Minho of SHINee will join the Paris 2024 Olympics as one of the “Olympic Friends,” said label SM Entertainment Wednesday.

He and actor Lee Dong-wook were selected as the first “friends” of the sporting event and promoted the Winter Youth Olympic Games Gangwon 2024 earlier this year.

The veteran idol will attend the 33rd Olympic Games which open Friday and will root for the national team and promote the event.

Separately, the singer and actor will return to TV screens as the male lead in the drama “Family X Melo,” which starts airing on Aug. 10. In the following month, he will make his theater debut through “Waiting for Godot.”

SF9 to return in August: report

SF9 will bring out a new album next month, according to a local media report on Wednesday.

It would be about seven months after its 13th EP “Sequence” which topped the iTunes Top Albums chart in five regions and sat among the top five in 18. The mini album was the first from SF9 as an eight-member group, as Rowoon left to pursue his acting career.

It is not yet known how many members will be featured in the forthcoming album since four are completing their mandatory military service. Dawon enlisted last month following Youngbin, Inseong and Jaeyoon.

Inseong held his first solo fan meeting last month and Hwiyoung released his first solo album “Traveling Fish” in June. Yoo Taeyang has been appearing in the musical “Salieri” since May.

Ateez spends 7th week on Billboard 200

Ateez extended its stay on the Billboard 200 to the seventh week in a row with its tenth EP, agency KQ Entertainment said Wednesday citing the chart dated July 27.

The EP “Golden Hour: Part 1” ranked No. 121 on the main albums chart and renewed the record for the eight-member act whose previous album, the second LP “The World Ep. Fin: Will,” spent six weeks on it after debuting on it at No. 2.

Meanwhile, the band is set to perform in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday. The US and Canada legs of the tour “Towards the Light: Will to Power,” held across 10 cities, began on July 14 and was expanded by three days.

As the tour poster indicated, the eight members will visit Europe in January next year.

Secret Number to tour for 1st time

Girl group Secret Number will embark on its first overseas tour on Friday, agency Vine Entertainment announced Wednesday.

The group will travel to eight cities in the US, including Chicago, Denver, Seattle and Los Angeles, through Aug. 10.

On Sept. 28, it is set to hold a concert in Jakarta, Indonesia, its first standalone live show in the native city of member Dita. She is the first from her country to join a K-pop girl group.

The multinational group debuted in 2020 with the single “Who Dis?” and logged over 40 million views on YouTube with its music video. The group has released six more single albums since, the latest album “Starlight” having come out in August last year.