NCT Dream

NCT Dream took shape in August 2016 when SM Entertainment introduced the third sub-unit of its boundary-free K-pop project NCT, known formally as Neo Culture Technology and designed to accommodate an open-ended roster distributed across satellite groups in Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, and Bangkok. The ensemble made its entrance with the single “Chewing Gum.”

After several Top Five EPs, the act reached the summit of the Gaon Albums chart with its first full-length release, Hot Sauce, in 2021. Glitch Mode repeated the feat the following year, and the group closed 2022 with the special mini-album Candy: Winter. The third studio album, ISTJ, arrived in 2023 and again led the South Korean rankings before Dreamscape appeared in 2024.

The sub-unit’s debut single “Chewing Gum” surfaced in 2016 and later anchored the 2017 EP The First. Korean- and Mandarin-language versions of both that track and the follow-up “My First and Last” were issued. We Young arrived later in 2017 and We Go Up followed in 2018, each placing inside the Top Five on Korean charts and the U.S. World chart; the third “We” installment, We Boom, appeared in 2019. The Japan-only compilation The Dream came out the next year.

Hot Sauce, the group’s inaugural full-length, was released in 2021, topped the Korean chart, and was subsequently repackaged as Hello Future. NCT Dream contributed the track “Dreaming” to the NCT project Universe before year’s end.

Mark’s return to the lineup accompanied the March 2022 arrival of the second studio album Glitch Mode, which immediately claimed the top Korean position and debuted at number 50 on the Billboard 200—NCT Dream’s first appearance on that ranking. Candy: Winter followed in December.

The romantic single “Broken Melodies” introduced the third full-length, ISTJ, whose title references the Myers-Briggs personality indicators for introversion, sensing, thinking, and judging. Released in July 2023, the album topped the South Korean Circle Albums chart and reached number 28 on the Billboard 200. The seventh EP, DREAM( )SCAPE, arrived in March 2024 and preceded the November full-length Dreamscape, which, despite its similar name, contained none of the same tracks. The set peaked at number two in Korea and produced the Billboard-charting single “Rains in Heaven.”