SM Entertainment Introduces New SM Rookies — And Fans Are Already Theorizing What It Means

SM Entertainment is home to many different male and female groups, and many idols including members of Red Velvet, aespa, and NCT, were able to gain pre-debut experience and be exposed to the public through SM Rookies.

The SM Rookies’ social media accounts have been quiet since 2018 when NCT members Hendery, YangYang, and Xiaojun were added to the NCT line-up. The accounts have recently returned to life and shared the names and photos of three new Rookies!

According to posts made by the SM Rookies account, the new members’ names are Eunseok, Shohei, and Seunghan.

SM Rookie Shohei’s name was also hashtagged in Japanese, implying that Shohei is from Japan or of Japanese descent.

These new members are being referred to as SR22B, which stands for SM Rookies 2022 Boys. Past sets of SM Rookies were named similarly until their official debuts.

Many fans seem to think these may be future members of NCT’s upcoming Japan unit, NCT Tokyo, and have suspicions based on information current NCT members have given out about upcoming activities.

its very suspicious tho, sungchan and shotaro kept on telling us to look forward, shotaro went to japan twice for multiple schedules and now the smrookies page is revived, i think we're nearing that new unit 👀👀👀👀👀

— saf 🦦 (@taromarklee) July 1, 2022

SO THESE WILL BE THE NEW MEMBERS OF NCT??!!!! #EUNSEOK #SHOHEI #SEUNGHAN#SMROOKIES #SR22B pic.twitter.com/gQCIcE5CTi

— ani (@goyangijaem) July 1, 2022

Others are theorizing that these new rookies are part of SM Entertainment’s upcoming boy group that is said to not be a new NCT subunit.

https://twitter.com/gaeshenv/status/1542886993063202817?s=20&t=hOUC3XV3OrSYSUZiEaU0Tw

the new smrookies are for smnbg since they’re debuting this year💀 sm is still doing auditions for nct units so that’s not happening till next year

— eden★ (@astralcenter) July 1, 2022

We can’t wait to learn more about these new SM Rookies!