May 14, 2025 • 12 mins
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Beomhan discusses mental health within the K-Pop industry and the challenges idols face. We explore the impact of bullying and the intense public scrutiny performers endure, along with the toll it takes on their mental well-being.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The K Factor Everything
k Pop hosted by Bomhan. I am a former keypop
training who toured around the world doing content and performances,
(00:21):
and I'm here to shed some light on the behind
the scenes of the K pop experience. Here's a little
reminder that you can listen to this podcast on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Today's episode is something close to my heart and it's
about mental health. Mental health and idle stardom in South
Korea is very closely interconnected, and we're going to cover
(00:42):
every single part of it today. This is a two
part episode where today I will talk about mental health.
Then next week I will talk about my personal experience
as I bring on a therapist. I am going to
have therapy live on the podcast. Let's do It. Today
we are going to be talking about health and up
until about twenty years ago, it was absolutely taboo to
(01:04):
admit that you had any mental health struggles or you
struggle with any of these things. And it wasn't until
very recently that there was very public incidents. These public
incidents includes on April nineteenth of twenty twenty three, twenty
five year old idol Moonbin from Astro passes away in
his home. Thirteen days later, on May twelfth, Trot singer
(01:28):
twenty nine years old Hissu as It was away in
her hotel room. Then a couple weeks later, pop Starchy
Sumbong on June twentieth passes away as well, and they
had all passed away from a mental health crisis. This
sparked a lot of conversation about mental health in idols,
(01:50):
mental health in society in Korea in general, and this
is what brought about this episode. These days, idols are
trying to talk about mental health more and more. Recent
examples of Korean idols taking the helm and public talking
about mental health is in twenty twenty one, former GOT
seven member JB. He reveals that he's been diagnosed with depression.
(02:13):
He talks about his issues with a magazine A Lord,
revealing that he was taking medications and therapy all throughout
the era of his promotions. BTS rapper Shuga creates an
alter ego Augusty to talk about mental health with lyrics
talking about depression, and he later comes forward and says
that more idols should be talking about these issues in
general Kung Daniel creates an album around the subject of
(02:36):
mental health and he talks about how he suffers panic
attacks reading negative comments and he's still very much so
affected by it. Idols and famous people were caused I
say we very vaguely, but famous famous people, they're constantly
exposed to public scrutiny. The image that they have to
(02:59):
present a lot of the times, especially in idle stardom,
is it differs significantly from their true selves and how
they carry themselves normally. This difference from reality can kind
of create like a sense of emptiness and depression, which
eventually leads to a tragic incident. The examples where famous
people have to present and be celebrated for an image
(03:21):
that's different from their true selves and that leading to
mental health problems that there's another side to that where
if the famous person becomes famous for their personality and
the image that they present to variety shows and their
live streams and to their fans, once that's critiqued and
scrutinized as well, it becomes personal attacks. So there's no
(03:42):
way around kind of this issue of mental health to
these famous people. Either you're celebrated for something that's not you,
and then you feel empty inside, or you're celebrated and
then scrutinized for something that is you, and then it
becomes something deeper than critiquing art. It's becomes something different
from having an opinion on art. You're rather now you're
(04:04):
just kind of exploiting this parasocial relationship that you have
and now bullying this person that for their person. So
and there are lots of parallels in the society in
which these idols kind of grow up in and the
training system in Korea as well. In Asia, you kind
(04:24):
of grow up with school being your kind of number
one focus. You grow up and you go through middle school,
high school preparing for these standardized exams where you're competing
against all these other kids in the country. And that's
that the pressures that you feel from your family, from
your peers, from your parents, it's very similar to what
(04:46):
an idol goes through from a young age as well.
The idle auditions. It's kind of giving SATs, not gonna lie.
You go in and you are in these training camps
from when you're thirteen to fourteen year old, and you're
learning how to dance and sing, and you're competing against
all these other kids in the camp, and then you
(05:06):
take your test every now and then in your evaluations,
and then you're judged and you're graded, and you're critiqued
on your looks, your skill, your talent, and all these things.
And then eventually, hopefully one day, you get picked and
you join a big company, and then you go through
this over and over and over again, and you never
(05:28):
know if you're going to debut. You're losing time because
you're stepping away from your studies, and every day that
goes by, you're kind of staking your future a little bit.
And there's that pressure that comes with chasing and pursuing.
This mental health is seen as taboo, is not really
talked about, and the generation before was also brought up
(05:48):
like this in an extreme extreme way, and the people
directly in charge of these companies are also passing these
on to their idols. So now you have these workplace
environments where kids are getting yelled at some occasions and
like criticized for their looks, criticized for anything really, and
then they grow up and then they finally achieve their
(06:09):
dream they get to debut, and then now that parallel
extends to the public and now you're critiqued in public,
and now you're health to these standards in public, and
this lifetime of pressure causes the collapse of a lot
a lot of people. However, with these incidents bringing this
kind of issue to light, something positive that has been
(06:32):
coming from these mental health campaigns and these unfortunate tragic
incidents happening in the public light is that a lot
of companies and actually the government has been getting involved
in issuing these standardized contracts for miners who are trainees,
and it enforces a lot of labor laws making sure
(06:54):
that underage trainees can't train for a certain amount of time,
and it has a lot of clauses that protect the
trainee whether they debut or not. And I think that's
something very very positive. And actually these things came in
effect when I officially signed my contract with my K
pop company as well, and it states that if I
(07:15):
was dealing with depression, or if I was dealing with
any kind of mental health things, I am allowed to
speak up and allowed to seek help and ask for breaks.
I wasn't allowed to train over a certain amount of time. However,
it's not really it's not really well regulated, to be honest,
and when I was dealing with my personal issues and
(07:38):
I was going through my training, and then I had
a bunch of personal home life things collapse as I
was preparing for certain things and then like suffering from
certain disappointments and like not getting into certain shows. I
had this huge major collapse and I was like, Okay,
I remember signing this contract. I'm gonna ask for a
(07:59):
break here. And then like one of the things that
happened was like I had a family member pass away
and it was my grandma. I was I had my grandma.
My grandma passed away. And then I went to my
my grandma passed away, and she took care of me
ever since I was like three years old, and like
she like supported my family when like they first came
to America all these things. I was very close to her,
(08:20):
and I went to my manager and I was like, hey,
like I had this thing happen. I explained to her.
And then I had a schedule that day, and I
was like, is it okay if I like if I
show up like thirty minutes late, I just need some
times I like processed as And then she came up
to me and she was like everybody's Grandma dies and
then she like threw me my clothes and I was like,
oh okay, and I was like and it's like, while
(08:42):
these things are kind of implemented in the system, I
wished for it to be enforced better in the future.
You know. For example, even when I was doing therapy,
when I was going through these things and whatnot, my
boss was coming into my therapy sessions, so it's like, yeah,
(09:06):
I am allowed to have therapy, but it's kind of
done on their own terms. So the system from experience
isn't perfect. However, we're taking steps every now and then
to move forward in the world of K pop. And
I also think that having mental health checkups is very important,
(09:27):
whether you're an idol or just literally anyone. And it's
very easy to kind of get caught in a system.
Have the momentum of your life, like whether you're working
like double shifts, all these things that burnout kind of
catches up to you unexpectedly, and all of a sudden
(09:48):
you end up with me. And I'll have these moments,
for example, where I can't move, I can't think, I
can't breathe, I can't do anything for hours and hours
at a time, and that was a huge result of burnout,
where my mind just chooses to rest because I'm not
(10:11):
giving it, like I'm not actively telling myself to rest anymore.
So my brain just kind of automatically shuts off and
goes like, no, we're stopping now, and I can't control it.
And if I had checked in with myself during those
times and been like, Okay, hey, I'm feeling tired here,
and I made my rest is more intentional, then these
things wouldn't have happened. And a lot of times people
(10:32):
don't take care of their mental health like they should.
Like another example too, something that someone told me one
time was when you're five years old compared to now
you like when huh sorry? Something that someone told me
one time is that when you're five years old, compared
(10:54):
to now right now, you can do more pushups, you
can run faster, you can do more pole or whatever
it is. Then when you were five years old, so
you grow physically. However, there's a lot of people who
are twenty thirty dealing with emotional problems the same way
that they would if they were five years old, and
it's because they never take time to work on it
(11:16):
and check in on these things. So, whether you're an
idol who's plagued by these busy schedules and endless projects,
or if you're like a regular listener or a capop
fan or whatever it is, checking in with your mental
health is very, very important. So hopefully this episode brought
(11:36):
you a little bit more insight into the behind the
scenes of kpop and how mental health affects the industry
and South Korea as a society. Make sure to check
in with your mental health today. Make sure to ask
one of your close friends who's maybe acting a little
bit funny or a little bit weird if they're okay
and they're doing fine. Next week, we're going to have
(11:59):
a therapist. Come on. I want to talk about more
personal problems and my personal experience with K pop and
what led me to my infamous crash out a couple
of months ago. So tune in next week and see
you guys. Then this is the K Factor everything k
pop
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The K Factor Everything
k Pop hosted by Bomhan. I am a former keypop
training who toured around the world doing content and performances,
(00:21):
and I'm here to shed some light on the behind
the scenes of the K pop experience. Here's a little
reminder that you can listen to this podcast on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Today's episode is something close to my heart and it's
about mental health. Mental health and idle stardom in South
Korea is very closely interconnected, and we're going to cover
(00:42):
every single part of it today. This is a two
part episode where today I will talk about mental health.
Then next week I will talk about my personal experience
as I bring on a therapist. I am going to
have therapy live on the podcast. Let's do It. Today
we are going to be talking about health and up
until about twenty years ago, it was absolutely taboo to
(01:04):
admit that you had any mental health struggles or you
struggle with any of these things. And it wasn't until
very recently that there was very public incidents. These public
incidents includes on April nineteenth of twenty twenty three, twenty
five year old idol Moonbin from Astro passes away in
his home. Thirteen days later, on May twelfth, Trot singer
(01:28):
twenty nine years old Hissu as It was away in
her hotel room. Then a couple weeks later, pop Starchy
Sumbong on June twentieth passes away as well, and they
had all passed away from a mental health crisis. This
sparked a lot of conversation about mental health in idols,
(01:50):
mental health in society in Korea in general, and this
is what brought about this episode. These days, idols are
trying to talk about mental health more and more. Recent
examples of Korean idols taking the helm and public talking
about mental health is in twenty twenty one, former GOT
seven member JB. He reveals that he's been diagnosed with depression.
(02:13):
He talks about his issues with a magazine A Lord,
revealing that he was taking medications and therapy all throughout
the era of his promotions. BTS rapper Shuga creates an
alter ego Augusty to talk about mental health with lyrics
talking about depression, and he later comes forward and says
that more idols should be talking about these issues in
general Kung Daniel creates an album around the subject of
(02:36):
mental health and he talks about how he suffers panic
attacks reading negative comments and he's still very much so
affected by it. Idols and famous people were caused I
say we very vaguely, but famous famous people, they're constantly
exposed to public scrutiny. The image that they have to
(02:59):
present a lot of the times, especially in idle stardom,
is it differs significantly from their true selves and how
they carry themselves normally. This difference from reality can kind
of create like a sense of emptiness and depression, which
eventually leads to a tragic incident. The examples where famous
people have to present and be celebrated for an image
(03:21):
that's different from their true selves and that leading to
mental health problems that there's another side to that where
if the famous person becomes famous for their personality and
the image that they present to variety shows and their
live streams and to their fans, once that's critiqued and
scrutinized as well, it becomes personal attacks. So there's no
(03:42):
way around kind of this issue of mental health to
these famous people. Either you're celebrated for something that's not you,
and then you feel empty inside, or you're celebrated and
then scrutinized for something that is you, and then it
becomes something deeper than critiquing art. It's becomes something different
from having an opinion on art. You're rather now you're
(04:04):
just kind of exploiting this parasocial relationship that you have
and now bullying this person that for their person. So
and there are lots of parallels in the society in
which these idols kind of grow up in and the
training system in Korea as well. In Asia, you kind
(04:24):
of grow up with school being your kind of number
one focus. You grow up and you go through middle school,
high school preparing for these standardized exams where you're competing
against all these other kids in the country. And that's
that the pressures that you feel from your family, from
your peers, from your parents, it's very similar to what
(04:46):
an idol goes through from a young age as well.
The idle auditions. It's kind of giving SATs, not gonna lie.
You go in and you are in these training camps
from when you're thirteen to fourteen year old, and you're
learning how to dance and sing, and you're competing against
all these other kids in the camp, and then you
(05:06):
take your test every now and then in your evaluations,
and then you're judged and you're graded, and you're critiqued
on your looks, your skill, your talent, and all these things.
And then eventually, hopefully one day, you get picked and
you join a big company, and then you go through
this over and over and over again, and you never
(05:28):
know if you're going to debut. You're losing time because
you're stepping away from your studies, and every day that
goes by, you're kind of staking your future a little bit.
And there's that pressure that comes with chasing and pursuing.
This mental health is seen as taboo, is not really
talked about, and the generation before was also brought up
(05:48):
like this in an extreme extreme way, and the people
directly in charge of these companies are also passing these
on to their idols. So now you have these workplace
environments where kids are getting yelled at some occasions and
like criticized for their looks, criticized for anything really, and
then they grow up and then they finally achieve their
(06:09):
dream they get to debut, and then now that parallel
extends to the public and now you're critiqued in public,
and now you're health to these standards in public, and
this lifetime of pressure causes the collapse of a lot
a lot of people. However, with these incidents bringing this
kind of issue to light, something positive that has been
(06:32):
coming from these mental health campaigns and these unfortunate tragic
incidents happening in the public light is that a lot
of companies and actually the government has been getting involved
in issuing these standardized contracts for miners who are trainees,
and it enforces a lot of labor laws making sure
(06:54):
that underage trainees can't train for a certain amount of time,
and it has a lot of clauses that protect the
trainee whether they debut or not. And I think that's
something very very positive. And actually these things came in
effect when I officially signed my contract with my K
pop company as well, and it states that if I
(07:15):
was dealing with depression, or if I was dealing with
any kind of mental health things, I am allowed to
speak up and allowed to seek help and ask for breaks.
I wasn't allowed to train over a certain amount of time. However,
it's not really it's not really well regulated, to be honest,
and when I was dealing with my personal issues and
(07:38):
I was going through my training, and then I had
a bunch of personal home life things collapse as I
was preparing for certain things and then like suffering from
certain disappointments and like not getting into certain shows. I
had this huge major collapse and I was like, Okay,
I remember signing this contract. I'm gonna ask for a
(07:59):
break here. And then like one of the things that
happened was like I had a family member pass away
and it was my grandma. I was I had my grandma.
My grandma passed away. And then I went to my
my grandma passed away, and she took care of me
ever since I was like three years old, and like
she like supported my family when like they first came
to America all these things. I was very close to her,
(08:20):
and I went to my manager and I was like, hey,
like I had this thing happen. I explained to her.
And then I had a schedule that day, and I
was like, is it okay if I like if I
show up like thirty minutes late, I just need some
times I like processed as And then she came up
to me and she was like everybody's Grandma dies and
then she like threw me my clothes and I was like,
oh okay, and I was like and it's like, while
(08:42):
these things are kind of implemented in the system, I
wished for it to be enforced better in the future.
You know. For example, even when I was doing therapy,
when I was going through these things and whatnot, my
boss was coming into my therapy sessions, so it's like, yeah,
(09:06):
I am allowed to have therapy, but it's kind of
done on their own terms. So the system from experience
isn't perfect. However, we're taking steps every now and then
to move forward in the world of K pop. And
I also think that having mental health checkups is very important,
(09:27):
whether you're an idol or just literally anyone. And it's
very easy to kind of get caught in a system.
Have the momentum of your life, like whether you're working
like double shifts, all these things that burnout kind of
catches up to you unexpectedly, and all of a sudden
(09:48):
you end up with me. And I'll have these moments,
for example, where I can't move, I can't think, I
can't breathe, I can't do anything for hours and hours
at a time, and that was a huge result of burnout,
where my mind just chooses to rest because I'm not
(10:11):
giving it, like I'm not actively telling myself to rest anymore.
So my brain just kind of automatically shuts off and
goes like, no, we're stopping now, and I can't control it.
And if I had checked in with myself during those
times and been like, Okay, hey, I'm feeling tired here,
and I made my rest is more intentional, then these
things wouldn't have happened. And a lot of times people
(10:32):
don't take care of their mental health like they should.
Like another example too, something that someone told me one
time was when you're five years old compared to now
you like when huh sorry? Something that someone told me
one time is that when you're five years old, compared
(10:54):
to now right now, you can do more pushups, you
can run faster, you can do more pole or whatever
it is. Then when you were five years old, so
you grow physically. However, there's a lot of people who
are twenty thirty dealing with emotional problems the same way
that they would if they were five years old, and
it's because they never take time to work on it
(11:16):
and check in on these things. So, whether you're an
idol who's plagued by these busy schedules and endless projects,
or if you're like a regular listener or a capop
fan or whatever it is, checking in with your mental
health is very, very important. So hopefully this episode brought
(11:36):
you a little bit more insight into the behind the
scenes of kpop and how mental health affects the industry
and South Korea as a society. Make sure to check
in with your mental health today. Make sure to ask
one of your close friends who's maybe acting a little
bit funny or a little bit weird if they're okay
and they're doing fine. Next week, we're going to have
(11:59):
a therapist. Come on. I want to talk about more
personal problems and my personal experience with K pop and
what led me to my infamous crash out a couple
of months ago. So tune in next week and see
you guys. Then this is the K Factor everything k
pop
Host
Beomhan
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