of their fans is Piece. Keeho is the leader of the group.

In this latest official poster on the company’s website, Keeho is positioned at the center, with his arms outstretched to embrace the two members in front of him,

like a parent figure quietly supporting the group from behind. This visual composition aligns with his long-established leader image as a gentle, nurturing presence within the team, someone who cares for and supports his fellow members like a compassionate mother.

This screenshot shows Keeho’s profile on a fan communication platform. He warmly invites fan interaction (“ask me about anything”) and expresses gratitude for their love and support in another post. The banner includes photos with other members, highlighting his role as a group leader and reinforcing his approachable and caring image.

Keeho’s post “ask me about anything” performs a tone of openness and familiarity, creating the illusion of equal communication and reinforcing his image as an accessible idol. His use of both English and Korean highlights his bilingual identity, aligning with FNC’s branding of him as a global spokesperson. Repeated gratitude in his award post reflects affective labour, a professionalized form of sincerity that sustains emotional investment from fans. The “authenticity” displayed in these posts may partly reflect Keeho’s genuine personality, but it is more likely a performance shaped by institutional management. His gentleness, sincerity, and sense of humor together constitute a continuously manufactured form of “branded authenticity.”

The core theme of “EX” is female autonomy and romantic freedom. The line “Every girl deserves to have her exploration” reflects a post-feminist discourse of self-agency and pleasure, encouraging women to break free from traditional romantic roles. It also mirrors a Western cultural attitude toward relationships, one that values independence, freedom, and enjoyment. For a K-pop boy group, such openly feminist and English-language lyrics are relatively rare, revealing the group’s creative alignment with Western pop culture and values.

“Night of My Life”, on the other hand, is filled with a party-like and self-empowering atmosphere. It conveys the message of living in the moment and celebrating freedom and success, which is characteristic of Western youth culture. Linguistically, expressions like “My fit is mint, Milano / Doing what I wanna” carry a clear hip-hop tone, symbolizing confidence, independence, and lifestyle expression. The overall vibe is upbeat and direct, making it a prime example of mainstream Western pop sensibility tailored for global audiences.

During the interview segment, only Keeho communicated fluently and confidently with the host. When asked why they decided to release an English album, he replied: “It’s time for K-pop to reach a larger audience. It’s not just for Koreans, but for everyone.” This statement is crucial from an industrial perspective. It was not merely a personal expression but a brand discourse assigned to him by the company. Keeho acts here as a cross-cultural spokesperson, embodying FNC’s global branding stance: “K-pop belongs to everyone.” His English fluency and inclusive rhetoric are institutionalised tools, deployed to humanise and internationalise the brand image.

Throughout the broadcast, Keeho was consistently framed at the centre of the camera, while the audience behind him showed fans of diverse races and nationalities. This visual arrangement produces a narrative of “multicultural coexistence” and “global unity,” positioning Keeho as a symbol of inclusivity and approachability. His image is therefore a product of visual storytelling, one carefully designed through camera work and stage composition to portray him as a global leader.

Keeho’s Canadian background, bilingual ability, and gentle confidence may appear as personal traits, yet they are, in fact, deliberately selected and amplified as brand markers by FNC. The company capitalises on these “authentic” qualities to craft an internationally marketable idol who embodies “realness.” The essence of stardom, as Dyer (1998) argues, lies in contradiction, being both real and ideal, ordinary and extraordinary. Keeho exemplifies this industrial contradiction: his “authenticity” is not innate but produced through selective promotion, narrative framing, and visual construction, a form of branded authenticity engineered to meet the demands of the global market.

In contrast, on Chinese social media, reposted content combined tones of “gossip consumption” and “defensive justification,” creating a secondary sphere of public opinion that prolonged the scandal’s visibility.

Within the K-pop context, the Korean media remained largely silent, with mainstream outlets avoiding coverage. The company managed to stabilize Keeho’s image through strategic silence, effectively controlling the narrative by not engaging with it directly.

The transnational circulation of Keeho’s nightclub controversy reveals the uneven geography of K-pop fandom and its impact on image construction. While the initial posts on Twitter were met with indifference or sarcasm,“no one cares because they have no Korean fans”, the same comments were later translated and reposted on Chinese social media, where the discussion gained renewed intensity. This disjuncture between Western detachment and Asian moral scrutiny reveals the uneven distribution of celebrity visibility and influence across cultural markets.

The absence of Korean mainstream coverage further shows the operation of managed silence within the idol industry, allowing the scandal to circulate only within semi-official and fan-translated spaces. Through this fragmented flow of information, Keeho’s image was redefined: Western fandoms normalised the event as casual nightlife, whereas Chinese fans re-moralised it as a test of character. Together, these responses illustrate how media circulation and fan commentary co-produce celebrity meaning across linguistic boundaries, turning controversy into another stage for negotiating authenticity.

Keeho, a Canadian-Korean member, stands out as the group’s fluent English speaker and global spokesperson. His cross-cultural background gives P1Harmony a more international presence, setting him apart from his Korean and Japanese-Korean teammates. Known as the “team’s mother,” Keeho shows humour, warmth, and emotional intelligence. His leadership style is caring rather than authoritative, creating harmony within the group and reinforcing his image as a nurturing leader. As P1Harmony’s main vocal, Keeho’s wide vocal range and soulful tone fit R&B perfectly, “a voice more soothing than the ocean,” as he describes himself. His voice bridges the contrast between the group’s sharper and higher-pitched vocalists, creating musical harmony that reflects his emotional and artistic role in the team.

In fan-written narratives, Keeho’s persona is reimagined through two dominant modes of emotional projection. In self-insert romance stories, many fans begin from his Canadian background, constructing him as a “Western boy” or even a playful, confident playboy figure, an interpretation influenced by his streetwear fashion, bilingualism, and self-assured stage presence.

In boy-love fiction （Fan-created boylove 「BL 」fiction featuring Keeho and other members as main characters），however, Keeho is often positioned as the bottom partner. This recurring characterisation reflects how fans perceive and amplify his “feminine” or soft emotional traits, such as empathy, humour, and expressive warmth.

On fan community polls, he is frequently ranked as the “No.1 bottom” of P1Harmony, affectionately nicknamed “辣妹 (spicy girl)”, “mean girl”, or even “queen”，“bitchy”. These nicknames and narrative roles illustrate how fans collectively rewrite his gendered persona, negotiating power, intimacy, and desire through creative re-authorship.

Fans who regularly attend fansigns and consistently produce high-quality photo outputs are often recognized as “fansite” or core fans, admired by others within the fandom. Different props and concepts lead to diverse visual styles, ranging from masculine or feminine aesthetics to couple (CP) themes with other members, or stylizations inspired by Keeho’s own daily fashion and meme-based concepts. These co-created visual performances not only enrich the idol’s image repertoire but also continuously fuel his online popularity.

Through these interactions, fans become active co-producers of Keeho’s public image, blending fandom aesthetics with industrial publicity.