Fantasy Boys to debut without Yu Jun-won

Yu Jun-won, winner of MBC's audition program ″Fantasy Boys″ [NEWS1]

Soon-to-debut boy band Fantasy Boys will have 11 members instead of the initial 12-member roster it had announced, after bidding farewell to member Yu Jun-won due to "differences in opinion."

"We regret to announce that Yu Jun-won, who had been chosen through MBC's audition program 'Fantasy Boys,' will not join the band on its journey, having broken off from the group without our consent," the band's agency Pocketdol Studio said Wednesday.

According to the agency, Yu's parents demanded that he get a higher cut of the band's income because he received the highest score during the audition program.

"Distributing the income differently could have raised a fairness issue, so we explained that it cannot happen," the agency said. "But his parents made the members cancel their group schedule twice and finally gave us an ultimatum that he cannot be with us anymore."

Trainees Kim Gyu-rae, Hong Sung-min, Oh Hyeon-tae, Lee Han-bin, Ling Qi, Kang Min-seo, Hikari, K-Soul, Kim Woo-seok, Hikaru and Kaedan will continue without Yu.

The audition program was produced in collaboration with MBC, Phunky Studio, Naver, Pocketdol Studio, among others. "Fantasy Boys" follows the format of MBC's 2021 girl group audition program "My Teenage Girls," which debuted the seven-member girl group CLASS:y in May 2022.

Fantasy Boys are set to debut in September. An exact date will be announced Friday.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]