suju army schedule

The schedule for Super Junior’s members enlistment into army has been released. Everyone of them have to be in the army for 22 months.

Enlistment Years (by members)
Kangin: 2010-2012
Leeteuk, Heechul: 2011-2013
Yesung: 2012-2014
Shindong: 2013-2015
Sungmin, Donghae, Eunhyuk, Siwon: 2014-2016
Ryeowook, Kibum: 2015-2017
Kyuhyun: 2016-2018

Members Count (by years) (just take it that Kibum is not away cause of acting)
2010: Missing Kangin, 11 Members left
2011: Missing Kangin, Leeteuk, Heechul, 9 Members left
2012: Missing Leeteuk, Heechul, Yesung, 9 Members left
2013: Missing Yesung, Shindong, 10 Members left
2014: Missing Shindong, Sungmin, Donghae, Eunhyuk, Siwon, 7 Members left
2015: Missing Sungmin, Donghae, Eunhyuk, Siwon, Ryeowook, Kibum, 6 Members left
2016: Missing Ryeowook, Kibum, Kyuhyun, 9 Members left
2017: Missing Kyuhyun, 11 Members left
2018: FULL TEAM!!

That means 8 more years till we’ll see SJ together as a whole again T__T Kangin’s enlistment this year is understandable, but then can’t they just choose 2 years and enlist all the other members together at the same time? It’s not as though they have an age limit of when you go in. If Boom can enlist at the age of 27, I don’t see how the older members can’t wait till then and enlist together with the younger ones. The way they’re doing it, there will definitely be a few years where no albums will be released at all, for various reasons. And at the end of 8 years, who knows how many ELFs will there still be left? How many fans will wait 8 years for a group to be together again??
But looking at the number of people left over per year, it’s pretty unlikely they would release any albums. Concert tours maybe, but albums, not quite possible.

2011: Missing leader and most talkative people aka Heechul, Kangin, Leeteuk. Promotion activities would be quite hard.
2012: Same reason as 2011, plus missing one of the main singers aka Yesung.
2013: Possible, if they have other members to take over Yesung’s parts, possible Leeteuk or Kyuhyun.
2014: Not possible. 4 out of 6 main dancers gone (Donghae, Eunhyuk, Sungmin, Shindong. Left with only Kyuhyun and Leeteuk) Dance choreography will be too huge a barrier. Unless only SJ-K.R.Y. continue with their activities.
2015: Even worse than 2014, not only with more members gone into army, but Ryeowook, one of the main vocals will be missing. Only 3 out of 6 main dancers left in group. Even SJ-K.R.Y. activities, if any, will be put on hold.
2016: Not possible to release album as SJ as a whole. Main dancers all back, except Kyuhyun just join army. But 2 out of 3 (Ryeowook and Kyuhyun) main vocals will still be in army. Unless they have activities with SJ-T or SJ-Happy.
2017: Possible, since Kyuhyun’s the only one missing. Can probably have Donghae, Leeteuk and Sungmin covering his parts until he return.

Only 2018 will all of them gather as a group again. But after 8 years gap, will they still have as many fans? Not likely. Will SM still let them release an album? That’s a question. Maybe one as an experiment, which if their album sales are still high enough will possibly continue. But if not, this 4th album could be the last that we see of them together as Super Junior. Hopefully not though, especially with all the turmoils that they went through together since they debuted. I’ve got to say their road to being idols is much tougher than most, if not all, other groups that I have seen.
Nevertheless, it’ll be wonderful if we can still see them together, as 13 or at least 12 after 8 years. If not we’ll just have to settle with seeing them with their individual activities, which I hope is not the case.