REPUBLIC Collective, WAKEONE Partner on K-Pop Groups izna and ALPHA DRIVE ONE

ALPHA DRIVE ONE and inza were both built by fans, backed by one of Korea’s strongest cultural conglomerates and now two of K-pop’s most-watched acts have a major U.S. partner.

Billboard can exclusively report that South Korean label WAKEONE has entered a strategic partnership with REPUBLIC Collective, the Universal Music Group division that has led three of Billboard ‘s year-end label charts for the past five years: Top Labels , Billboard 200 Labels and Hot 100 Labels . Officially announced Tuesday (June 9), the deal will see REPUBLIC support WAKEONE’s girl group izna and the recently debuted boy band ALPHA DRIVE ONE for the acts’ global expansion including album promotion and distribution.

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Both izna and ALPHA DRIVE ONE were assembled in real-time by international K-pop fan voters: izna through the 2024 survival singing competition show I-Land 2 — where fans across a reported 217 countries and regions voted for the final girl group lineup — and ALPHA DRIVE ONE (also known as ALD1) on Boys II Planet , which reportedly drew more than 26 million votes across 223 countries and regions to decide the eight-member lineup last fall.

The partnership brings the buzzy K-pop acts to a heavyweight Western distributor with a direct line to several of the scene’s most recent crossover moments with nearly a dozen No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 (including chart-toppers from TWICE , Tomorrow X Together , and eight from Stray Kids ) and acting as a label home for the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, the juggernaut LP whose single “Golden” topped the Billboard Hot 100 and won both a Grammy and an Academy Award this year.

The Demon Hunter magic could continue with izna, whose music is produced by Teddy — the longtime hitmaker who has worked with BLACKPINK and PSY — who snagged a Grammy and an Oscar for his work on “Golden.” Teddy and his go-to creative collaborators like IDO and Kush — the same names behind several KPop Demon Hunters tracks — work across izna’s music, including their EP Set the Tempo and new single “METRONOME” (below) released Monday (June 8) as the first release under the REPUBLIC/WAKONE alliance.

Debuting just days into 2026, ALPHA DRIVE ONE saw their debut album, EUPHORIA , move a reported 1.1 million physical copies globally on its Jan. 12 release day. The ALD1 boys followed up with new single “OMG!” released at the end of last month, and its video has already earned more than 61 million views on YouTube in less than two weeks.

Both groups are represented by WAKEONE, a label under CJ ENM — the entertainment and media arm of conglomerate CJ Group behind the massive K-pop festival KCON, the highly watched MAMA Awards, and popular Korean cable channel Mnet, which produced both groups’ respective competition series. While CJ and WAKEONE have been comparatively slow to formalize a larger Western label partnership, their boy band ZEROBASEONE — created on the original season of Boys Planet in 2023 — eventually secured distribution through Virgin Music Group and has since notched two Top 30 entries on the Billboard 200 to date with a new EP, Ascend- , set for a physical release in the U.S. on June 26.

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/pro/republic-collective-wakeone-strategic-partnership-izna-ald1/)._