Stray Kids perform for the Billboard Music Awards at Hwajung Gymnasium in Seoul on November 19, 2023. Credit – Penske Media/Getty Images
For it is said that for Koreans, being a K-pop idol is harder than winning the lottery. For those outside Korea, the path to stardom in the genre may seem even rarer; But soon industry executives and starlets around the world hope that luck will begin to change.
Last week, nearly 70 students in Singapore experienced what it means to be a K-pop idol; They traveled to Singapore to attend a five-day K-pop boot camp taught by some of the industry’s most famous dance and vocal coaches. Southeast Asian country from Seoul. The camp was organized by the Singapore Raffles College of Music (SRMC), which plans to open the first K-pop high school outside of Korea next year in collaboration with the Seoul School of Performing Arts, pending approval from the Singapore Ministry of Education. SOPA) is a popular arts high school in Seoul that has produced some of the biggest names in K-pop.
“We understand this [SOPA] It has very strong connections for students to enter the industry,” SRMC executive director Ryan Goh told TIME, adding that he hopes the upcoming program will build “the necessary credentials for Southeast Asian talent” to become K-pop stars.
Outward expansion (interacting and collaborating with foreign cultures) is “a natural evolution of K-pop,” says Goh, noting the genre’s increasing internationalism, especially in the past few years, as the likes of BTS and Blackpink have risen to the top. charted and achieved mainstream popularity around the world. “We hope to have a small role in helping build the pipeline of talent that will be part of this journey,” he adds.
Non-Korean K-pop idols have been around since the 1990s with groups like Fly to the Sky (a duo consisting of a Korean-American singer) or SES (a girl group consisting of a Japanese member). Today, Blackpink’s Thai Lisa is a fan favorite in Thailand and a testament to how international K-pop group members can move international audiences. NewJeans and Stray Kids, two relatively new bands on the rise, each have two Australian members.
“Strategically, it makes a lot of sense to bring together people who can connect with fans from different regions,” CedarBough Saeji, an assistant professor of Korean and East Asian studies at Pusan National University, told TIME.
The new school may seem like an unprecedented gateway for young Southeast Asians to join the ranks of professional K-pop artists, but success and happiness are by no means guaranteed.
While high schools specifically catering to K-pop education are a relatively new but growing phenomenon, the “idol education” system that the K-pop industry wants to export is already firmly established in Korea, with thousands attending each year. Adolescents filter through a notoriously brutal regime in which they are forced to adhere to punitive schedules and follow strict diets while being deprived of social life and most of their personal freedoms. Even among those who complete their internships, only a small portion are chosen by record companies to debut as K-pop idols. For every band or solo act that finds success, there are thousands of other fitful “Hallyu-wood” dreams; These are interns who have fallen into crippling debt or who claim to have been subjected to oppression or abuse by their management.
“I love that young people have dreams, and the K-pop industry is extremely attractive but also a really challenging industry,” Saeji says. “I see a lot of young people entering the industry, perhaps too young, and it burns them out. It’s not an easy life. And I think when you’re 16 you don’t understand how hard that can be.”
“I’m a little worried that these types of schools are profiting from young people’s dreams,” Saeji adds. “They are setting some young people up for a difficult future, perhaps disappointing.”
Yet for many students and their parents, the rigid curriculum and huge price tag of K-pop education aren’t enough to deter the quest for stardom.
“The past five days were really difficult,” says Chu Xiyi, a 17-year-old camp participant and vocal training student who came to SRMC. “But if this helps me have a better future, then I think it will all be worth it.”
Lai Hooi Chin, who enrolled her 12-year-old daughter in the camp, which cost more than $2,000, told TIME that they also signed up for another K-pop training camp in Seoul next month for about the same price. The five days of grueling training had only strengthened her resolve, her daughter Ong Lixuan told TIME after attending a demonstration on the last night of camp. “I told myself before that I wouldn’t give up, even if it was hard,” she says. “Because this is my dream. That’s what I was after.”
K-pop teachers don’t shy away from the hard truth. “Being an idol is not just a dream,” a SOPA instructor solemnly told a room full of enthusiastic teenagers and tweens on the last day of camp. “It’s a job, like any other job.”
SRMC’s Goh says the latest camp aims to give students a “complete experience” of the K-pop industry. He added that the school, which is expected to start with 75 students in the second half of 2024, will make sure to include enough breadth in its curriculum to prepare students “if they are not going to be stars.”
Contact us at letters@time.com.