K-Pop Horror Story

K-Pop’s treatment of their “Idols” is actually worse than the American music industry provided you didn’t run into someone like Puff Diddler (I don’t know how low the odds of that are).

KG Crown (real name Kiera Grace Mudder) is a young pop performer who entered a survival show run by JY Park Entertainment called A2K. Basically a cattle call for American girls who love K-Pop and want to become Idols. All of them are minors, KG herself was fifteen when she started the process, and the youngest member was 13.

The format is that of a weekly elimination show and at the end of it, you have a girl group.

It was done as a partnership with YouTube. So you can see the whole thing if you want.

The winners, of which KG was one, debuted in a group called VCHA (it means something in Korean I think, I don’t care, I’m not looking it up and the Darkspawn are out of the house so I can’t ask them, moving on).

Around July the group stopped performing and went radio silent.

Now, KG Crown has very publicly stormed off the group citing a list of K-Pop horror stories. Some of the training these children are put through would, I shit you not, qualify as interrogation techniques at a Marine Corps SERE school. Except the Sere instructors aren’t allowed to go as far as these trainers did.

These kids were denied water while training for hours. They would be required to continue training with stress injuries sometimes resulting in severe injuries. Eating disorders were strongly encouraged. The girls were required to live in a mansion in Los Angeles and, (you guessed it) JYPE put them in debt for the rent. These kids have about $500,000 in debt which JYPE garnishes from their pay leaving them with nothing.

Some of the girls began indulging in self-harm, which the staff ignored. Another swallowed 42 Niquel capsules in a suicide attempt, that the staff covered it up with claims of food poisoning.

Members were required to practice and perform while ill (granted that is kind of normal). They also found hidden cameras around their house, (which is not).

KG Crown has now left the group and filed a lawsuit. As disinterested in entertainment child abuse as California is, there are people who are paid to do something about it and have to justify their department’s existence.

Perhaps more importantly, the Koreans are out-of-towners trying to muscle their way into the LA music scene. This story is being algorithmically boosted when it would normally be suppressed, that doesn’t happen by accident.

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