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IVE’s Rei surprised fans by resuming her activities with the group on May 26, 2023. The 19-year-old singer went on hiatus on April 11 to take care of her health issues. It was right at the time when the group made their much-awaited comeback. It also broke many fans’ hearts that she could not participate in the comeback promotions.
On May 26, Starship Entertainment released an official statement announcing her return to the group’s fancafe. The announcement read as follows:
“Hello. This is Starship Entertainment. This announcement is regarding the future promotions of our agency artist IVE member Rei. Rei’s symptoms have recently improved greatly and she’s decided to re-join the team and resume activities. While carrying out their future schedules, we will closely check the health statuses of IVE, including Rei, and do our best to care for our artists. We ask for lots of support for Rei. Thank you.”
The same day, photos of IVE’s Rei with the group for their Music Station Japan event were posted on their official Twitter account, leading to much cheer and celebration from the fandom.
IVE’s Rei resumes group activities, fans celebrate the return of rapper-vocalist
IVE’s Rei initially had fans concerned when she did not fully participate in the press conference of the group’s comeback, I've IVE, held on April 10 due to health issues. The next day, Starship Entertainment, the group’s agency, released a statement announcing the 19-year-old singer’s condition. The singer suffered from "abnormal symptoms such as heart palpitations and stuffiness."
After over a month, IVE’s Rei gave fans a surprise by performing with the group on Music Station for their Japanese promotions of 1st EP, WAVE, on May 26. Both South Korean netizens and international fans showered the singer with love and compliments.
Fans couldn’t stop mentioning how much they missed the 19-year-old singer and shared that IVE was finally complete. Many comments and tweets about ‘OT6’ (One True 6 members, referring to all the members of a particular group). The post on theqoo, a South Korean platform, celebrating IVE’s Rei’s return was viewed over 88k times.
Take a look at how fans reacted to the singer’s return to group activities below:
Meanwhile, IVE continued to make records with their latest release. Their full-length album, I’ve IVE, became the third girl group album in Hanteo’s history to surpass one million sales in the first week of release. From April 10 to 16, the album raked in 1,102,107 sales.
In April, IVE also became the first and only K-pop girl group to have two songs with perfect all-kills in 2023. The first song was their pre-release single Kitsch, and the second was I AM, the title track of their album I’ve IVE.
A perfect all-kill is ranking first on all major South Korean music charts that provide real-time, daily, and weekly data, such as MelOn, Genie, Bugs, Vibe, Flo, and YouTube Music. The data for this is presented by Instiz iChart.
