Behind the “girl hero” glamour of IVE‘s new EP Looks Can Kill, the group’s biggest star traded the stage for a styrofoam cup of street food and accidentally delivered the most charming teaser of the comeback.
Here’s the image: a pink-masked superhero with waist-length waves and teal gloves, costume gleaming, poised like she stepped out of a comic panel. Now add a cup of tteokbokki, a set of hair rollers, and a cross-legged seat on the floor of a photo studio. That collision fantasy hero meets girl-who-just-wanted-a-snack is exactly what Jang Won-young posted to her social media on October 22, and it’s a perfect encapsulation of why IVE has become one of K-pop’s most magnetic acts.
She added no caption. She didn’t need one. The photos did all the talking.
The Glamour and the Gochujang
In the images, Won-young wears a pink halter-neck costume paired with a matching hero mask, those signature long waves tumbling to her waist, teal gloves completing a look pulled straight from animation. It’s high-concept, high-gloss, unmistakably a character. And then the carousel turns: the same costume, the same star now seated in front of a humble container of Korea’s most beloved street food, digging in.
That gap between the untouchable stage persona and the relatable, snack-loving human is the whole appeal. Fans have long been drawn to Won-young’s poised, almost otherworldly image; moments like this glamorous hero on top, hair rollers and spicy rice cakes underneath puncture it just enough to feel intimate. It’s a reminder that the “it-girl” aesthetic IVE sells so effectively is a performance the members are in on, and happy to let fans behind.
Meet “Bat Pink” and the Rest of the League
The costume isn’t a one-off. It’s Won-young’s styling for the “girl hero” concept at the heart of IVE’s fifth mini-album, Looks Can Kill, with the singer transformed into a pink-coded heroine dubbed “Bat Pink.”
She’s not flying solo. For this era, each of IVE’s six members has adopted her own hero alter ego: Captain Purple (An Yu-jin), Wonder Green (Gaeul), Jin Yellow (Rei), Bat Pink (Jang Won-young), Super Blue (Liz), and Spider Red (Leeseo). It’s a playful, color-coded ensemble that leans knowingly into superhero-universe tropes the kind of fully-realized world-building that gives a comeback legs across music videos, performances, and exactly the kind of candid behind-the-scenes content Won-young just dropped.
Crucially, the concept is more than cosplay. Looks Can Kill extends what IVE calls its “girl fantasy” universe a running narrative that has already moved through Cupid and the magical girl, and now arrives at the hero. The album’s thesis, per the group, is confidence as a superpower: the idea of a presence so commanding it can “deal a fatal blow simply by existing.” But Won-young gave the concept a softer, more human reading when the group pre-released the title track. “When you think of a hero, you might picture someone with special powers, but we tried to think about it a little differently,” she said. “A small word of support given to someone can become courage for another person. Through this album, we wanted to say that we can all be heroes to one another.” Seen through that lens, the tteokbokki photos aren’t a contradiction of the hero concept they’re an illustration of it. The hero is just a girl, and the girl is already enough.
Why Every IVE Teaser Lands
IVE has been operating at this level of cultural fluency since their very first move. Formed by Starship Entertainment and launched on December 1, 2021 with the single album Eleven, the group fast-tracked to the top of K-pop’s fourth generation on the strength of viral, self-assured anthems Love Dive, After Like, I Am that turned confidence itself into a brand. Won-young and fellow member An Yu-jin arrived already famous, as alumnae of the project group IZ*ONE, and IVE converted that head start into one of the most successful debuts of its era.
That track record is why a caption-less Instagram post becomes news. IVE has trained a global audience to read its visuals closely, to hunt for concept clues, to screenshot and share. A hero in hair rollers eating street food isn’t an outtake — it’s content engineered, consciously or not, to travel. And it slots neatly into a comeback rollout that has been unusually immersive: IVE pre-released the title track “Looks Can Kill” on October 19, performed it live for fans days before release, and even built a physical collaboration with Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza so fans could step inside the album’s world.
The Takeaway
The genius of this moment is how effortless it looks. IVE could sell Looks Can Kill on spectacle alone — six heroines, a cinematic universe, a title that promises danger. Instead, the sharpest piece of promotion so far is Jang Won-young, in full superhero regalia, eating tteokbokki like it’s a Tuesday. It’s the thesis of the whole era made edible: the hero and the girl next door are the same person, and that’s precisely what makes her powerful.
IVE’s fifth mini-album Looks Can Kill releases October 26, following the pre-released title track of the same name, out now.