By Hasan Beyaz
Photos by Ryan Coleman
There is something significant about watching an artist fifteen years into their career play at a venue the size of London's Dingwalls. Not because it undersells them – though it does, a little – but because of what it represents. For LEE MINHYUK, better known by his solo stage name HUTA, this Camden show was a first meeting. His debut European tour, <HOOK – WHO : KING>, brought him to Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Madrid, and London across February 2026, closing a gap that his fanbase had spent years accepting might never close.
Dingwalls is not a glamorous room. It is compact and Camden to its core – the kind of venue that suits an indie rock band's third headline show, not a veteran K-pop performer's European debut. But the intimacy it forced had its own logic. When the lights dropped and HUTA stepped out to "V" and "I'm Rare," the crowd's response made the scale feel earned rather than limiting. Nobody in this room was a casual concertgoer. They were passionate fans who had waited for this moment and were unafraid to show that.
He arrived, notably, under the weather. He said as much early in the show – but you wouldn't have known it.
His live vocals were clean and powerful. His movements were always precise, and his energy uncompromised. When he told the crowd "I need all of your passion," it read like a statement of shared terms. This was going to be that kind of show.
The first half made good on that promise. HUTA moved through "Shadow," "Hang Out (Rock Ver.)," and "Real Game (Like Messi)" with the kind of expertise that doesn't arrive without years of practice. "Wet" and "BOOM" pushed the room harder, and it was here that the venue's ceiling became most apparent. His choreography – delivered faultlessly, particularly the footwork sequences – deserved sightlines that Dingwalls simply couldn't offer. His movement was there. The room just couldn't always show it.
Before "BOOM," he paused to take the temperature of the room – and seemed genuinely caught off guard by what he found. "You guys have really impressive energy. I'm really in awe." He spoke about London with the enthusiasm of someone who'd actually engaged with it: a visit to the Harry Potter platform at King's Cross, a longstanding interest in football.
That last detail landed with unexpected resonance. The room wasn't purely a London crowd – fans had travelled from across Europe, Italy among the loudest, despite no Italian date on the routing. When HUTA invoked football, a language that needs no translation on this continent, the room responded accordingly. The unspoken implication was hard to miss: next time, the map should be bigger.
When he asked the crowd which Hogwarts house they'd put him in, the consensus leaned Hufflepuff. He disagreed – Slytherin, firmly. The room argued back. It was a small moment, but it established something important: he wasn't just performing at London. He was in it.
The gear-change came via a cover of Shawn Mendes' "Treat You Better" – a deliberate exhale after the pop-rap heavy first half, a moment to let the room recalibrate before HUTA left the stage to change. When he returned, the show's second register opened.
From "Rosy" onward, the set softened without losing grip. "XOXO" and "Dear My Spring" drew out a different kind of attention from the crowd – less kinetic, more concentrated. Then came the BTOB selections. He framed them directly: these were songs his European fans had waited for, and because this was his first time here, he'd wanted to build something special around them. "Only One For Me," "Missing You," and "LOVE TODAY" followed. For a significant portion of the room, this was fifteen years of distance collapsing into three songs. For that reason, this segment felt like the emotional centre of the evening.
The main set closed with "Bora," the title track from his latest album HOOK – funky, confident, and exactly the right note on which to land. He shed his shirt for it, a moment that felt like punctuation: this was the track he'd been building toward, and he was going to commit to it fully. If the first half proved his stamina, "Bora" proved his instinct. He knew where to put the full stop.
The encore brought "Break Free" and "Tonight (with Melody)," the latter carrying the warmth of a shared exhale after the intensity of what preceded it. He also mentioned he'd been running a 'beep challenge' from "Bora" across every tour city, and London was no different. He had to encourage the crowd a little – "have more confidence, don't be shy" – but they got there. By now HUTA was reflecting openly – the time had gone fast, he said, and he wanted to come back. "This is not the end. I've opened this, so there will be a next time."
He mentioned, too, that he studies English – deliberately, consistently – so that he can communicate more naturally with fans outside Korea. When BTOB were building their career, international engagement at this level wasn't structurally available in the way it is now. The fact that he is here now, studying the language of the rooms he's finally playing, says something about the seriousness of his global intentions.
In between, there was a moment that personified the evening better than any setlist choice could.
Someone in the crowd referenced the Eunkwang 'give up' meme – a clip of BTOB's leader and main vocalist that became a long-running joke within the fandom, the kind of niche lore that lives entirely within a specific corner of the internet. HUTA's reaction was genuine surprise. He said he hadn't expected fans this far from Korea to know something like that. It was a small thing. But it spoke directly to what this tour was actually about: the distance between an artist and an audience that has followed them anyway, across years and geography and a fandom infrastructure that for a long time offered digital proximity without physical presence.
Then, after what felt like a genuine close, HUTA came back out unexpectedly. A second encore: "Higher," a BTOB track, delivered with the energy of someone who still had something left to give and wanted to leave it here. And this time, it really was the end – for now.
Dingwalls was, in the most generous reading, a starting point. HUTA's alluring stage presence – the stamina despite sickness, the easy command of a room – consistently outran what the venue could frame. That isn't a criticism of the show. It's a statement about the next one. His live debut in London was the exact reference point his fans need to prove the quality of artist that European audiences have been missing out on all this time. He said it himself: this is not the end. European audiences will be holding him to that – and ready to meet him where he turns up next.