Fade to black. A term used which means to end a film or a scene of a film by causing the image to disappear and become black.

In the k-pop world, this term can be used for all the kpop groups that tried to make it but because of various reasons, faded to black.
Demion popped up on my radar after they released a statement at the beginning of September saying they were disbanding. Raise your hand if you didn’t even realize they were a group. *raises hand* Kpop has become oversaturated with groups and solo acts debuting almost every week. This year isn’t even over yet and over 90 groups have debuted. 90! Can you name them all because I, for one, cannot. It makes me wonder, if they don’t get that preverbal foothold, where do they go?

With Demion, the reason why they faded to black was because of their company’s financial issues. It takes a lot of money to build a kpop group. Singing lessons, dancing lessons, speech lessons, plastic surgery…the list goes on and on. It’s to the point that if the group isn’t an almost instant sensation, the company is in trouble.
Another reason why groups fade to black is because of criminal issues. First thing that comes to my mind would be the group DMTN. DMTN originally debuted as Dalmatian in late 2009 and was fairly successful. They changed their name to DMTN when they decided to go with a more mature look and sound for their comeback.

Then in 2013 an arrest report was filed for member Daniel. He was accused for selling and using marijuana. He was sentenced for 1 year in jail but was changed to 3 years’ probation as well as over 100 hours of community service and substance abuse.
Naturally since one of their members is “reflecting” on his deeds, the group is on the inactive list for a while. I doubt the group will ever be back since Daniel was supposedly headed to America to focus on his studies. It was a shame because that group was really talented.

Talent doesn’t go far in this kpop business. Just because you can sing or dance well, doesn’t mean you have the it factor. Take the girl group Kiss & Cry. They had talent. They could dance. But they still didn’t have enough to keep from fading to black. To this day I don’t know why the group went their separate ways. I can only imagine that they weren’t popular enough and the company had to move on with other things.
There are countless other stories of groups that have faded to black. It would be impossible to list them all but if you have some time on your hands check out the youtube series: Fade to Black and see some of the groups that are gone, but not forgotten.