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K-Pop Idols

K-Pop Idols

Can a British quintet survive a brutal 100-day boot camp to become Korean-style pop stars?

Made In Korea: The K-Pop Wk.34

BBC

Craig McLean

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Five young lads have been cast as Britain’s newest boy band hopefuls. They can dance, sing, pose and pout, and they love their mums. So far, so Simon Cowell. This, though, is a TV talent show with a twist. BBC1’s Made in Korea: the K-Pop Experience might be brought to us by veterans of Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor. But the five hopefuls – Blaise, Dexter, James, Olly and Reese, see panel, right – are being flown to Seoul to be schooled in the art of K-pop: the fizzy, catchy, highly stylised, super-choreographed and ultra-regimented genre of chart music that has, over the last decade, taken over the world.

Last year, of the 20 best-selling artists and groups internationally, six were K-pop, and the scene’s “idols” – the generic name for Korean musical stars – were streamed some 90 billion times. When Coldplay headlined Glastonbury in June their performance featured projections of BTS, the boy band behemoth with whom they collaborated on 2021 mega-hit My Universe. Last month, the eight-strong Stray Kids head-lined Hyde Park to a 65,000-strong crowd. The previous year, girl group Blackpink played the same slot. In doing so, they became the first K-pop band to headline a UK festival.

This planet-dominating success is the result of talent and a lot of hard work. From wide-ranging auditions, K-pop acts are normally cast in their early and mid-teens, “because it’s easier to mould younger people into being good dancers and singers,” says culture writer and K-pop specialist Lucy Ford. But surviving the gruelling audition process is only the start. Wannabe stars are put through their paces in training academies for anything up to six years before they’re launched on K-pop’s ardent fandom – and many are discarded without making the cut.

Dexter Greenwood, James Sharp, Blaise Noon, Olly Quinn and Reese Carter of Dear Alice. They are all stood side-by-side with their hands in their pockets, looking ahead.

Dexter Greenwood, James Sharp, Blaise Noon, Olly Quinn and Reese Carter of Dear Alice. Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

“There are all sorts of horror stories about K-pop – you’re going to have your ears fixed, your nose taken in,” says Britain’s Got Talent veteran Nigel Hall, one of the team behind Made in Korea, referring to the darker rumours surrounding the industry. “All nonsense,” he insists. “But there is a quest for excellence.”

That quest has indubitably led to tragedy, even including the suicides of some young stars. “The pressure to look good is definitely scary, especially if you’re female,” says Olive Pometsey, deputy editor of culture magazine The Face. “There are videos of some fainting onstage because they’ve lost so much weight. You have to wonder about the pressure on these usually very young people.”

Early in the first episode of Made in Korea, our UK novices – dropped into Seoul’s K-pop star-making machine for a fast-paced, 100-day boot camp and given the band name Dear Alice – come up against its no-nonsense rigours. In the first of the “evaluations” that are standard in the industry, they have to perform for the formidable Hee Jun Yoon. She’s described by the programme-makers as “the creative force behind some of the biggest K-pop bands of the last 20 years”. In the words of Kate Phillips, BBC director of unscripted entertainment, she’s a “terrifying” figure who “makes Simon Cowell look like Mary Poppins”. Or, as Hall cheerfully puts it, she’s a “Bond villainess”.

“Based on your performance, do you think you did well?” Yoon asks the lads through an interpreter. “Everything is concerning.” She says their choreography is nursery school-level, they’re singing bum notes and that they are, effectively, time-wasters. “Do you guys really think you can become artists like this? I don’t think you understand the dire situation you are in right now.”

At a time when the conduct of judges and trainers on reality shows is under more scrutiny than ever, this level of criticism is bracing. But Made in Korea producer Russ Lindsay insists that Hee Jun Yoon is coming from a place of encouragement. “Some of the villains in some of the TV shows we’ve all been involved in don’t necessarily say exactly the right things that help people achieve more,” he acknowledges. “But she is brilliant. She points out the faults, and she doesn’t just do it because she wants to… she does it because the boys pick up on them and work on them. And it makes them better.”

It seems a fair bet that Dear Alice have what it takes to be successful in the British music scene – the tunes we hear are earworm-strong and, since the demise of One Direction, there’s been a boy band-shaped hole in our charts. But could they make it in the even tougher world of K-pop? “It’s a difficult one,” says Ford. “There’s a level of personal sacrifice that comes with being a successful K-pop idol. They can’t have scandals, they can’t have thriving personal lives publicly. Basically, idols are up for consumption, and it’s hard for a Western group to deal with that. If you want that level of fandom, that’s the trade-off.”

MEET THE BOY BAND

Reese previously worked as a performer on a cruise ship. “I think we can take a bit of every major artist that we all love and turn ourselves into an amazing group.”

Authors

Craig McLean

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