Ousted From SM, Lee Soo-man Just Beat the NCT He Built: A2O LITE Tops NCT WISH on Inkigayo

Featured photo: Lee Soo-man speaking at the CISAC World Congress in Seoul, 2024. Photo: TV10 via YouTube / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (AI-upscaled by the uploader).

On Sunday, October 25, 2026, Lee Soo-man’s new girl group A2O LITE beat SM Entertainment’s NCT WISH for No. 1 on SBS’s Inkigayo. NCT is the group system Lee personally unveiled for SM in 2016, and NCT WISH is its youngest team. A man pushed out of the company that bears his name three years ago won a network-TV No. 1 showdown against a team built on his own blueprint. Watching girls not even two weeks into their debut lift that trophy, I clapped along in front of my screen.

Sunday evening, 6,060 to 5,587

There were three No. 1 candidates on Inkigayo that day: Soyeon of i-dle with “I’ll Quit,” NCT WISH with “I SPY” and A2O LITE with “NEON.” The final scores, combining digital sales, album sales, social media and viewer votes, were 6,060 for “NEON,” 5,587 for “I SPY” and 4,056 for “I’ll Quit.”[1]

Inkigayo is one of the weekly music chart shows run by Korea’s three terrestrial networks (KBS, MBC and SBS), so its trophy carries more weight than a cable music-show win. Thirteen days after debut, A2O LITE took its fourth trophy after The Show (October 20), Show Champion (21) and M Countdown (22), and this was its first on a terrestrial network.[1][2] On stage the members said, “We debuted not long ago, and we’re so happy to receive this much love. It still doesn’t feel real.”[3] More than anything, I found that trembling speech adorable.

One of the most-liked comments on the official clip read: “I thought a terrestrial No. 1 might be hard since they don’t have a core fandom yet. Congrats on No. 1 on Inkigayo.”[4]

Also read: The No. 1 Korea Doesn't Want to Believe: Why Fans Doubt A2O

NCT was Lee Soo-man’s blueprint

NCT is the “unlimited expansion” group SM announced in 2016. The idea was a local team for each city, Seoul, Tokyo, China and more, with members moving between teams, and it was unveiled by Lee himself, then SM’s chief producer.[5] The system produced NCT U, NCT 127, NCT DREAM and WayV, and NCT WISH, which debuted on February 21, 2024, is its youngest unit.[6]

Lee left SM about a year before that youngest team debuted. NCT WISH is a team that an SM without him built on his blueprint. In 2023, SM’s management announced “SM 3.0,” a plan to run the company without Lee, and Lee sold his 14.8% stake in SM to HYBE while agreeing not to produce records in Korea for three years. At the end of that fight, SM ended up in Kakao’s hands.[7][8][17] When the agreement expired in February 2026, he immediately launched A2O LITE and A2O SOUL at the same time.[7] How he was pushed out, and the real reason he went to China, is in part 4 of this series, It Wasn’t Exile That Sent Him to China.

1.26 million albums stopped at the streaming charts

By the numbers, the two teams came armed with opposite weapons. NCT WISH’s fourth mini album I SPY sold 1,266,263 copies in Circle Chart’s week 42 (October 11–17) to top the album chart, its fourth straight million-seller.[9] A2O LITE’s “NEON” is a digital single, so it has no physical album to sell at all. That same week on Circle Chart, “NEON” hit No. 1 on the digital chart, and on the global K-pop chart it ended the 15-week reign of HUNTR/X from Netflix’s animated KPop Demon Hunters.[9]

On streaming, the gap is even wider. Early on October 26 on the Melon TOP100, “NEON” was No. 1 and “I SPY” No. 50. The previous day’s daily chart had them at No. 1 and No. 56.[10] On Spotify’s daily chart for South Korea, “NEON” had been No. 1 for 11 straight days through October 24.[11]

Both music videos went up on YouTube on the same day, October 12. Thirteen days later, “NEON” had 26.47 million views and “I SPY” 24.39 million. Likes stood at 506,000 to 94,000, a gap of more than five times.[12]

Here is SM’s side of the matchup, for comparison.

SM sold the most albums, but the song people listened to and watched most was Lee Soo-man’s. The 29-hour climb to No. 1 on Melon is the story of part 1, and two weeks later “NEON” is still at the top of Melon.

The kick Lee Soo-man demonstrated himself

On the evening of the Inkigayo win, Sunny of Girls’ Generation posted a short video on Instagram: “Behind-the-scenes to celebrate A2O LITE’s debut song ‘NEON’ winning its first terrestrial No. 1.” In a practice room, Lee personally demonstrates the kick at the start of the “NEON” choreography for member Aijing. “Don’t kick and then come up like this. Snap it like this, come up right here, and then kick like this.”[13] Sunny is Lee’s niece. After her SM contract ended in 2023, she joined A2O and worked as a producer on this release.[14] Her account, quiet for about 14 months, is moving again because of this group.[15]

What fans see in this group is, in the end, SM. The most-liked comments on the “NEON” video say so: “Is this a Lee Soo-man memoir group? I can feel everything from BoA to S.E.S., Girls’ Generation, f(x), Red Velvet and aespa” (13,000 likes), and “Seeing this many Korean comments, I get how much people missed SM’s NEO vibe” (12,000).[12] The people who missed “SM-ness” the most did not find it at today’s SM. His week at age 74, still lifting his leg in the practice room, is in part 3.

Kakao’s Melon had its busiest week

In the week of October 12–18, when “NEON” came out, total listening time on Melon was 3.73 million hours. That was up 41.6% from the same week a year earlier (2.63 million hours) and the highest since March 2021.[16] Melon is Kakao’s music platform, and Kakao is the company that took SM at the end of the 2023 fight that pushed Lee out. Reporting those numbers, Money Today wrote that “Kakao is quietly smiling too.”[16]

The company that took the company Lee lost had its busiest week in five and a half years, and the name at the top of the chart that week was Lee Soo-man’s.

Sources

1. Topstar News, October 25, 2026
2. Ilgan Sports, October 25, 2026, Star News, October 25, 2026
3. Gukje News, October 25, 2026
4. SBSKPOP X INKIGAYO official YouTube comments (497 likes, checked October 26, 2026)
5. Tenasia, January 27, 2016
6. TV Daily, NCT 10th anniversary feature
7. @star1, October 2026
8. Money Today, October 26, 2026
9. Break News, October 22, 2026 (Circle Chart week 42), News Culture
10. Melon TOP100 and daily chart, checked 04:50 KST, October 26, 2026
11. Kworb, Spotify Daily Chart South Korea, October 24, 2026
12. Official YouTube channels’ views, likes and comments, checked October 26, 2026 KST
13. Star News, October 25, 2026
14. Ilgan Sports, October 25, 2026
15. My Daily, October 25, 2026
16. Money Today, October 26, 2026 (IGAWorks Mobile Index)
17. Nocut News, February 2023 (SM 3.0, Kakao stake)