K-Pop Boom in Asia Sheds Light on Korea’s Unique Talent Search

Approximately 23,000 aspiring singers from elementary school students to those in their early 20s flocked to the JYP Entertainment's talent search held in Seoul last month. Only four were picked as JYP trainees, scheduled to go through the years-long training program before making their debut. The record-high turnout in the audition came after the JYP trainee program gained the reputation of a machine producing K-pop idols, such as Wonder Girls and 2PM.

Origin of Trainee System
Hallyu expert Park Jung-sook told The Korea Times that the origin of the trainee system here goes back to the 1990s when Lee Soo-man, founder of SM Entertainment, benchmarked Johnys, a Japanese entertainment company that started a unique star search program.
"Probably boy band HOT, which was popular across Asia in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, was one of the first trainee attempts," she said.
Talent Search

Each entertainment business adopts different strategies when searching and training. Jung of Pladis said that his company has only four or five trainees now. He believes that stars are born, not made. "Rising stardom is not something that can happen to people whose talent is not outstanding. So we handpick those who have strong potential to become pop icons," he said. Jung goes everywhere, including high schools of art, streets and venues where the talented get together, to discover aspiring stars."I just recognize those who are born to be stars at first sight," he said.

Pladis does not provide its trainees with foreign language lesson. "We kind of wait and see how they go after making their debut and then invest in the foreign language lesson for only those who have strong potential to go global," he said.
YG, meanwhile, prefers the youngest possible trainees. "Founder Yang Hyun-seok, a former member of Seo Tai-ji boys, believes that discovering those who are talented when they were young is the key to success. So we have more elementary and middle school student trainees than any other entertainment businesses," said a YG staff member who asked not to be named.

Dark Side
An increasing number of entertainment businesses pick younger talents like Japan, but once they become pop icons, their popularity at home and abroad are underappreciated in their income. This is because some entertainment businesses try to lock their rising stars into the fixed, long-term contracts.
The Samsung Economic Research Institute report released in 2006 found that content power in K-pops and dramas was one of core elements that made the Korean wave go global.

Park said, "K-pops have competitive content that appealed to people in Asia. But we don't have the sustainable system that can make K-pop artists enjoy popularity in the long-term.
"We need to set ethical norms and business rules in the trainee system so as to make a more durable star producing machine."