A parliamentary forum on K-pop trainees revealed accounts of abuse, depression and harassment, prompting calls for better legal safeguards.
For K-pop trainees, the stakes are stark: Make it, or leave with little to show for years of sacrifice. Teenagers starve themselves to skeletal proportions and give up years of schooling for the promise of stardom — without any guarantee that they will ever even debut.
“I was so underweight that my periods stopped for a year,” one female K-pop trainee said in an interview examining their working conditions and experiences. “The health consequences hit me later. I think failing to debut may have contributed to my depression.”
Accounts by former K-pop trainees presented Wednesday at a parliamentary forum on idol trainees in Yeouido, western Seoul, revealed a common pattern: extreme dieting that damaged their health during adolescence, lack of schooling or an ordinary social life, constant monitoring of their private lives, unsafe shared housing that left them vulnerable to crime and sexual abuse, punitive contract penalties, depression and other psychological problems.
The trainees comprised 11 women and five men, with an average age of 22 at the time of the interviews. Fourteen of the 16 interviewees, all of whom had trained to become idols since 2020, never even debuted.
Critics blame a lack of oversight for allowing agencies and K-pop academies to bind aspiring idols to unfair contracts and subject them to rights abuses with few consequences.
Demands on the aspiring idols also went far beyond punishing diets and grueling training schedules.
“I had to please everyone, not just the head of the agency but its employees too,” one trainee said. “Some staff treated trainees as potential dating partners, and others told us to wear clothes that accentuated our breasts. Even when it made me feel sexually humiliated, I had no way to push back.”
“Every trainee’s circumstances are different, but certain problems come up again and again,” said Heo Yu-jeong, a former K-pop trainee who now runs arts company Souju. “We need institutional reform based on their experiences.”
The interviewees became idol trainees at an average age of 15.9 years old — and sometimes as early as age 12. They spent an average of about 30 months training or working as idols, with five devoting more than three years to the pursuit. Along the way, two gave up on attending high school and six abandoned plans for college.
Each trainee signed with an average of 2.3 companies over the period. Leaving can come at a steep price, as agencies charge penalties tied to training, dormitory stays and, in some cases, cosmetic surgery. Critics say the contracts were overwhelmingly tilted in the agencies’ favor.
“I was told I would owe 100 million won ($73,500) if I left, while I heard a foreign trainee paid only 1 million won,” one interviewee said. Another said, “I saw what lawsuits did to my friends, so I gave up and accepted that more than five years of my life had been wasted.”
“Young trainees are not legally classified as workers under current law, so labor laws do not protect them,” said attorney Kim Du-na of the Children and Youth Media Rights Network (translated), the organization that conducted the interviews. “Laws governing artists apply to them only in part, which leaves them with little effective protection. We need clearer safeguards and an institution that can provide legal review when trainees sign contracts with agencies.”
The industry is built largely around minors, yet those who work in it face virtually no regulation, critics say. Current law requires talent agencies to have at least one executive with two years of relevant industry experience and the required training to register as a pop culture agency.
The bar is low. The required training consists solely of 40 hours of online courses run by the Korea Creative Content Agency. In addition, there are no restrictions tied to agency employees’ sex-offense records and no minimum standards for capital or professional qualifications. Over the past five years, 6,588 businesses had registered as agencies as of June.
Critics also called for safeguards to keep idol trainees in school.
“Agencies often see school attendance as a burden, so students naturally start considering dropping out,” said Kim Yeo-jin, a teacher at the High School of Korean Pop and Performing Arts. “We need a system that allows students to balance school and trainee life so that even if they stop training, they can return to school at any time and continue their education and pursue another career.”
Another industry expert called for institutional overhaul.
“We need to examine why the rules and safeguards already in place are failing to work,” said Kim Seong-hyeon, a professor in the K-pop department at Dong Seoul University. “The government should go beyond online training for business operators and move toward a system that checks and evaluates whether human rights are actually being upheld on the ground.”
Source: https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/...contracts-and-very-little-protection/12899692
For K-pop trainees, the stakes are stark: Make it, or leave with little to show for years of sacrifice. Teenagers starve themselves to skeletal proportions and give up years of schooling for the promise of stardom — without any guarantee that they will ever even debut.
“I was so underweight that my periods stopped for a year,” one female K-pop trainee said in an interview examining their working conditions and experiences. “The health consequences hit me later. I think failing to debut may have contributed to my depression.”
Accounts by former K-pop trainees presented Wednesday at a parliamentary forum on idol trainees in Yeouido, western Seoul, revealed a common pattern: extreme dieting that damaged their health during adolescence, lack of schooling or an ordinary social life, constant monitoring of their private lives, unsafe shared housing that left them vulnerable to crime and sexual abuse, punitive contract penalties, depression and other psychological problems.
The trainees comprised 11 women and five men, with an average age of 22 at the time of the interviews. Fourteen of the 16 interviewees, all of whom had trained to become idols since 2020, never even debuted.
Critics blame a lack of oversight for allowing agencies and K-pop academies to bind aspiring idols to unfair contracts and subject them to rights abuses with few consequences.
Demands on the aspiring idols also went far beyond punishing diets and grueling training schedules.
“I had to please everyone, not just the head of the agency but its employees too,” one trainee said. “Some staff treated trainees as potential dating partners, and others told us to wear clothes that accentuated our breasts. Even when it made me feel sexually humiliated, I had no way to push back.”
“Every trainee’s circumstances are different, but certain problems come up again and again,” said Heo Yu-jeong, a former K-pop trainee who now runs arts company Souju. “We need institutional reform based on their experiences.”
The interviewees became idol trainees at an average age of 15.9 years old — and sometimes as early as age 12. They spent an average of about 30 months training or working as idols, with five devoting more than three years to the pursuit. Along the way, two gave up on attending high school and six abandoned plans for college.
Each trainee signed with an average of 2.3 companies over the period. Leaving can come at a steep price, as agencies charge penalties tied to training, dormitory stays and, in some cases, cosmetic surgery. Critics say the contracts were overwhelmingly tilted in the agencies’ favor.
“I was told I would owe 100 million won ($73,500) if I left, while I heard a foreign trainee paid only 1 million won,” one interviewee said. Another said, “I saw what lawsuits did to my friends, so I gave up and accepted that more than five years of my life had been wasted.”
“Young trainees are not legally classified as workers under current law, so labor laws do not protect them,” said attorney Kim Du-na of the Children and Youth Media Rights Network (translated), the organization that conducted the interviews. “Laws governing artists apply to them only in part, which leaves them with little effective protection. We need clearer safeguards and an institution that can provide legal review when trainees sign contracts with agencies.”
The industry is built largely around minors, yet those who work in it face virtually no regulation, critics say. Current law requires talent agencies to have at least one executive with two years of relevant industry experience and the required training to register as a pop culture agency.
The bar is low. The required training consists solely of 40 hours of online courses run by the Korea Creative Content Agency. In addition, there are no restrictions tied to agency employees’ sex-offense records and no minimum standards for capital or professional qualifications. Over the past five years, 6,588 businesses had registered as agencies as of June.
Critics also called for safeguards to keep idol trainees in school.
“Agencies often see school attendance as a burden, so students naturally start considering dropping out,” said Kim Yeo-jin, a teacher at the High School of Korean Pop and Performing Arts. “We need a system that allows students to balance school and trainee life so that even if they stop training, they can return to school at any time and continue their education and pursue another career.”
Another industry expert called for institutional overhaul.
“We need to examine why the rules and safeguards already in place are failing to work,” said Kim Seong-hyeon, a professor in the K-pop department at Dong Seoul University. “The government should go beyond online training for business operators and move toward a system that checks and evaluates whether human rights are actually being upheld on the ground.”
Source: https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/...contracts-and-very-little-protection/12899692
