What Happened
Yeonjun of TOMORROW X TOGETHER has done it again. On July 10, the singer released NO LABELS: PART 02, his second solo mini album, alongside its bright, summery title track "Ice Cream." The EP is the follow-up to last year’s debut solo project NO LABELS: PART 01, and it arrived with the kind of momentum that turns a comeback into a headline.
The numbers landed almost immediately. According to reporting on circulation data, NO LABELS: PART 02 moved more than 660,000 copies on its first day alone — a single-day figure that already eclipsed the entire first-week total of his 2025 debut EP, which had sold 601,105 copies. By the end of its opening tracking window (July 10 to 16), the record had climbed to 738,072 copies, comfortably setting a new personal best for the artist.
For a soloist stepping out from one of the biggest groups of K-pop’s fourth generation, it was a statement release — playful in sound, but serious in scale. "Ice Cream" leans into a light, danceable hook, and Yeonjun has framed the PART 02 chapter as a continuation of the confident, genre-fluid identity he introduced on his first outing.
Why It Matters
Here is the eye-catching part: that 738,072 first-week tally is the highest first-week sales of any Korean soloist so far in 2026. In a year already stacked with high-profile solo debuts and comebacks, Yeonjun edged to the front of the pack — and he did it as a member of a group rather than as a fully separated solo act.
That distinction matters because it speaks to how the modern K-pop machine is evolving. Agencies increasingly let flagship group members build parallel solo brands without leaving their teams, spreading a fandom’s energy across multiple release calendars. When a single group member can top the soloist sales chart for an entire year, it shows just how deep and mobilized these fandoms have become.
It is also a strong data point for Big Hit Music and its parent company, which continue to lean on TOMORROW X TOGETHER as a central pillar of their roster. A record-breaking solo release keeps the group’s commercial engine humming even between full-group comebacks, and it signals to the wider industry that the “soloist inside a supergroup” model has real staying power.
Reaction
Fans — TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s fandom is known as MOA — responded with the sort of coordinated enthusiasm that has become a hallmark of K-pop culture. Within hours of release, celebratory posts, streaming parties, and record-tracking threads flooded social platforms, and the "Ice Cream" hook quickly became a favorite for short-form video clips.
The global picture was just as loud. By mid-morning KST on July 11, NO LABELS: PART 02 had reportedly reached No. 1 on iTunes Top Albums charts in at least 11 regions, including markets as varied as Japan, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia. The EP also topped Japan’s Oricon daily album chart, underlining how quickly a Korean soloist release can travel across borders today.
That worldwide spread is a reminder that a K-pop comeback is no longer a purely domestic event. A single release can chart on multiple continents within a day, powered by fans who treat first-week performance almost like a team sport.
What’s Next
With the sales milestone locked in, attention turns to how Yeonjun carries the PART 02 era forward. Solo comebacks of this size typically roll into a stretch of music-show performances, content drops, and fan-focused events that keep a title track in rotation for weeks.
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There is also the group calendar to consider. TOMORROW X TOGETHER remains an active touring and recording act, so Yeonjun’s solo run is likely to be balanced against future full-group activities. That push-and-pull between solo spotlight and group commitments is exactly what makes the current chapter interesting to watch.
If PART 01 and PART 02 are indeed framed as connected chapters, the door is open for the story to continue — whether through additional releases, visual concepts, or eventually a stage built specifically around Yeonjun’s solo identity.
Closing Thoughts
What makes NO LABELS: PART 02 fun to talk about is the contrast at its core. The title track is breezy and low-stakes — a song literally named after ice cream — yet the release quietly rewrote a chart record and reasserted just how powerful a well-timed solo comeback can be inside the K-pop ecosystem.
It is a neat snapshot of where the genre sits in 2026: individual artists confidently exploring their own sound, fandoms turning every release into a global event, and the line between “group member” and “soloist” growing more relaxed by the year. For Yeonjun, the record is a milestone; for K-pop, it is another sign of how far a three-minute pop song can travel.
한글 요약
투모로우바이투게더(TXT)의 연준이 7월 10일 두 번째 솔로 미니앨범 ‘NO LABELS: PART 02’와 타이틀곡 ‘Ice Cream’을 발매했습니다. 발매 첫날에만 66만 장 이상이 팔리며 지난해 데뷔 솔로작의 첫 주 기록을 하루 만에 넘어성고, 첫 주(7월 10~16일) 판매량은 73만 8,072장을 기록했습니다.
이 수치는 2026년 한국 솔로 아티스트가 세운 첫 주 판매량 중 가장 높은 기록입니다. 그룹에 소속된 멤버가 한 해 솔로 판매 선두에 오른 만큼, 팬덤의 규모와 화력, 그리고 ‘그룹 안의 솔로’ 모델의 힘을 잘 보여주는 사례로 평가됩니다. 발매 직후 앨범은 일본·태국·사우디아라비아 등 최소 11개 지역 아이튠즈 톱 앨범 차트 1위와 일본 오리콘 데일리 앨범 차트 정상에도 올랐습니다.
가볍고 경쾌한 여름 콘셉트의 곡이 조용히 차트 기록을 갈아치운 점이 이번 컴백의 매력입니다. 앞으로 연준의 솔로 활동은 TXT의 그룹 일정과 균형을 맞추며 이어질 전망이며, PART 01과 PART 02가 연결된 책터로 제시된 만큼 다음 이야기에 대한 기대도 커지고 있습니다. (참고: Soompi, allkpop 등 보도)