By Juwon Park
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) --An Apple TV+ documentary series, “K-pop Idols,” premiering Friday, offers an intimate look at how the K-pop industry is embracing diversity while grappling with challenges in a field that demands perfection.
The six-part series features Korean American star Jessi and up-and-coming K-pop bands like Cravity and Blackswan, documenting the highs and lows of their careers.
K-pop is known for its blend of vocals with precise choreography.
Blackswan members Fatou and Nvee told The Associated Press they practice up to 10 hours daily, including choreography and vocal sessions before the “comeback” season which refers to a string of events to promote their latest songs.
The grueling practice starts early.
Once under contract, K-pop trainees enter a system that includes classes in manners, language, dance, and choreography. As of 2022, there were 752 K-pop trainees under entertainment labels, according to a Korea Creative Content Agency report.
Despite recent pushback against the perennial “dark side of K-pop” narrative, the documentary shows that some industry problems persist.
Former Blackswan member Youngheun said members had a curfew and were not allowed to drink or date. “We even had to report when we were getting our nails done and going to the convenience store in front of our house,” she shared in the documentary.
Rigid control extends to diet.
Blackswan member Gabi is seen eating a meal of egg, chicken breast and what resembles sweet potato sticks during her trainee period. “I am dieting because Mr. Yoon (the label’s head) told me I need to lose weight,” Gabi said.
The pressure applies to boy bands, too.
Cravity member Wonjin shared that he was given two weeks to lose weight to join the label. “I would eat like one egg a day (…) I lost about 7kg,” he said in the documentary.
Bradley Cramp, one of executive producers of the documentary, noted that such restrictions exist in other competitive industries as well.
“I honestly don’t know one idol or elite sports athlete or entertainer that doesn’t deal with the issue of diet and self-image and mental health to some degree or another,” he told The Associated Press.
The documentary also touches on K-pop’s new challenge: embracing diversity.
Following BTS’ international success, K-pop labels have been actively recruiting foreign talents, which sometimes brings unfamiliar challenges.
In the documentary, Yoon Deung Ryong, the founder of Blackswan’s label DR Music, struggles to settle internal conflicts among members, which later escalated to online clashes between fans.
“If the company says, ‘don’t fight,’ they won’t fight,” he said, referring to traditional K-pop groups. He added that he can’t control a “multinational group” the same way because of language and cultural differences. There are currently no Korean members in Blackswan after member changes.
With K-pop’s global expansion, fundamental questions about the essence of K-pop remain.
“In a K-pop group, if there are no Korean members, I feel like it’s just a K-pop cover group, isn’t it?” Blackswan’s former Korean member Youngheun said in the documentary.
However, Cravity’s Hyeongjun disagrees. “If foreigners come to Korea and sing in other languages, I am not sure if I can call that K-pop, but since they (Blackswan members) are active in Korea and use Korean, they are K-pop.”
Cramp said social media has impacted K-pop’s ecosystem in various ways, including creating a “symbiotic relationship” between K-pop stars and fans, and forcing stars to live their lives “under a microscope.”
“There’s a desire to be real. But on the other hand, you have to obviously keep certain things kind of out of the public spotlight,” he told the AP. “You want to be famous, but yet at the same time, you still want your privacy and you want to be able to go and have dinner with your friends and have a good time and not be filmed doing it.”
“K-Pop Idols” is now available on Apple TV+.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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