment — since group names are often copyrighted by the original agency.

All four members of Brave Girls — Minyoung, Yujeong, Eunji and Yuna — decided not to extend their exclusive contracts with Brave Entertainment on Feb. 16.

Brave Girls originally debuted in 2011, but all the original members left the group after lukewarm success. The group's producer, Brave Brothers, called the current four members the second generation of Brave Girls.

The second generation did not achieve commercial success either and was about to disband, looking into other jobs until a YouTube video about "Rollin'" went viral in early 2021. The video, which shows a compilation of YouTube comments under Brave Girls' performances, revealed that the song was popular among Korean servicemen as the girl group frequently performed at military bases to entertain troops. The viral popularity earned Brave Girls the moniker "president of the military."

BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]