Hanbin: the first Vietnamese male K-pop idol, from Hanoi dance floors to TEMPEST
Ngô Ngọc Hưng, known as Hanbin, left Hanoi dance crew C.A.C. for I-LAND, debuted with TEMPEST in 2022 as the first Vietnamese male K-pop idol, and opens a solo lane with No Fear in 2026.
The Goldscene Desk
Hanbin is the singer and dancer born Ngô Ngọc Hưng on January 19, 1998 (Capricorn, Fire Ox) in Yên Bái, Vietnam. Under YH Entertainment he debuted with boy group TEMPEST on March 2, 2022, and is widely credited as the first Vietnamese male to become a K-pop idol. Female Vietnamese idols arrived earlier; the male first is the accurate framing.
If you are sizing him up fast: he is 28, listed around 176 cm (5 ft 9 in) on Korean and Vietnamese profiles, and works as TEMPEST’s main dancer and a vocalist. He has not confirmed a public relationship timeline in major press.
Hanoi first, trainee later
He started teaching himself to dance around 15, then moved to Hanoi for university. At Đại học Thương mại (Vietnam University of Commerce) he studied marketing in the international faculty while founding and leading K-pop cover crew C.A.C. under the stage name Hưng Bin from about 2016 to 2019.
Weekend sets on the Hoàn Kiếm walking street and contest wins, including Best Player at Hanoi’s Vietnam K-pop random dance in public in 2018, built a local dancer following before any Seoul logo appeared on his résumé. That pre-debut fluency still shows up when he hosts in Vietnamese.
I-LAND, Belift, then Yuehua
He passed a Belift global audition in Hanoi and began training in Korea in July 2019. Mnet’s I-LAND put him on a worldwide feed in 2020. He opened with SuperM’s “Jopping,” survived into the final twelve, peaked near the top of global votes mid-run, and left in episode 11 at tenth place short of the ENHYPEN debut lineup.
Belift kept him for a post-show stretch that included an October 2020 online fanmeeting (Hanbin !00%) and a New Year’s Eve solo stage of “I&Credible” for Big Hit’s NYEL concert. On June 2, 2021, Belift announced his departure. Yuehua Entertainment signed him the same day. The path is a familiar survival-show sequel: miss the project group, keep the name recognition, change houses.
TEMPEST: group utility with a passport edge
Yuehua introduced him as TEMPEST’s fifth member on January 3, 2022. The seven-member debut EP It’s Me, It’s We arrived March 2 after a COVID delay from a planned February date. Later Korean releases stacked through SHINING UP, ON and ON, THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM, TEMPEST Voyage, RE: Full of Youth (March 2025), and As I Am (October 2025), whose title track “In The Dark” kept the group on music-show stages.
Hwarang left in August 2024 after a hiatus. TEMPEST continues as six: Hanbin, Hyeongseop, Hyuk, Eunchan, Lew, and Taerae. Inside that lineup Hanbin is the performance hinge: live dance stability and bilingual fan work, not a passport footnote.
Soft power that runs both directions
At home he is more than a K-pop export footnote. He won Rising Artist at Vietnam’s WeChoice Awards 2023 with more than 313,000 votes, accepting remotely from Seoul with the rest of TEMPEST on video. In May 2026 the group played the Legend of Dragons stage at the LCK Team Roadshow KIWOOM DRX Homefront in Hanoi; Hanbin hosted in Vietnamese and judged a local music-project final.
That two-way traffic is the biography point. Seoul needs a reliable dancer-vocalist. Vietnam keeps a hometown name who can still work the room without a translator.
Solo: No Fear and HEU’NG
On August 24, 2026, at 6 p.m. KST, he releases his first digital single, No Fear, as TEMPEST’s first soloist. Teasers lean hard into identity: a modern áo dài concept, the coinage HEU’NG HANBIN (Korean heung plus his given name Hưng), and the gag that searching “HANBIN with FEAR” turns up none.
Our Who’s Rising read covers that teaser week. This page is the longer arc: dancer from Yên Bái, survivor of I-LAND, group pillar at YH, and now a soloist who finally put Vietnam in the frame instead of only in the bio.
What to watch next
Start with TEMPEST title stages if you want the group product, then the No Fear drop for the solo thesis. Track whether the single becomes a one-off or the start of a real solo calendar, and whether YH keeps sending him into Vietnam-facing stages the way DRX Homefront already did.
Hanbin’s career is proof that Southeast Asian idols in Korean boy groups do not have to stay caption trivia. When the dancing holds and the home market still answers, the passport becomes strategy.
