Gia Shin, Writer
You pass rows of brightly colored tents in the Citi Field stadium parking lot in New York where fans have been camping out for the past three days. You enter the stadium after purchasing a $211 resale ticket and find your seat to be so far back the stage is the size of a textbook. You’re surrounded by a thunderous roar of 40,000 people as seven boys rise up from the middle of the stage. They first reveal their variegated hair, then their doll-like features, and lastly their tall, slender bodies dressed in clothes worth the price of a new car. The current Guinness World Record holders for the most viewed music video in 24 hours and most Twitter engagements, the seven-member boy band BTS is the first Korean popular music (or K-Pop) group to score a Grammy nomination and top the U.S. album charts.
The seven members--RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook--open the concert with “Idol,” a traditionally-themed, hip-hop-style track with thumping drums and a pulsing bass heating the air with intense excitement. You twirl your $57 lightstick and watch it blend in with a sea of vibrant colors radiating with everyone else’s. Waving the lightsticks in sync with the music, the colors are triggered via Bluetooth, painting rainbows and positive words in the crowd.
Twelve days before BTS performed at Citi Field for their Love Yourself 結 'Answer' world tour, leader RM spoke at the UN about chasing after his dreams and self-love, declaring that “true love first begins with loving myself.” However, while their long list of achievements and colorful, carefully scripted stage performances are impressive, a look behind the scenes of K-Pop reveals that “loving oneself” isn’t on the record studios’ agenda.
For those who are unfamiliar with the world of K-Pop, here’s some background. K-Pop is most commonly organized into boy groups, girl groups, and solo artists. These successful artists--or idols--are often portrayed as pure, innocent and youthful, appealing to a younger audience of teens and 20-somethings with their upbeat rhythms and positive lyrics. The genre originated in South Korea but has exploded beyond the country’s radio stations, reaching an international audience. According to Tamar Herman, “[2018] saw BTS...land atop iTunes charts in over 60 countries with each of this year’s “Love Yourself” album releases." Collaborations between K-Pop groups and globally famous artists like John Legend, Kanye West, and Missy Elliott have become increasingly common as well. We call it Hallyu--the Korean Wave--, and BTS has been at its forefront.
Public Image Pressure
In June of 2013, K-Pop group Bangtan Sonyeondan (shortened to BTS) debuted under Big Hit Entertainment, and the public image pressure for BTS followed. In November 2013, RM and Suga, two of BTS’s three rappers, were invited to a broadcasting party along with several other hip-hop stars. South Korean rapper B-Free announced to the public that RM and Suga weren’t true rappers and derogatorily called them “girls” because they wore makeup.
Wearing (and being criticized for wearing) makeup is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2017, the four-member girl group Six Bomb spent $90,000 on “almost every kind of surgery that could be done on a face” for a single music video. “I wanted to see my image on the screen and not feel insecure,” explained Soa, the group’s petite 101-pound leader. Men in K-Pop commonly get procedures done as well: according to Joy Kang, CEO of Eunogo, a Singapore-based Korean plastic surgery concierge service, “When you see K-Pop stars, they all have sharp V-line jaws with perfect flawless skin, and masculine bodies.”
Drastic weight loss is also prevalent. Jimin, the 134-pound vocalist and main dancer of BTS, has struggled to appeal to K-Pop’s beauty standards. "I came to Seoul from Busan, which is really far away. I left everything behind and [...] was scared because I didn't know how it would all end up." He was called chubby and started to starve himself on extreme diets to the point of losing consciousness. In the TV show Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, he reveals, “I went on a diet where I survived off of one meal for 10 days.”
IU, a thriving solo singer who has dominated the Korean chart more than any other artist since 2010, went on a diet that consisted of an apple for breakfast, one sweet potato for lunch, and a protein shake for dinner--all while stretching and exercising strenuously. The struggles Jimin and IU went through to maintain a certain weight and shape is representative of the pressure most K-Pop idols face.
This pressure does not come solely from the Korean public; management companies set rules for each trainee’s weight loss. According to Kathy Benjamin, a writer for Grunge, “...being skinny is so important that no less than the CEOs of record companies supervise weigh-ins. If the number is too high, stars are told to lose weight immediately. And they do.” In an interview on the talk show Follow Me 8, Chaeyeon from the girl group DIA revealed, “There is a general guideline for my weight, but if I go over that guideline, I get punished […] When my boss tells me to lose weight, I have to comply.” She added that she checks her weight daily and measures the size of her thighs with a tape measure. In 2015, the entertainment company JYP forced TWICE’s Momo to lose seven kilograms the week before her debut. If she didn’t shed the weight, she would not be able to perform on stage with the rest of her group. Momo shared this experience on a live broadcast, saying “I didn’t eat anything for the whole week and went to the gym [...] I spat all the time so there was no water left in my body. When I laid down on my bed and tried to sleep, I was scared that I wouldn’t wake up again.” Her fellow group members shared her fear.
The idols who go on extreme diets still have to perform in their tired, sick, and weakened state. They train for at least six hours a day; some, like BTS, train up to fifteen hours. The youngest member of BTS, Jungkook, passed out backstage in one of their performances in Chile. He was exhausted and had overworked himself, as he revealed after medics rushed in to administer an oxygen mask. He later explained that he returned to the stage afterwards to finish the performance because “We only had two days of shows [in Chile], so I worked myself until my body couldn't take it anymore.”
Slave Contracts
Even if an idol wants to stop altering their physical appearance to conform to Korean beauty standards, it’s not always an option because of “slave contracts,” which are what aspiring K-Pop idols--often as young as twelve or thirteen--first sign with an agency as “trainees.” These trainees practice and train until they are deemed fit to debut. During their trainee period, their agency has nearly full control over them; most agencies restrict them from dating, having social media, and driving. Former K-Pop idol Henry Prince Mak claims on his radio show The Prince Mak Hour, “Typical contracts are about 7 to 15 years. 7 years is the least I've heard of […] I was 7 years myself and I considered myself lucky.” To intensify matters, the clock only starts ticking after the trainee’s debut and not when they initially join an agency. Choi Junghan, former head of the Korea Entertainment Law Society, justifies this practice by saying that “top stars [are] ‘made’ into stars by their agents and agencies. These young artists need to be ‘invested in’ for at least 10 years.”
As the agencies make millions off of the most successful trainees-turned-idols, their investment pays off; however, the trainees’ investments in K-Pop do not always turn a profit. Most trainees are still in school, juggling their academic life and trainee life; their daily schedules may begin as early as 5 a.m. and end at 1 a.m. Foreign students spend additional time mastering the Korean language and assimilating into Korean culture. Companies also hold monthly evaluations where height, weight, and performance skills are all graded and recorded. If the trainers feel that there hasn’t been enough “improvement,” the trainee will be kicked out of the agency. The agency requires the trainees to repay the costs of their wardrobe, vocal, dancing, and acting lessons, not to mention their living costs--regardless of whether or not they debut. The more time spent as a trainee, the more debt has to be paid off.
In fact, in 2017, the country’s Fair Trade Commission ordered eight large entertainment agencies to end their unfair contracts. According to Sonia Kil, a Seoul-based writer at Variety, “Penalties imposed by the agencies on early stage trainees, typically teenagers who breached their contracts, [...] were found to have been excessive--ranging from $86,200 to $129,000.” Critics argue that these trainees are signing away their lives--and their bank accounts--on a path of uncertainty, because achieving the debut milestone only happens to a rare few.
It’s difficult to determine precisely the amount of trainees that debut, but several sources claim that less than 0.1% of K-Pop trainees make it to their debut stage. Once they debut either as a group or solo, most of them don’t start making money right away. Very few entertainment agencies pay their artists as soon as they debut. Most, however, use a system called a “break-even”: When the artists debut and make money, it goes towards paying off the “debt” accumulated during their time as trainees and the costs formed after their debut, including money for song production, music videos, and choreography teachers, just to list a few. According to BBC News, “The bill can add up to several hundred thousand dollars. Depending on the group, some estimates say it is more like a million.”
The average K-Pop “rookie” group that has just debuted generates about $4,000 per show, and most of the proceeds go to the entertainment agency. In his YouTube video discussing the amount of money he made as part of the boy group JJCC, Prince Mak reveals that the company took eighty percent of the group’s profit, leaving them with only twenty percent. There were seven members in his group, meaning he had to split 20% of the $4,000 among his bandmates, resulting in a mere $114 per person, used to pay off a massive debt.
Prince Mak’s case is not an anomaly. In most situations, the company usually takes around 80-90 percent of the money an idol makes, leaving 10-20 percent to slowly pay off the idol’s debt; the idols won’t see any money in their hands until all of the debt is paid off. In 2009, former members of the K-Pop group TVXQ sued SM Entertainment, claiming that their income was distributed unfairly even after working to their physical limits, operating on less than four hours of sleep every night.
Shin Hyung Kwan, the general manager of Mnet (Korea’s version of MTV), justifies keeping artists under slave contracts in order to discipline and instill proper manners in rising stars and minimize the appearance of scandals that may cause the downfall of a career. “If you are not careful, the whole thing can be spoiled. Westerners do not understand. The performers could get into some kind of trouble.” Despite--or perhaps in part because of--the restrictive contracts, the K-Pop world is full of scandals, ranging from drug abuse and sex scandals to suicide.
Scandals
As K-Pop increases in global popularity, so too does the significance of its scandals. When a scandal occurs, not only is the image of the artist tainted, but the image of the group and of K-Pop in general is affected as well.
In 2014, 2NE1’s Park Bom made international headlines when she was found to “smuggle” drugs from the United States to South Korea. Although an investigation found that these “drugs” were prescribed medicine, K-Pop followers remained suspicious and continued to attack Bom on social media. The K-Pop idol was removed and edited out of the variety show Roommates and ended up suffering from depression. Soon enough, she was no longer active in the K-pop entertainment industry and her girlgroup 2NE1 disbanded the following year. Even just an association with drugs can bring the downfall of an idol’s career: this year, iKon’s B.I was forced to drop out of the group because he has once--three years earlier--considered taking marijuana and LSD to deal with the stress of being an idol.
Sexual exploitation has also recently emerged from the underside of the K-Pop industry. YG Entertainment, one of the biggest entertainment labels in the country, has seen its star idols involved in several major scandals. Seungri from Big Bang, a five-member boy band who soon became known as the “kings of K-pop” after their debut in 2006, was arrested in March of 2019 for sex bribery and offering sex workers to his clients in his famous nightclub, The Burning Sun. This scandal made the front page of top news sources and first opened the public’s eyes to a whole other side of K-Pop. This “news” is new to the public, but not so new to those in the industry. Actress Jang Jayeon left a seven page suicide note in 2009, claiming that present-day sex slavery was widespread across Korean entertainment. Sexual exploitation, however, is not the only cause of suicide among artists.
The stars in the entertainment industry are no exception to the competitive, cutthroat culture of South Korea that places the country first among the highest suicide rates in developed countries. In 2017, the World Health Organization showed South Korea’s statistic of 21 deaths by suicide per 100,000 individuals compared to the 13 deaths by suicide per 100,000 individuals in the United States. That same year, the positive, colorful facade of the K-Pop music industry collided with the shocking news that Kim Jonghyun--one of the nation’s most famous idols--had become a victim of South Korea’s suicide epidemic. The suicide of the 27-year-old lead singer from SHINee, one of the most popular boy groups in K-Pop history, flooded the headlines. “I was just existing before I found SHINee,” said American fan Kimmie White, who flew from Georgia to New York to attend Jonghyun’s memorial service one year later after his death. “[But] when SHINee came into my life, it brought friends, happiness. It becomes part of who you are.”
Even with all of the support Jonghyun garnered from fans and other idols while he was alive, his publicly released note proves the struggles that were hidden behind his innocent smile: “The depression that gnawed on me slowly has finally engulfed me entirely,” he wrote, adding that he “couldn’t defeat it anymore.” What surprised his fans the most was that Jonghyun seemed perfectly happy in public appearances on the days leading up to his death.
Although Jonghyun’s death by suicide is arguably the most well-known in the K-Pop world, the plague of suicide permeates all levels of K-Pop artists; bogged down by the pressures of crafting their perfect public image and obeying “slave contracts,” several lesser-known K-Pop entertainers have also felt there was no way out except suicide.
22-year-old Ahn Sojin entered a survival reality show known as the “Baby Kara” series. She made it to the top four contestants, but was ultimately eliminated and failed to debut with the girl group Kara. When she missed the chance to debut once again with a new girl group called April, Sojin was devastated and suffered from depression. The contract with her agency DSP Media soon ended and she threw herself from the tenth floor of an apartment.
K-Pop singer U;Nee hanged herself at the age of 25 after posting on her website, “I feel everything is empty. I am again walking down a path to reach a destination that I don’t know.” Boy group M.Street’s lead singer, Lee Seohyun, committed suicide after he lost all of his money--both his own and borrowed from friends--when South Korea’s stock market crashed in 2008. Suicide among K-Pop artists is not a new phenomenon. Charles Park was one of the first K-Pop idols to commit suicide at the age of 19, revealing in his note that the burdens of his second album succeeding was far too great, after the major acclaim of his first one. Twenty-three years later, too many of us are still ignoring the dark side of K-Pop.
You pass rows of brightly colored tents in the Citi Field stadium parking lot in New York where fans have been camping out for the past three days. You enter the stadium after purchasing a $211 resale ticket and find your seat to be so far back the stage is the size of a textbook. You’re surrounded by a thunderous roar of 40,000 people as seven boys rise up from the middle of the stage. They first reveal their variegated hair, then their doll-like features, and lastly their tall, slender bodies dressed in clothes worth the price of a new car.
You’re focusing on their song lyrics telling you to love yourself; you’re not thinking of Jimin’s eating disorder, you’re not thinking of “anti-fans” petitioning to kick out J-Hope from the group, you’re not thinking of RM’s death threats. Instead, you only feel a sense of unity among people you have never met.
Eleven months later, the news of BTS taking a break pops up in your newsfeed and you’re reminded of who these idols really are when you strip down the facade of perfection. After six years of nonstop music production and tours, they are, for the first time, stepping away from the exhausting K-Pop scene and experiencing the life of average twenty-year-olds. Just as BTS has taken it upon themselves to encourage us to love ourselves, it is time we take it upon ourselves to shed light on the darker side of K-Pop--and to remind these K-Pop artists to love and take care of themselves, too.
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