K-Pop Looks Beyond Korea for Its Next Generation of Idols

For Koreans, turning into a Ok-pop idol is alleged to be tougher than successful the lottery. For these outdoors Korea, the trail to stardom within the style could appear even rarer—although quickly, trade executives and aspiring stars all over the world alike are hoping, these odds could also be beginning to change.

Final week, some 70 college students in Singapore obtained a style of what it takes to turn out to be a Ok-pop idol, having spent 5 days attending a Ok-pop coaching camp taught by among the trade’s most famous dance and vocal coaches who traveled to the Southeast Asian nation from Seoul. The camp was organized by the Singapore Raffles Music Faculty (SRMC), which is planning to open—pending approval from Singapore’s schooling ministry—the first K-pop high school outside of Korea subsequent 12 months, in collaboration with the Faculty of Performing Arts Seoul (SOPA), a well-liked arts highschool in Seoul that has produced some of K-pop’s biggest names. 

“We perceive that [SOPA] has very robust hyperlinks when it comes to college students coming into the trade,” Ryan Goh, the chief director of SRMC, tells TIME, including that he hopes the upcoming program will construct the “vital competency inside Southeast Asian expertise” to turn out to be Ok-pop stars. 

The outward-looking enlargement—participating and collaborating with overseas cultures— is “a pure evolution of Ok-pop,” says Goh, who notes the style’s growing internationalism, notably in the previous few years, because the likes of BTS and Blackpink have topped charts and achieved mainstream recognition internationally. “We hope that we’ll have slightly half in serving to to construct that pipeline of expertise that might be a part of this journey,” he provides.

Non-Korean Ok-pop idols have been round since as early because the Nineteen Nineties, with teams like Fly to the Sky (a duo with a Korean-American singer) or S.E.S (a lady group with one Japanese member). In the present day, Blackpink’s Lisa, who’s Thai, is the firm favorite of followers throughout Thailand, a testomony to how worldwide Ok-pop group members can mobilize worldwide audiences. NewJeans and Stray Kids, two comparatively new teams quick on the rise, every have two Australian members.

“Strategically it makes a lot sense to get individuals who can talk with followers from completely different areas,” CedarBough Saeji, assistant professor of Korean and East Asian research at Pusan Nationwide College, tells TIME.

The brand new college might appear to be an unprecedented gateway opening for younger Southeast Asians to hitch the ranks {of professional} Ok-pop artists, however success—and happiness—is actually not assured.

Whereas excessive faculties that cater particularly to Ok-pop coaching are a comparatively new, however rising, phenomenon, the system of “idol coaching” that the Ok-pop trade is seeking to export is already firmly established in Korea, the place yearly hundreds of adolescents are filtered by way of a notoriously brutal regimen, throughout which they’re made to stick to punishing schedules and keep strict diets, whereas being disadvantaged of a social life and far of their private freedom. And even amongst those that full their traineeship, solely a fraction are chosen by report labels to debut as Ok-pop idols. For each group or solo act that breaks by way of, there are literally thousands of different dashed “Hallyu-wood” dreams—trainees who land in crippling debt or who’ve alleged coercion or exploitation by their administration. 

“I really like that younger individuals have desires, and the Ok-pop trade is enormously engaging, however it’s additionally a extremely, actually robust trade,” says Saeji. “I see too many younger individuals who get into the trade, maybe too younger, and it chews them up. It isn’t a simple life. And I feel that while you’re 16 years outdated, you do not perceive how laborious it may be.”

“I fear slightly bit that these sorts of faculties are making up revenue off the desires of younger individuals,” Saeji provides. “They’re setting some younger individuals up for a tough future, maybe for disappointment.”

Nonetheless, for a lot of college students and their mother and father, the rigorous curriculum and sizeable pricetag of Ok-pop coaching aren’t sufficient to discourage the pursuit of stardom.

“These previous 5 days have been actually robust,” says Chu Xiyi, a 17-year-old camp attendee and incoming vocal coaching pupil at SRMC. “But when this might let me have a greater future, then I feel that is all very value it.”

Lai Hooi Chin, who enrolled her 12-year-old daughter within the camp, which price greater than $2,000, tells TIME they’ve additionally signed up for one more Ok-pop boot camp held in Seoul subsequent month for across the similar worth. Her daughter, Ong Lixuan, tells TIME, after taking part in a showcase on the camp’s last evening, that the grueling 5 days of coaching solely strengthened her resolve. “I instructed myself earlier than that even when it’s laborious, I’m not gonna hand over,” she says. “As a result of that’s my dream. That’s what I’ve been chasing for.”

Ok-pop lecturers don’t shrink back from the laborious actuality. “Being an idol isn’t just a dream,” one SOPA teacher solemnly instructed a room filled with enthusiastic teen and tween attendees on the final day of the camp. “It is a job, similar to any job.”

SRMC’s Goh says that the latest camp was geared toward giving college students a “full expertise” of the Ok-pop trade. The college, he provides, which is anticipating to begin with 75 college students within the second half of 2024, will be sure to include adequate breadth in its curriculum to organize college students “if they’re unable to turn out to be a star.”