The members are all part of the pre-debut group SMROOKIES created by S.M. Entertainment. Taeyong, Ten, Jaehyun, and Mark were introduced in 2013, while Taeil and Doyoung were introduced in 2015.

In January 2016, Lee Soo-Man held SMTown: New Culture Technology 2016 at SM Coex Artium: he spoke about the strategy for the culture contents business under boy-group brand NCT (initialism of Neo Culture Technology), which will be debuting different teams based in different countries around the world. S.M Entertainment launched the two teasers of the project, The Origin and Synchronization of your Dreams, which includes five members of SMRookies: Taeyong, Hansol, Ten, Mark, and Jaehyun.[1] A week later, the 3rd teaser was launched with the name The 7th Sense and includes SMRookies member Winwin.

On April 4, 2016 S.M. Entertainment revealed two te