Escrow Entertainment K-pop girl group X:IN is certainly not the first group to contain international members, but it did manage to capture the limelight a bit better than some other groups featuring members who did not originate from East or Southeast Asia. Escrow CEO and CCO Chung Yountae started X:IN as part of a strategy that involves leveraging “experience in exploring cultural content markets in China, Japan, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.” Escrow used a lot of fancy, wordy “business speak” to describe its goals, but the basic idea is that it wants to find opportunities for Korean culture to connect with other cultures in fresh ways. X:IN, pronounced similarly to “Action,” is the result of that! So let’s take a look back at when exactly did X:IN debut with their original lineup of Roa, Chi.u, E.sha, Nova, and Aria, plus their first song.
X:IN Debuted on April 7, 2023, Performing Single “Keeping the Fire”
X:IN first predebuted on March 12, 2023 when they performed “Who Am I” live at the 44th K-Stage, and a performance video for “Who Am I” was released on the same day. Perhaps the first Korean news article announcing the group’s predebut came from Daily Sports Hankook on March 8, 2023, where the diverse backgrounds of the group members were emphasized. Particularly, Nova (birth name reportedly Maria Pavlovna Emelyanova) originally hails from Russia, and Aria (birth name “Gauthami”) is originally from Kerala, India. By their own explanation, Nova came to South Korea in August 2022, and Aria came in October 2022 — so their training period in Korea amounted to less than a year in total. Prior to then, in India Aria had been an actress since she was about 3 1/2 years old. Likewise, according to Kinopoisk, which is similar in function to film-and-television-information-database IMDb but Russian, it appears that Nova had a lengthy career in voice acting in Russia.
X:IN made their official debut on April 7, 2023, when they performed the single, “Keeping the Fire,” on Simply K-Pop CON-TOUR Ep.563. That same day, a fan chant guide video was released on the X:IN YouTube channel. However, the actual “Keeping the Fire” music video would not be released until April 11, 2023.
X:IN would perform and promote together in its original five-member incarnation for the next couple months. However, on June 7, 2023, Escrow Entertainment announced that Chi.u had departed X:IN, and on July 8, 2023, it further announced that original leader Roa had departed the group and would be replaced by new members Nizz and Hannah. Since then, X:IN has maintained a consistent lineup of E.sha, Nizz, Nova, Hannah, and Aria.
In summary, X:IN made their official debut on April 7, 2023 with a live performance of “Keeping the Fire,” and the music video for “Keeping the Fire” was released four days later, on April 11, 2023. For more about the group, check out how old the X:IN members currently are and who their leader is now.