![\"Alleged](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/12899699.webp\")
<\/p>\n\n A parliamentary forum on K-pop trainees revealed accounts of abuse, depression and harassment, prompting calls for better legal safeguards.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
\n A parliamentary seminar about the experiences of K-pop trainees is held at the National Assembly in western Seoul on Sept. 30.
\n JEONG EUN-HYE\n <\/p>\n
For K-pop trainees, the stakes are stark: Make it, or leave with little to show for years of sacrifice. Teenagers starve themselves to skeletal proportions and give up years of schooling for the promise of stardom \u2014 without any guarantee that they will ever even debut.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so underweight that my periods stopped for a year,\u201d one female K-pop trainee said in an interview examining their working conditions and experiences. \u201cThe health consequences hit me later. I think failing to debut may have contributed to my depression.\u201d<\/p>\n
Accounts by former K-pop trainees presented Wednesday at a parliamentary forum on idol trainees in Yeouido, western Seoul, revealed a common pattern: extreme dieting that damaged their health during adolescence, lack of schooling or an ordinary social life, constant monitoring of their private lives, unsafe shared housing that left them vulnerable to crime and sexual abuse, punitive contract penalties, depression and other psychological problems.<\/p>\n
The trainees comprised 11 women and five men, with an average age of 22 at the time of the interviews.\u00a0Fourteen of the 16 interviewees, all of whom had trained to become idols since 2020, never even debuted.<\/p>\n
Critics blame a lack of oversight for allowing agencies and K-pop academies to bind aspiring idols to unfair contracts and subject them to rights abuses with few consequences.<\/p>\n
Demands on the aspiring idols also went far beyond punishing diets and grueling training schedules.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Text messages allegedly from a K-pop agency executive demanding sexual images from a trainee, as reported by YTN in August 2022
\n YTN\n <\/p>\n
\u201cI had to please everyone, not just the head of the agency but its employees too,\u201d one trainee said. \u201cSome staff treated trainees as potential dating partners, and others told us to wear clothes that accentuated our breasts. Even when it made me feel sexually humiliated, I had no way to push back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery trainee\u2019s circumstances are different, but certain problems come up again and again,\u201d said Heo Yu-jeong, a former K-pop trainee who now runs arts company Souju. \u201cWe need institutional reform based on their experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interviewees became idol trainees at an average age of 15.9 years old \u2014 and sometimes as early as age 12. They spent an average of about 30 months training or working as idols, with five devoting more than three years to the pursuit. Along the way, two gave up on attending high school and six abandoned plans for college.<\/p>\n
Each trainee signed with an average of 2.3 companies over the period. Leaving can come at a steep price, as agencies charge penalties tied to training, dormitory stays and, in some cases, cosmetic surgery. Critics say the contracts were overwhelmingly tilted in the agencies\u2019 favor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was told I would owe 100 million won ($73,500) if I left, while I heard a foreign trainee paid only 1 million won,\u201d one interviewee said. Another said, \u201cI saw what lawsuits did to my friends, so I gave up and accepted that more than five years of my life had been wasted.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Former](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/12899700.webp\")
<\/p>\n
\n Former K-pop trainees share their experiences about extreme diet and conditions attached for their debut.
\n SCREEN CAPTURE\n <\/p>\n
\u201cYoung trainees are not legally classified as workers under current law, so labor laws do not protect them,\u201d said attorney Kim Du-na of the Children and Youth Media Rights Network (translated), the organization that conducted the interviews. \u201cLaws governing artists apply to them only in part, which leaves them with little effective protection. We need clearer safeguards and an institution that can provide legal review when trainees sign contracts with agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The industry is built largely around minors, yet those who work in it face virtually no regulation, critics say. Current law requires talent agencies to have at least one executive with two years of relevant industry experience and the required training to register as a pop culture agency.<\/p>\n
The bar is low. The required training consists solely of 40 hours of online courses run by the Korea Creative Content Agency. In addition,\u00a0there are no restrictions tied to agency employees\u2019 sex-offense records and no minimum standards for capital or professional qualifications. Over the past five years, 6,588 businesses had registered as agencies as of June.<\/p>\n
Critics also called for safeguards to keep idol trainees in school.<\/p>\n
![\"K-pop](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/12899701.webp\")
<\/p>\n
\n K-pop talent agency HYBE in Yongsan District, central Seoul. The photo is unrelated to the story.
\n NEWS1\n <\/p>\n
\u201cAgencies often see school attendance as a burden, so students naturally start considering dropping out,\u201d said Kim Yeo-jin, a teacher at the High School of Korean Pop and Performing Arts. \u201cWe need a system that allows students to balance school and trainee life so that even if they stop training, they can return to school at any time and continue their education and pursue another career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another industry expert called for institutional overhaul.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to examine why the rules and safeguards already in place are failing to work,\u201d said Kim Seong-hyeon, a professor in the K-pop department at Dong Seoul University. \u201cThe government should go beyond online training for business operators and move toward a system that checks and evaluates whether human rights are actually being upheld on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
BY JEONG EUN-HYE [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]<\/p>\n
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A parliamentary forum on K-pop trainees revealed accounts of abuse, depression and harassment, prompting calls for better legal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-916428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}