Arena Homme Plus — Seonghwa Digital Cover

Seonghwa's August 2026 digital cover and solo interview for Arena Homme Plus, "THE STRIKING CONTRAST."

Announced July 27, 2026, with the magazine's full interview following on August 3, the piece opens on the shoot itself — Seonghwa found the styling nostalgic, like an older version of himself layered over who he is now, and says the team's chemistry made it click. He's an active collaborator on pictorials generally, offering input where he can while staying open to a stylist's direction, and describes shoots like this one as valuable precisely because they let him build a personal identity distinct from ATEEZ — a side of himself the group doesn't show.

That same care shows in how he prepares for runway work. Walking in Paris for a third time, he felt noticeably more practiced and less nervous than before, though he still considers himself behind professional models. Because he usually doesn't know his outfit, shoes, or hairstyle until the day before a show, he prepares for every possibility — rehearsing both a powerful walk and a slower, looser one, practicing in a hotel hallway the night before, and doing mental run-throughs at the gym that morning. He calls himself someone who plans everything out precisely so he's left with no regrets, win or lose.

On the difference between group and solo work, he says the pressure is much greater alone — he's always representing "ATEEZ's Seonghwa," not just himself, so every choice becomes a direct reflection on him rather than something the team absorbs together. The first time he worked solo, the experience felt unfamiliar more than exciting — mostly just strange to have every eye on him alone. What's stayed consistent is how it feels to return to the members afterward: coming back from an individual schedule, a vacation, even a visit home, being around the other seven immediately puts him at ease, and he says that feeling has only grown warmer over time. He traces the group's closeness back to the hard, uncertain years early in their career — starting at a small company, never sure the group would last — saying the members getting through that together, and genuinely looking out for one another since, is what built the bond.

On the music side, this album cycle was demanding in a different way: the songs came from a producer team based in the UK, so the guide vocals already carried another artist's voice and delivery, and matching that feel in his own singing took real effort, timed inconveniently alongside runway preparation. He describes coming out of the cycle having built another version of himself shaped specifically for this era's sound. He's reached a point where he knows what looks and approaches suit him best, but says repeating that would mean standing still — as ATEEZ's Seonghwa, he feels he has to keep searching for versions of himself that fit wherever the group's music goes next, even when that means hitting a wall, because he still believes continuing to push himself is the right call.

That instinct traces back to a real shift in how he thinks about style. Early on his taste was so fixed and distinct that other trainees could recognize his clothes on sight — there was even a saying about it. As ATEEZ's concepts grew more intense over the years, he began to feel that sticking to one look would mean staying in place, so he deliberately pushed himself toward variety, and came to enjoy it. After seven or eight years of that, he admits to an ongoing tension between wanting to keep doing what suits him and feeling he should try something new — a friction he now treats as part of how he learns. Style, to him, isn't just clothing but attitude: he describes channeling an intense, almost apocalyptic warrior energy for "Adrenaline," versus deliberately rougher styling and a harder expression to become a "bad guy" for "BAD" — treating each release like stepping into a different role, one that stays on stage and doesn't carry over into daily life.

Off stage, he says he still feels like a high schooler when he's just hanging out — drawn to cute things and miniatures, happiest taking walks or seeing friends — and that he's good at switching cleanly between his stage character and his ordinary self rather than staying immersed. He'd genuinely like to try acting, having appeared in one project already, but wants to wait until he's properly trained rather than take on a role before he's ready, since he doesn't want to get in the way of people who've built careers around acting seriously — wanting to do something and an audience actually being satisfied by it, he points out, aren't the same thing. For now he's chosen to focus on the group, partly out of concern that spreading his attention elsewhere could hurt the team, reasoning that because ATEEZ and ATINY are a long-term relationship, there's no risk in pursuing something like acting later.

Looking back across roughly eight years since debut, he says the biggest change has been mental — not that he'd call himself strong even now, but he's learned real ways to comfort and love himself. He still has days he falls apart, and rather than hide it, he tells ATINY directly when things are hard, wanting to share even those feelings rather than only good ones, even while he goes back and forth on how much to say so he doesn't worry them. He traces a lot of this back to his trainee years, when he felt constantly outmatched by members who danced, sang, or rapped better, or who he thought looked better than him, and comparing himself to them rather than to his own past self ate away at him. Things started changing after debut, once he met ATINY, but the real breakthrough was learning to actually acknowledge what he was lacking instead of denying it — reframing that acknowledgment into motivation to try harder rather than into envy. Once comparison narrowed down to just himself, the jealousy disappeared, and he calls that shift the most important part of the whole process, something he now hopes to pass on to anyone working through the same thing.

Touring hasn't lost its power to surprise him, either — he assumed he'd grown used to the spotlight by now, but found himself crying on stage while headlining the BST Hyde Park Festival in London, simply from how happy he felt watching the crowd, and realized in that moment that he still isn't fully used to it. He admits some nights can feel tiring, but says he tries to give his best regardless, even for a single person in the audience, because performing is, in his words, the reason he and the group exist; he feels most alive there, and says all eight members share that same commitment on every stage, big or small. That commitment showed up concretely in the solo segment of his last tour, built around a snake concept: he wanted an image that was distinctly his own within ATEEZ, so he built a moment where he sheds his shirt the way a snake sheds its skin, treated it as the performance's essential centerpiece, and was intensely nervous going into it — a nervousness that paid off in how thrilled he was by ATINY's reaction.

Asked about what's ahead, he says he'd like to keep expanding a personal creative universe that branches off from ATEEZ's own story, with plenty of ideas still forming. New, smaller dreams keep surfacing too, even after he assumed they'd stop — publishing a book someday, competing in a fencing tournament, playing guitar on stage. On the group side, earlier dreams like reaching the Billboard 200 and the Billboard Hot 100 have already come true, and that success produced a new goal: topping all three Korean weekly music shows. Achieving it with "GOLDEN HOUR: Part.4" actually moved him to tears — proof, he says, that nothing the group had done was wasted, and that days like that genuinely do arrive if you keep going. Through all of it, he points to one thing that hasn't changed: the members never treat a single show as disposable, still shouting encouragement to each other before every performance, a ritual that still gives him chills no matter how many times he's done it.

Asked, finally, what makes someone genuinely "cool," he equates it with simply being a good person — something you can sense in something as small as a handshake or a look in someone's eyes. He admits that when he was younger he associated coolness with looking impressive, but now believes being a good person is what real coolness actually looks like.

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Official Sources

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Era Context

GOLDEN HOUR Era · 2024 – Present

The current chapter. Continued global touring, expanded solo visibility in fashion and media, and an evolving artistic voice — documented here as it unfolds.