New Journey to the West's cast members are Kang Ho-dong, Lee Soo-geun, Eun Ji-won, Ahn Jae-hyun, Cho Kyu-hyun, Song Min-ho, and Pyo Ji-hoon.

Inspired by the famous Chinese novel Journey to the West, in each season every cast member was dressed as a certain character and traveled to places on a mission to find mystical dragon balls.

Over the years, this program has gained popularity and garnered high viewer ratings with its fresh ideas, fluid storyline, varying roles, and fun costumes.

The four members each take one of the characters from the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West as they go on a 5-days and 4 night backpacking trip through Xi'an, China, to play various games.

[3] The third season of the show, added boy band members Kyuhyun (Super Junior) and Mino (Winner), filmed in Guilin.

[6] The fifth season was filmed in Hong Kong with a new member P.O (Block B), replacing Kyuhyun who could not participate due to his mandatory military service.

In Season 1, Lee Seung Gi plays Tang Sanzang (a Buddhist monk in the novel) who leads and worries constantly about the monsters hyungs (his co-cast members) who don't listen to him.

Together, they take a journey to the west (Xi'an, China) while completing various missions to find seven dragon balls which can grant wishes for those who collect them.

In Season 3, Kang Ho-dong, Eun Ji-won, Lee Soo-geun, Ahn Jae-hyun, Mino and Kyuhyun travel to China (Guilin and Xiamen).

In Gangshi Game, members complete all the tasks in time, Mino accurately selects the gift buttons (luxury cars) after spinning 15 turns around.

In Season 7, Kang Ho-dong, Lee Soo-geun, Eun Ji-won, Song Mino, P.O, and a returning Cho Kyu-hyun travel around South Korea.

On 16 July 2015, tvN announced that Na Young Seok PD will show a new form of variety program in fall through internet contents called 'New Journey to The West'.

[24] tvN announced on 18 August 2015 that "New Journey to the West" will be released exclusively through PC and mobile Naver TVCast in early September.

[26] New Journey to the West production crew and members make their first official appearance through a press conference held at 63 Convention Center on the afternoon of 1 September 2015.

[28] The show also streamed exclusively on Tencent's QQ.com in China, simultaneously with its run on South Korean portal website Naver.

Seo Jang-Ho, the head of international sales and acquisitions at CJ E&M, said, "We are excited to introduce New Journey to the West to Chinese viewers through Tencent, one of the largest online platforms in the country.

“We then talked about filming it, but because it would lack completeness as a TV show, we decided to use the Internet platform.”[30] Na stated that they wanted to make a program that is new in every ways, including genre and format.

Season 2.5 consisted of 7 episode internet exclusive clips familiarizing the 2 new cast members, Cho Kyuhyun and Song Minho to the show among other things.

[32] The first trailer of the show which was revealed on 25 August 2015 via Naver TVCast exceeded more than 1 million view in less than 24 hours and became a hot topic among netizen.

[33] The first five episodes, each spanning between five and ten minutes, were uploaded at 10 a.m. Five hours after it release, more than 50,000 people had subscribed to the channel on Naver's video streaming website TVCast, where the show is broadcast.

It made "New Journey to the West" as the first online broadcast to reach the break-even point with only advertising revenues in South Korea.

Online broadcast is emerging as a new cash cow with TV ad revenues declining.”[37][38] It also received good responses in China.