eye of heaven (하늘의 눈) is a five member (formerly seven) boy group under shine entertainment. the group consists of chaeeon, jinyoung, river, chenxi, xingxi, kade, and mingyeom. the group was created through the survival show SUN SEARCHERS and debuted on january 3rd, 2015 with the mini album SUNRISE.
the story of eye of heaven, from sun searchers to now. from a number one sunlight. tw: injuries, overworking, mentions of abuse, drug use, hate trains, mobs.
word count: 1388 words.
as an EYE OF HEAVEN stan (or otherwise known as a sunlight) since their predebut survival show "SUN SEARCHERS", i feel that i am incredibly qualified in the department of detailing the history of EOH to new fans, or anyone who's just curious about everything.
so grab your snacks and get comfy because with more than a decade of being active, there is a good portion of things we have to cover.
now i'm sure if you're tuned into the industry at all, you've seen some of the headlines that have gone around about this group. with that in mind, it's important that throughout this video you remember that while SHINE ENT. does a great job at creating successful groups, they do not give a fuck about the wellbeing of their idols.
EOH was the first group to ever come out of SHINE, and they wanted to make a big impression with their first (and soon to be most successful) act. it took a lot of deliberation in the the management offices but SHINE eventually determined that their ideal course of action would be to host a "survival show".
this survival show entitled SUN SEARCHERSc consisting of eighteen of the company's twenty two male trainees all competing for a spot in the company's first ever group's debut lineup. cool right? we had already seen it before with companies like JYP with SIXTEEN and STARSHIP with NO:MERCY and those groups turned out pretty successful, what could go wrong here?
a lot of things apparently.
for starters, the show would take place from october 12th to december 11th, 2014, making the oldest contestant 25 and the youngest contestant, MINGYEOM just 14. while in retrospect, this brought up a lot of concern from fans, viewers at the time actually didn't seem to notice enough to care due to both MINGYEOM and KADE being pushed as "visuals" within the show's promotions. with even the judges constantly praising their "mature" looks and "sexiness".
the most popular clip you may have seen from SUN SEARCHERS would probably be the episode where XINGXI was introduced to the other contestants. fresh off the plane from china with the intention to just be a trainee under SHINE, the staff would actually bring him to the SUN SEARCHERS dorms and introduce him as a new contestant nearly halfway through the show. XINGXI would receive a massive hate train both online and from some of the other SHINE trainees for the "special treatment" he received, and this hate would unfortunately last so long that it would eventually lead to his departure from the group.
another thing that would become a big source of controversy later on was the fact that the other eleven trainees were revealed to never have been in contention for debuting. unbeknownst to these additional trainees nor the final lineup, SHINE actually was dead set on the lineup, even with the inclusion of XINGXI from day one, and only used SUN SEARCHERS as a form of publicity. it was just a waste of the other eleven trainees' time and wellbeing being forced through the stress of mission after mission.
the debut lineup from SUN SEARCHERS would be "revealed" as 1ST PLACE, fifteen year old KADE NOE, 2ND PLACE, nineteen year old SUCHART "RIVER" YONTARARAK, 3RD PLACE, twenty year old JWA JINYOUNG, 4TH PLACE, fourteen year old YOON MINGYEOM, 5TH PLACE, nineteen year old NIU CHENXI, 6TH PLACE, twenty one year old GYEON CHAEEON, and 7TH PLACE, nineteen year old LUO XINGXI.
even with the amount of negative attention EOH was receiving before their feet even touched the debut stage, you couldn't deny the fact that the drama was intriguing enough for fans (like myself) to be in anticipation for their debut.
EOH would debut on january 3rd, 2015 with a mini album titled SUNRISE which would actually be pretty well received by fans due to all the attention they had been getting from everything that went wrong with SUN SEARCHERS.
the next two comebacks would both go by relatively smoothly with varying levels of success and surprisingly little to no controversy considering the amount of things that get brought up each comeback nowadays.
the problems would start to arise with the groups third comeback IF YOU DO. it was a more mature concept than what the boys had been performing previously, and while not super sexy or anything, fans were starting to get weirded out since two of the members were still minors at the time. during a pre show filming for one of the music shows they were performing on, MINGYEOM would fall due to a stage malfunction and would injure his right knee and ankle, fans who were able to be there in person recall that the injury seemed bad enough that MINGYEOM was crying even moving his leg at all, and many believed that they would either delay the performance or do so without the maknae. however, they were shocked to see that EOH would perform IF YOU DO with MINGYEOM right there like nothing happened, and the maknae would not be seen entering a hospital until promotions for the song were over. which was an additional week after the injury.
MINGYEOM's leg injury would be the first in a series of concerning scandals regarding the safety of the EOH members. from several more injuries that went either untreated completely or pushed aside for comebacks, alleged abuse of the youngest members, fans mobbing the members at schedules allegedly sold to fans, foreign members getting excessive hate for speaking their native languages (which mind you is 4/7 members) and drug use allegations (which in my opinion should have been the least of their worries??!!)
unable to just ignore the backlash like intended, SHINE would surprisingly put EOH on a hiatus on may 3rd, 2020 in an attempt to get things to cool down a bit. this ended up having the opposite effect because it just made sunlights even more concerned about what was going on behind the scenes when they weren't performing meaning we could at least see them.
the hiatus would end on december 5th, 2020 when EOH would release their single BYE BYE BYE, a weirdly joyful song considering the circumstances and current concept. and fans would soon notice that only six member would be active during it, meaning no XINGXI.
this would also be an extremely weird comeback due to the name being BYE BYE BYE, and XINGXI announcing his departure from the group days into promotions, leading fans to wonder if the comeback was the company's sick way of announcing it, especially due to the tense and/or upset expressions of the members throughout every interview and performance.
albeit six members now, unfortunately the group garnered even more popularity after XINGXI left, due to the amount of hate he got and unfortunately shed on the group. even some sunlights admit to being relieved when his departure was revealed.
the success and quality of the comebacks got so good from 2020-2023 that it sort of became hard for fans to remember what was concerning us so badly a few years ago, even if it was still happening right in front of us. could you blame us? songs like CALLING MY NAME, DEER HUNTER and BTBT are kind of hard to just ignore for the sake of making a statement, especially when SHINE hasn't listened to anything.
we sunlights were sort of in a sense of bliss for that three year period, while some of us were definitely missing XINGXI, we couldn't help our shoulders moving with comeback after comeback. which is why we were kind of blindsided when after CHAEEON left for the military in 2024 and was supposed to return at the beginning of 2026, he just never came back to the group. at first it was just silence on both his and SHINE's end, but then in march we got a singular post on instagram and that's it.
so from seven to five, through . . . all of that stuff, as you can tell sunlights, and obviously EYE OF HEAVEN have been through a lot. and i hope this doesn't scare you off, because this group is really great if you take the time to tune in, and even if you just stream, we'd appreciate it!
anyways, stan EYE OF HEAVEN now!
★ FORMER: GYEON "CHAEEON" . 01.17.94 — leader, main rapper, sub vocalist . JWA "JINYOUNG" . 03.09.95 — visual, main dancer, sub rapper . NIU "CHENXI" . 04.27.96 — leader*, main vocalist, sub rapper . SUCHART "RIVER" YONTARARAK . 05.18.96 — main dancer, visual, vocalist . FORMER: LUO "XINGXI" . 11.06.96 — main dancer, rapper . "KADE" NOE . 12.02.99 — center, lead vocalist, lead dancer, sub rapper . YOON "MINGYEOM" . 02.14.00 — face of the group, maknae, main vocalist.
★ GROUP INFORMATION: NAME . eye of heaven (하늘의 눈) . LABEL. shine entertainment . DEBUT DATE. january 3rd, 2015 . GREETING. "shining as brightly as the sun, we are the eye of heaven!" . FANDOM NAME. sunlights . FANDOM COLORS. sunshine yellow and sunburnt orange.
