HUR+: From DD52 Runners-Up to Zepp New Taipei — A Nine-Member Girl Group That Never Stopped

30-second overview: HUR+ (originally HUR), 2020 runners-up of Diamond Generation DD52 — six members from "Storm Spades" debuted, with producer Felipe.Z founding AOA Entertainment Lab. They lost the finale by 2.5 points, but the champion group G.O.F saw their momentum collapse within a year, and fellow debut group PINK FUN was rocked by member departures. Six years on, HUR+ is the only one of the three groups still releasing albums. Three albums (REVELATION, Crimzon, 9OF9 ARCANA), a crowdfunding campaign that broke NT$1.5 million in ten minutes for a South Korea promotional trip, and members from Mongolia, the UK, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Felipe.Z said: "If you use the same Korean formula, how could Taiwan ever win?"

September 4, 2020, evening. The finale of Diamond Generation DD52.

Storm Hearts: 57.9 points. Storm Spades: 55.4 points¹.

A difference of 2.5 points. The champions were Storm Hearts, who debuted under the name G.O.F (Girls On Fire). The runners-up were Storm Spades — six women who walked away from the competition stage.

In the logic of idol competitions, runners-up typically go like this: the audience feels a twinge of regret during the vote, and a few months later they've forgotten the names. But these six women encountered a producer who didn't play by the rules.

One Producer's Fifty Million

Felipe.Z had his eye on Storm Spades before DD52 even aired. After the show ended, he partnered with Liang Ting-Hao to found AOA Entertainment Lab and signed all six members of Storm Spades, giving them a new name: HUR².

HUR comes from Hurricane (the English abbreviation of Storm Spades), and is also a homophone of "Her" — symbolizing feminine power².

November 6, 2020: HUR officially debuted. Less than two months after the DD52 finale.

Felipe.Z later did the math for reporters:

✦ "Everyone thought we were just building a girl group — actually we were running a company!"³

He put in fifty million NT dollars into HUR. He originally estimated thirty to forty million would work. Once things actually got moving, he realized that if they truly wanted to hit K-pop quality standards (MV production, choreography training, image packaging, overseas marketing), they would need three to four hundred million³.

The gap between fifty million and four hundred million is the real distance between Taiwan's idol industry and Korea's.

Six Members

HUR at debut was a six-member group:

Two of the six members were not Taiwanese: C.Holly was from the UK, and Sizi from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Felipe.Z made this choice intentionally from the start: building international DNA into the group's composition².

Leader Li Shan-Zhen's story deserves a separate mention. During college she was scouted for online shows and commercials, but her family opposed an entertainment career. She obtained a flight attendant license and worked as a cabin crew member while pursuing variety work, until 2023 when she officially resigned from the airline to focus full-time on Next Girlz¹¹. Going from flight attendant to idol group leader, within Taiwan's idol industry salary structure, was essentially economic suicide. She did it anyway.

November 5, 2021: HUR released their debut album REVELATION². The opening track "Pain Killer" generated significant discussion — the music leaned into an R&B foundation with aggressive indie-electronic elements, completely breaking from the sweet mainstream path of Mandopop girl groups at the time⁴.

📝 Curator's Note
Among DD52's four competing groups, Storm Spades was known for intense stage presence, contrasting with champion Storm Hearts' "sweet and energetic" approach¹. Felipe.Z pushed this contrast to the extreme after debut: the goal was to build a group deliberately not like a K-pop group.

"The More Different, the Better"

If there's one line to summarize HUR+'s strategy, it's this from Felipe.Z:

✦ "Actually, the more different from Korea we are, the better. If you use the same formula and tricks as Korea, how could Taiwan possibly win?"³

Behind these words is the math. Korea's three major agencies generate annual revenue in the hundreds of billions of won; a new group's pre-debut training costs run in the tens of billions of won. Taiwan doesn't have that capital scale. Competing head-to-head with K-pop production standards is a dead end.

Felipe.Z's approach was differentiation through musical style. HUR+'s arrangements draw heavily on R&B and indie-electronic elements, with high English lyric ratios and a visual aesthetic that leans dark and street. Unlike the "concept switching" common in K-pop girl groups, HUR+'s style hasn't pivoted dramatically from debut to now — they've always been the group with aggressive energy⁴.

In 2023, they competed on Next Girlz as the nine-member limited lineup "Crimzon." Judges criticized them for being "too aggressive." Felipe.Z's public response was six words:

✦ "That's stone age thinking."⁵

From Six to Nine

Next Girlz gave HUR two things: exposure, and the opportunity to expand.

After the 2023 show ended, three new members officially joined, and HUR became HUR+²:

Lan Lan's addition is particularly notable. She "only started learning to dance" in 2022, entered the competition almost by accident — originally just recommended to audition from a dance class¹¹. But at 15 she was called the "team's ace" by Mirror Media. Her own take was breezy: "I'm still young, so I have time to try things."¹¹

Looking at this table reveals one thing: each new member simultaneously brings a market entry point². Shannon's Taiwanese-American background and modeling experience point to Western luxury markets. Grace comes from Indonesia (Southeast Asia's largest economy). Lan Lan's Taiwanese-Vietnamese heritage and her 2008 birth year point to Southeast Asia and younger demographics.

Together with original members C.Holly (UK) and Sizi (Mongolia), HUR+'s nine-member nationality map covers cultural connections across five countries: Taiwan, the UK, Mongolia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Diversity and market expansion aren't mutually exclusive here. Just as AKB48 once turned differentiation into a business model with "there's always one you'll like," HUR+'s member map simultaneously represents cultural diversity and serves as an entry point design where every market has someone to connect with.

✦ "What we're doing isn't just building a girl group — we're pushing forward an entire industry."³

May 3, 2024: Second album Crimzon released². January 9, 2026: Third album 9OF9 ARCANA released².

Ten Minutes, One Million Five Hundred Thousand

In 2023, HUR+ launched the "HUR+ Asia Debut Support Plan" on the WaBay crowdfunding platform, aiming to fund a Korean promotional trip⁶.

Within ten minutes of launch, they broke NT$1.5 million⁶.

The final target was NT$8 million, covering all costs of the Korea trip: flights, accommodation, music show registrations, MV production, local marketing⁷.

The number itself isn't what's stunning. The speed is. NT$1.5 million in ten minutes means HUR+'s core fan base threw money in from the very first moment the campaign opened. Core fans who had already formed emotional bonds put money in at second zero.

📝 Curator's Note
Crowdfunding a trip to promote in Korea. This fact alone is worth pausing on. In Korea, the agency pays for a group to appear on music shows — that's baseline infrastructure. In Taiwan, it's fans who pool their own money to send the group to Korea. This is the real state of Taiwan's idol industry right now: where official resources fall short, the fan community fills the gap.

Evidence on Stage

HUR+ has real live stages, and the venue scale has kept growing:

• February 2023: Inaugural concert ON MY WAY at Syntrend Creative Park²
• April 2024: Concert at Legacy Taipei²
• 2025: SUPER SLIPPA 超犀利趴 14 (Kaohsiung Arena), IDOL KINGDOM Taipei²
• April 2025: GODDESS digital single handshake event, hosted by So-net's Dolfan platform; live performance of unreleased single "Walk By The River"¹²
• February 27, 2026: Zepp New Taipei, 9 of 9: ARCANA CONCERT — their biggest headlining show in five years of activity¹³
• April 25–26, 2026: Two shows in Bangkok — first time on a Southeast Asian stage, in collaboration with Perfume Prod.¹⁴

From Syntrend to Legacy to Zepp to Bangkok. Six years of venue upgrades — a Taiwanese girl group's proof of survival.

And Zepp left behind an image that shouldn't be overlooked. Three days before the concert (February 24), C.Holly was in a car accident — her left foot was injured and bleeding, her hand fractured¹³. Any normal person would cancel. She didn't. She performed with a cast on her hand and in a wheelchair, singing "三不娶" with dancer assistance, at one point standing up mid-song to dance¹³.

💡 Did You Know
The footage of C.Holly performing in a cast went viral, with reactions that were telling: "How can something be this funny and this moving at the same time" and "When she stood up at the end, that was just insane"¹³. "Professionalism" doesn't quite cover it. This is something a group builds over six years — they go on stage because they know the people in the audience have been waiting a long time.

The Thunder (Thunders)

HUR+'s fans are called Thunder (雷雷)¹². Their slogan: "Join the Thunder — it's never too late."

Within the context of Taiwanese idol fandom, HUR+'s fan culture has one striking anomaly: the most active base is in Hong Kong.

HUR+'s Hong Kong fan club (@hurhkfc) has 11,000 followers and 269 posts¹⁵. That number is unusual in the Taiwanese girl group ecosystem. Taiwan's own idol groups, and their most active fan organizations are based abroad. Hong Kong Thunder members make cover videos and fan art, and fly to Taiwan for any major event. At the 2025 GODDESS handshake event, Hong Kong fans showed up — the members were surprised and delighted, calling out: "Long time no see!"¹²

The handshake event footage itself captures the community's character: one fan brought a white Totoro for a group photo and all nine members couldn't put it down; someone wore a handmade bikini-themed T-shirt with Xi Zi-Qi's image, and the whole venue erupted¹². The Thunder funds trips to Korea for promo appearances, places support ads via CheerSPOT at mobile power bank stations across Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand¹⁶, turning the relationship between idols and fans from one-way consumption into a two-way co-creation.

📝 Curator's Note
K-pop fan culture is highly organized: birthday support banners, coffee cup sleeves, subway ads — each with its own SOP. HUR+'s Thunder fans learned this language and speak it in a Taiwanese accent: small stages in Dadaocheng, digital displays on ChargeSPOT mobile power banks¹⁶, one actual Totoro. The "localization translation" of Taiwan's fan culture is happening right here.

Why the Runners-Up Outlasted the Champions

Back to the original question: DD52 finale, Storm Hearts 57.9, Storm Spades 55.4. Why are the runners-up the survivors six years later?

The answer isn't in those 2.5 points. It's in everything outside those 2.5 points.

G.O.F's debut followed the standard path: show ends, sign with a company, release albums, wait for bookings. But what does "wait for bookings" mean in Taiwan's idol market? It means waiting for a music show that doesn't exist, waiting for a commercial deal that may not come, waiting for audiences to slowly forget you⁹.

HUR took a completely different road. Felipe.Z didn't wait. He started his own management company, found his own funding, decided his own music direction, decided on his own "not copying Korea." While the champion group was waiting for someone to give them resources, the runner-up's producer was already calculating how to stretch fifty million into a lifeline³.

💡 Did You Know
Social media volume data for DD52's three debut groups: G.O.F 517 mentions, PINK FUN 621 mentions, HUR 604 mentions⁹. The champion had the lowest numbers. In Taiwan's idol industry, competition ranking and post-competition survival rate are two completely unrelated things.

The more fundamental difference: Felipe.Z never ran HUR like a girl group from the beginning. He ran it like a company³. The girl group is one product line, but the company's goal is building an idol industry structure that can keep operating — from music production to visual packaging to overseas marketing to fan community management, everything in-house.

This choice made HUR+'s growth much slower than Korean groups. But it also allowed them to find a position in Taiwan's small market that can survive without depending on massive capital.

How Far Can Taiwan's Girl Groups Go

As of April 2026, HUR+ has nine members, three albums, a cumulative 2.61 million YouTube views, and a completed Southeast Asia debut in Bangkok. Main dancer Lien Ying has crossed into solo development, with personal EP EZ going hip-hop, with fans running simultaneous support campaigns in three countries¹⁰. Leader Li Shan-Zhen quit her flight attendant job for this group¹¹. C.Holly performed in a cast with a fractured hand¹³. Hong Kong fans regularly fly to Taiwan to follow them¹⁵.

HUR+ is not a success story — if "success" means TWICE or BLACKPINK. But it is a survival story. In an environment where the average Taiwanese idol group lasts less than three years, being six years in, still releasing new songs, still headlining shows, still going from Taipei all the way to Bangkok, still having fans who will throw NT$1.5 million in ten minutes to send you to Korea for promotion — that in itself is an answer.

What Felipe.Z said — "the more different, the better" — sounds like a marketing slogan. But looking back six years later, it reads more like a survival strategy. In an era when K-pop dominates all of Asia, Taiwanese girl groups cannot survive by imitation. The only path is to create something different enough that "not being like a K-pop group" becomes a mark of identity.

HUR+ is proving this hypothesis. Not fully proven yet, but every additional year of existence, every new country's stage they climb, adds one more piece of evidence.

Further Reading

• Lien Ying — HUR+ main dancer; Taiwan's first girl group member to go solo while the group remains active. "The standard of dance a girl group should have"
• Taiwan's New Idol Generation — From DD52 to CHUANG ASIA, six years of idol competition industry experiments in Taiwan
• Yang Cheng-Lin — DD52 head mentor, also a 25-year story of carving out autonomy from the idol system
• Mayday — Another Taiwanese music group's long-distance run from small venues to Asian arenas
• Taiwan Independent Music — The intersection between HUR+'s musical style and indie electronic music

References