The Rose performs live on the ROSETOPIA Tour in Los Angeles
AKHET
There’s a certain kind of quiet that can only be appreciated after years of noise and The Rose have finally found their way into it.
On the first Friday of June, Madison Square Garden was the loudest place in New York from just the outside fervor. Hours before tip-off of Game 2 of the NBA Finals, Knicks fans were already flooding the plaza as well as MSG security and staff for the Garden’s outdoor watch party. But backstage in the Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden, four Korean rock musicians are the calmest people in the building, unhurried and almost startlingly chill for a band about to walk onstage before thousands to kick off their ROSETOPIA World Tour. It’s an unexpected energy to experience on opening night, but calm might be the point.
“These days, it’s very chill,” keyboardist-vocalist Dojoon explains of the band’s temperature after nearly 10 years together. “Really chill.”
“We were always chasing, chasing,” The Rose’s lead vocalist and guitarist Woosung says, “and finally I think we could just be.”
Once the ROSETOPIA tour wraps, the band announced that they’ll step away for an indefinite hiatus — “not as an ending,” their statement read, “but as a moment to breathe.” As The Rose speak, there’s no sense of grief, fracture or exhaustion, just a group of musicians who’ve earned the right to stop and look around.
“We’ve been touring and writing songs continuously for four years,” keyboardist-vocalist Dojoon explains, tracing the arc back to the last time the group paused. “That was one of the reasons why we need to take some time and then really look for ourselves a little bit more. We’ve found a lot of achievement and we’re so happy and proud of it. And we’ll see how the world tells us to carry on.”
The Rose are careful about how they tell their story because they didn’t choose their earlier pauses. Arriving amid the pandemic and the mandatory military enlistments of the group’s Korean members, as well as shadowed by a contract-termination lawsuit against their original label, The Rose says those years were defined by circumstances largely outside their hands.
“Our fans are used to us taking hiatuses because of certain situations and everything,” Woosung admits. “But this time we had the comfort of our individual independence to be able to release the news our way and take the narrative our way. Because for the longest time, the narrative was never in our favor. It was always someone else involved. Some other companies involved. Our narrative was never fully narrative. Announcing that was us showing that we have 100% control of where this is going. Now that we have 100% control of our brand, it’ll be even more exciting after the hiatus, whenever that is.”
The Rose’s latest music is designed with a similar message.
Released in April alongside their hiatus announcement, the shimmering single “Blue Moon” is described by the band as “a love letter of our 10-year journey that we were in together,” with Woosung quick to clarify, “it wasn’t a goodbye letter; it was a thank-you letter. We didn’t over-explain it, because I think simple is best when it comes to saying thank you and appreciating.” The song includes telling lyrics like “I remember what I love, I remember what I lost,” that reach back across years of meeting fans, touring their music globally, and navigating career uncertainty and industry politics.
Released in June, “Utopia” leans into the anthemic register The Rose have always embraced but adds a heavy dash of ’80s synth-pop backed by pounding percussion and a rush of choir-sized harmonies. Woosung describes the track as having “church vibes.”
“Blue Moon” and “Utopia” precede the new album ROSE, a title the band has been guarding for the better part of a decade together. “We’ve been saving this album name from the beginning,” Woosung says, recalling their EPs and LPs Dawn, Void, HEAL, DUAL and WRLD. “Four letters. Always.”
While the album’s rollout was briefly delayed while Woosung was treated for a vocal nodule has since fully recovered from, the pause meant fans could experience multiple new ROSE songs for the first time on tour before they were ever released as a truly special — and unmissable — live experience specifically for this tour.
The Rose live in Los Angeles
AKHET
While The Rose’s focus remains on the band and future commitments including Korean festivals, the guys are already shaping their individual plans.
Hajoon is fully stepping into the spotlight with his own solo project. “I just wanted to show more about myself,” the band’s drummer (who also goes by Dylan) says. “So, I’m gonna express myself through the music — I just wanna try!” The Rose’s leader frames it as something long overdue: “After we knew we were gonna go on the hiatus, Dylan wanted to just get it all out,” Woosung says.
For his part, The Rose’s leader has a full solo album “almost ready” — a poppier evolution of the sound Woosung explored on his 2021 record Genre and singles like “Lazy.” He says, “It’s an upgraded version of that album. It won’t be heavily EDM like my last solo album [4444 released in 2024], which was more of a passion project. This one is more pop, one hundred percent.”
Meanwhile, bassist Taegyeom has been studying to further his acting career. “Music and acting are an art,” he says while reflecting on recent acting lessons, building off his previous roles in Korean dramas. “The first time, I was really nervous. But I felt like it was similar to the music — just the expressing method is different. I love acting too, but it’s really hard.”
Dojoon has the most romantic plan of all: “I am actually going around the world and just feeling the vibe of where I want to reside,” he says. “I’m trying to look for a place to live somewhere abroad.”
The freedom extends past the professional. While the group began more squarely in the K-pop industry, one where artists’ personal lives are historically policed, The Rose talk about the prospect of families with a candor after the subject arrives, fittingly, when asked if there are any final rumors they want to clear up before the break.
“The one rumor we had was that someone has kids,” Woosung says, making the entire group laugh while recalling the exact timing of the memory. “It was recently, like three months ago, a Korean reporter called [AKHET CEO and founder] Clive [Kim] and was like, ‘We got news that one of The Rose members is hiding a kid. We’re just trying to confirm if that’s true.’ Clive was, literally, like, ‘Just put the news out so we get all kinds of publicity!’ And they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re not putting that out.’ Because we want kids! But we don’t have kids yet.”
Which raises the obvious question: Will we see Baby Roses pop up in the future?
“The thing is with kids, it’s not just up to us,” Woosung says for the group. “It would have to be a mutual agreement with our partners. And then, if we ever are able to not just tour every year — which, you know, this hiatus will give us the comfort to — maybe. I don’t know. I mean, it’s about time — we’re like 34, 33, right? I don’t wanna be an old dad.”
Whether or not The Rose is starting their fatherhood era is not the point, but rather the reminder that nothing gets decided for the group anymore: “We wouldn’t lie about that if we had babies. We would say we have babies, we would not hide that.”
Despite all their grand plans, the announcement produced a twist the band never anticipated: the moment The Rose said they were stepping back, offers started pouring in.
“It’s kind of funny, actually, because we were gonna stop after this tour,” Woosung admits, “but we got a couple of things we couldn’t say no to.” Among them, the band’s first-ever brand ambassadorship with a Korean company, plus a slate of Korean and invitations to overseas festivals they hadn’t explored in years.
Apparently, the prospect of future absence made the industry grow fonder. Today, The Rose navigate the industry through AKHET, the rebranded evolution of their self-made label Windfall (the members’ solo ventures will be handled by their own management), with true DIY independence. The name is borrowed from the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for “horizon” — the point where the sun disappears and, in time, returns; a symbol of rebirth. Today, The Rose write, release and distribute on their own terms (Woosung said he personally uploaded the band’s newest track for release just days before release). After a career spent fighting to get back on stage, it’s the four of them who get to decide when another chapter starts.
It’s why “Blue Moon” was the perfect song to start this “thank you” era.
“ We learned so much through this,” Woosung says of creating ROSE’s lead single. “I’m sure our fans, even if they were fans for two years, just one year, or the whole nine years, we just kind of learn as we go with music in our lives and the music really brings back the memories, right? We are hoping that with this ‘Blue Moon,’ [fans] could come back to this time and they could look at it, say, five years later down the line, ‘Oh yeah, I remember, and I learned so much from then to now.’ Because blue moons always come back around once in a while.”
A blue moon is not a disappearance but a phenomenon that recurs every two to three years, on a schedule set by the cosmos. The Rose spent a decade running to prove they belonged, and, now, even with a city roaring outside the venue’s wall, they’ve found the stillness to realize the peace their music and vision have granted them and the power they hold to decide whenever their blue moon comes back again.