Life As a South Korean Idol

Life As An Idol: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Life as an idol is amazing- amazingly surreal, amazingly pampered, and amazingly hard. Idols get the perks of adoring fans and the ability to meet other celebrities they always dreamed of seeing, but they also have to deal with working extremely long hours and having their privacy invaded. The verdict is still out on exactly how much idols make, considering the numbers are never revealed and many critics think that the record companies retain a much larger cut of the profit than they should.

The Good:

All the work pays off for idols eventually, in money and in privilege. A popular gift of idols to their families is a new home or a business that their parents can run. Coffee shops, restaurants, and similar enterprises seem to make up a large chunk of these businesses. Even without continued support, it’s easy for the parents to keep these stores running as fans flock to them in hopes of getting to talk to the mother or father of their favorite performers. If fans are lucky, they may even get to see their idols visiting or working behind the register during time off.

Another perk for South Korean idols is that they can accept food and gifts from fans. If a girl band or boy band member mentions that she or he likes green socks, you can be sure about a hundred pairs will arrive in their post in short order. Fans often get together to organize and pay for food for idols and staff during filming for shows or performances. This is a sweet gesture, but idols do have to be careful. There have been instances in the past of idols being poisoned, like DBSK’s Yunho, who drank juice originating from an anti-fan that had super glue in it. Anti-fans are discussed in a later section.

The Hard:

First of all, idols work hard. Being in an idol group isn’t just about singing and releasing singles, although that happens too of course. It isn’t even just about the dance routines that go along with each single and often require weeks of intensive practice, up to 10 or more hours a day. Idols in South Korea are multimedia entertainers. They host radio shows, act in dramas and movies, and participate in variety shows that sometimes take them into the middle of a jungle and other times require them to learn how to do the high jump. For a busy idol, getting an hour or two of sleep a night for weeks on end isn’t unusual.

Idol groups, especially young ones, tend to live in dorms. This serves several purposes most likely. It’s convenient for their managers who have to get them to events and recordings on time, useful for the group’s dynamics and image as they spend much more time together, and advantageous for the company as they have far more knowledge of the band’s personal lives and can control them more easily. Young groups can be forced into extremely small spaces. Starting out, the 5 members of SHINee all slept in one room, and Super Junior’s Kyuhyun didn’t actually have a bed to sleep on for almost a year. These conditions tend to ease over time and with gained popularity and revenue from the group.

The Ugly:

There are two things idols have to deal with that are beyond hard, and should be considered just ugly. The first is anti-fans. Anti-fan or just “anti” seems to be a term used exclusively in South Korea to refer to people who spend time hating a specific group. Antis can be solo or gather in communities online. In fact, antis often use the internet as their method of harassing a band or individual, sending hurtful comments on the band’s official sites or on members’ social media accounts. One of the most shocking and disgusting manifestations of this is the numerous occasions celebrities have been sent messages telling them they would be better off dead or to “go kill” themselves.

The second ugly part of the idol industry is the record companies themselves. Fans are supposed to be reassured by the smiling faces of their idols that everything is all rainbows in idol world, but sometimes reality shows through. It’s not unusual to be able to tell an idol is being exhausted by the amount of work scheduled for him or her, and even when sick or injured, idols often work through it after getting an injection from the hospital. Several lawsuits that have been brought against SM Entertainment in particular have cited instances of “violations of human rights” in this regard.

It is also unclear how much idols actually make off of their own work, and there seems to be little way for an idol to leave his or her management company without suing. SM has very publicly had three such lawsuits in the last five years, two of them by Chinese nationals who were allegedly (and likely) discriminated against by the broadcasting stations and by SM. Other companies, such as Open World Entertainment, have had scandals involving the sexual harassment and abuse of trainees at the hands of company employees.

This post is actually the continuation of a post here about how to become an idol. When that super-massive post got too big for its britches, we separated them into these two and the one coming next week: general facts about the South Korean pop industry.