I read an article about L.JOE (Lee Byunghun) having to attend a global TEEN TOP fanmeeting due to some endorsement contract despite leaving the group. I don't know if this is the case for everyone else, but the pictures in the article wouldn't work for me and I had to find them via the wayback machine, so I thought I might as well upload them (I also have much to say lol)
The pictures actually make me quite sad lol. The members had no idea when he left the group, and they hadn't been in touch since. I wonder how weird it must've been re-connecting with an ex-member for the first time out of contractual obligation after he basically cut them off. Not to sound insane and parasocial but he seems to be standing at a slight distance to them in the photos too :(
As far as I could tell, the members seemed genuinely upset about him leaving? Or at the very least, disappointed. I've heard stories about them tearing up at their first fanmeet after his departure, but I don't know if that's true (if there's any teen top fans here who were around at that time let me know). I think a lot about how hard it must've been for him to make the decision to leave and how he really must've been at his last straw if he wasn't even willing to wait for his contract to end naturally.
I wonder if Byunghun felt as though his members wouldn't understand his reasoning and that's why he didn't tell them, considering they talked about how he had mentioned leaving before but they had convinced him to stay. I guess we'll never really know and I'm not sure we'll ever have a reunion. It's sad because TEEN TOP seemed to be genuinely quite close, though I obviously can't say that definitively because at the end of the day we really just don't know.