"All That Glitters Is Not Gold " (Chapter One)
Oct 1, 2015 10:27:52 GMT -5
Post by Yun Goeun on Oct 1, 2015 10:27:52 GMT -5
(OOC: Trying something a bit different.)
[All That Glitters is Not Gold: A Documentary on a Fallen Idol]
My name is Yun Goeun.
Some of you know me, but not many of you really know me.
So I thought it was time for me to... reveal all - for lack of a better phrase - about the girl whom is Yun Goeun. But I wanted to do this for more than just to... let people learn about who I am. I wanted to take an inside look at the industry that I was forced into. An industry that chewed me, and many girls like me, up and then spit me out.
I want this documentary to be my tell all.
The sad thing is, in Korea, many idols wait until their suicide letter to tell all.
I am stronger than that. So, I asked to have this documentary made.
I want people to understand who I am, and I want people to know every single thing I went through.
When people hear my story, with out all the facts, knowing only that I never wanted to be a singer and I "gave up" on a dream that so many people have I hear "Boo hoo for you! You were famous!" I want to tell the story that you don't get to hear or see, the inside look at the industry.
So then maybe next time, before I am judged... You will know just what you are talking about.
[Chapter 1]
People always seem to have this misconception that I was a pop idol in Korea, that I was rich, that I was famous, that everything was handed to me on a silver platter. But the truth of the industry in the East, is a far cry from that in the West. You can have marginal talent in the west and get rich, get famous, and get everything handed to you on a silver platter. But in Korea, and even in Japan and China, you are given nothing on a silver platter. You are never going to become rich, the old man who owns your contract... HE is going to become rich. Then fame? Don't be fickle, it will go as quickly as it came for many different reasons.
You decide to get a boyfriend? Your fans turn on you.
You decide to leave the industry? Your fans turn on you.
You make a joke that some how offends the most easily offended group of humans on the planet? Your fans turn on you.
But the sad thing is, most of the girls and boys who put them selves through the riggers of becoming an idol in Asia, ASK FOR IT. They want to be famous and are willing to go through with every single thing asked of them, no mater how repulsive you or I may find it.
But the fact is, not everyone in the industry has ASKED to be there.
You have idols who had submitted TEN or more audition tapes, getting rejected each time but never giving up, before they get their chance. You have idols who submit ONE audition tape, and are signed right then and there. You have girls and boys who show up at tryout events just to try to earn a spot on a major label.
...Then there is another arm of this recruitment process on how companies get talent. Scouts. I will not sit here and say I did not like singing, nor will I say I was not good at it. But enjoying singing as a hobby and wanting to make a career out of it?
So, imagine you are NINE years old, your whole life ahead of you, and you decide to sing at a talent show for children under 15 being put on by a TV station. Winner would get... you know I forget how much money it was. But if I won, it was enough to get me through college. At least for a year or two.
It was not some sort of early version of X-Factor or Pop Idol, or any of those Got Talent Shows, it was just a small talent show put on by a local station, not a national station. Was for any act you wanted to perform in front of a crowd, and at the end the crowd votes. So when I proposed the idea to my parents, they loved it. So when the day came, they happily took me to it.
It changed my life. I came in second place, yet it changed my life. I doubt anyone remembers the boy who won, he was some sort of magician, and I hope he enjoyed the prize money. I won a nice little pot coming in second my self but... You could say I was the real winner if you wanted to look at it that way.
There was a scout in the crowd from SYC Entertainment, a record label owned and operated by former idol SooYoung Choi. My mom was a huge fan of hers back in the day and was smitten the second the scout said her name.
The scout praised my voice, my look, almost everything about me. He told my parents if they signed a contract for me to join SYC Entertainment as a Rookie, he can all but guarantee with my voice and look, that not only will I make it past being a rookie, but become a mega star. He told them I was one of the best singers he has ever discovered at one of these events. I am sure he gave that pitch to everyone he approached...
But he was not wrong...
More than that, my parents took it hook, line and sinker.
My parents took me aside later that night, and explained how big this would be for me. But for it to be so, I would have to leave home. I was scared, I didn't want to leave home for about six months at the least and for as long as three years. They wanted what was best for me, and they wanted to see me succeed as a idol... They never once asked if this was something I wanted, and frankly when I said "No!" and "I don't want too!" I was told, I was too young to realize how good this was for me and I was just scared about leaving home...
It was a choice I had no say in.
If you asked nine year old Yun Goeun where she saw her self in the future, it would not be singer.
In fact, at that age I still wanted to be a doctor. I think, maybe I was in my lawyer phase. But that is here nor there... What is important is what happened three days later...
Three days later, SooYoung Choi her self came to my little house in Seoul, and had all these documents for my parents to read and sign. So while her lawyer and my parents went over the documents, I was introduced to SooYoung Choi... I was scared of her, the first time I saw her. She has a presence that you don't forget, it strikes you the moment you see her.
She asked me if I could sing for her.
I told her I was scared. She smiled and assured me it was alright, "You will grow out of that" she told me. She then sat me down and told me she saw the tape the scout recorded and was floored to hear such a voice from someone so young. She told me the same thing the scout told my parents, I would be a star with a voice like mine...
I wanted to be anywhere but there, so I can't recall many of the details to what she actually told me. But what little I do remember involved telling me that I would live with girls like me, train to become an idol and in a few years time debut.
If I am going to tell the truth.
I wanted to run away. Just... vanish from everything.
The following week, after a tearful good bye with my sister, my parents took me to the office of SooYoung Choi in the heart of Seoul. It was a huge building, and with the fog hugging the city that morning I could not see the top of it. I felt more fear in that moment than I had ever felt in my life up to that point in that moment. Because out came SooYoung Choi with four men in suits, and before I knew it I was being escorted in to the building...
I was crying.
I was screaming, still, that I did not want to go.
But the one vision of this moment that haunts my dreams more than anything is the fact that my parents were smiling. There was not one drop of sorrow on their face. They looked happy. I am being hauled off for who knows how long, told they would not be able to see me for at least the first six months... And there they were. Happy.
That stayed with me all through out those first six months.
My parents saw me more as a cow to milk, as a product, than as a daughter...
Do you know how heartbreaking that is to a nine year old girl, taken away from her home against her will just so her parents could make some money?
Sure, most of these girls WANTED to be there.
But I did not, not from day one, but here I was BOUND by a contract to be here.
I tried to leave once and there was talk of breach of contract if it happened again and my father yelled at me so much, that for the first time in his life he laid his hands on me.
I didn't want to be there.
They didn't want me to be home.
That was when I just... gave up and fell in line.
My whole life changed from that point on.
I was put into a dorm with four other girls, around my age.
I use the term dorm loosely. It was a corner room in the basement of the building.
It had no heating, no air conditioning, only one window that was maybe 6 inches deep and three feet wide, covered in tin foil so people outside could not see inside. There was only one room, which we all had to share. There was no bathroom, so no toilet or shower, in our room. Worse then all there was no door. It was maybe the worst environment imaginable. The only bathroom on the floor, was a public style restroom that everyone on the floor had to share. It had 5 shower units and 5 toilets, with out any means of privacy...
Our meals were brought to us twice a day.
If you want to call them meals. We all ate the same thing.
It was always the same thing, half of a chicken breast, and vegetables in extremely limited portions.
You see, we had a daily caloric intake we were, as per our contract, not allowed to exceed. This diet designed with our daily workouts, designed to keep our shape... inhumanly thin.
My whole day was devoted to studies for the first year.
I was assigned to a new public school, one closer to the SYC building.
Me and all the girls and guys in the basement were sent there.
Private schools were only afforded to those who had actually made it.
When I would get back to the building from school, it was then singing lesson for hours, then dance lessons for hours. I was taught English. I was taught Japanese. I was taught how to be the perfect idol.
I would wake up at 5 in the morning, and by the time we were done for the day it would be a little after 11 at night. The life as a trainee or rookie is one of the worst periods in the Korean Entertainment industry, and you hope the whole time it will only get better but... It never does.
The six months minimum came and went. I was told when the six months were up my parents could visit me if they wished. But they never did. My sister would show up from time to time but.. as the six months extended into two years as a trainee, she came less and less. She never said it, but I could see it in her eyes. She hated to see me that way.
About every four months, SooYoung Choi her self would visit the basement for a minute or two at a time. Every time she would post up two pieces of paper. On one sheet she would list a new boy group, or a new girl group, and the members from the trainee pool she wanted to join them. The other piece of paper was the list of the girls and boys who had been cut... released from there contract.
For those who wanted to be here, this was a moment of great tension. If you saw your name on either list, you had made it, or flunked out. If your name was not there, it was another four months of this hell for you. If you were like me, you always hoped to see your name on the cut list.
...It never came for me.
Then after two long years as a trainee, the day finally came I saw my name on one of the two lists. The first group listed on the "made It" list was a new female group called "Pink Dolls" and right below the name of the group, first on the list, was my name... and in that moment my heart dropped, but I had some hope that maybe... just maybe from here on out things would get better.
... I was a fool.
[To Be Continued...]
~~~~~~~~~
Yun Cam
~~~~~~~~~
Hey, Maurice. Remember me?
My name is Yun Goeun, and I beat you a few months ago.
I mean I kicked you in the head pretty fucking hard, so I was just making sure you remember me. Okay so you do? You know, I ask for one simple reason... You said something last time and I just really want to see how you feel about that shit now.
AND I QUOTE: "Yun Go-Eun beating me is next to impossible! Surviving me aint looking to good either."
So Maurice, how you feeling about that? You want to maybe recant that? Maybe take the time to tell the world I made you look like a buffoon in the ring? No, you want to live by that shit then eh? Okay then I guess I pulled off the impossible? I guess I am better than I always thought I was because now I am Yun Goeun, THE GIRL WHO CAN DO THE IMPOSSIBE.
But you know, you failed on two counts there, Maurice. Because not only did I beat you in the center of the ring, with your shoulders on the mat looking up at the ceiling lights, I'm also feeling pretty fucking good right now. Like, I went to the doctors this week and everything to make sure I was indeed still alive... So I think I survived too.
I hope you don't make predictions often, because, man.
You are pretty bad at them.
But it is cool, I really like proving that I can do the impossible. I also like proving that I can do the impossible twice, because I mean if beating you once was impossible I sure am not going to be able to beat you twice eh? Maybe I got lucky. Yeah. I am sure that is what you told your self.
You gave it your all.
She just got lucky, right?
You should have won that match.
You just got careless.
I mean, that is after all the same excuses out of your mouth every time I've heard you after a loss. Okay, perhaps I am not one to talk as I've not been on the most impressive run lately, and maybe I've been a bit down by that fact. But I don't need to fluff my ego and say I got careless and lost a match I should have won.
Cordy beat me because on that night she was better than me.
Izzy beat me because on that night she was better than me.
I beat you because on that night, I was better than you.
...and frankly I am going to beat you again because I am just better than you.
I am not the old feeling sorry for her self Yun anymore, Maurice, that you may have heard in recent weeks. You are getting a Yun Goeun who has her mind back in the game, and is focused to regain her path up the ladder of success.
I may have fallen down a few rungs of late, but my rise comes, and this week it comes at your expense, Machine. You know, for a machine you may want to bring your self in for a check up, I am pretty sure there is a recall on your model, because it is just terrible.
This week begins the rise of Yun Goeun, Maurice. I hope you don't get Vertigo as you watch it.
Beating ME is next to impossible, and you know what? Surviving me ain't looking so good either.
...Yun Goeun! HWAITING!
[All That Glitters is Not Gold: A Documentary on a Fallen Idol]
My name is Yun Goeun.
Some of you know me, but not many of you really know me.
So I thought it was time for me to... reveal all - for lack of a better phrase - about the girl whom is Yun Goeun. But I wanted to do this for more than just to... let people learn about who I am. I wanted to take an inside look at the industry that I was forced into. An industry that chewed me, and many girls like me, up and then spit me out.
I want this documentary to be my tell all.
The sad thing is, in Korea, many idols wait until their suicide letter to tell all.
I am stronger than that. So, I asked to have this documentary made.
I want people to understand who I am, and I want people to know every single thing I went through.
When people hear my story, with out all the facts, knowing only that I never wanted to be a singer and I "gave up" on a dream that so many people have I hear "Boo hoo for you! You were famous!" I want to tell the story that you don't get to hear or see, the inside look at the industry.
So then maybe next time, before I am judged... You will know just what you are talking about.
[Chapter 1]
People always seem to have this misconception that I was a pop idol in Korea, that I was rich, that I was famous, that everything was handed to me on a silver platter. But the truth of the industry in the East, is a far cry from that in the West. You can have marginal talent in the west and get rich, get famous, and get everything handed to you on a silver platter. But in Korea, and even in Japan and China, you are given nothing on a silver platter. You are never going to become rich, the old man who owns your contract... HE is going to become rich. Then fame? Don't be fickle, it will go as quickly as it came for many different reasons.
You decide to get a boyfriend? Your fans turn on you.
You decide to leave the industry? Your fans turn on you.
You make a joke that some how offends the most easily offended group of humans on the planet? Your fans turn on you.
But the sad thing is, most of the girls and boys who put them selves through the riggers of becoming an idol in Asia, ASK FOR IT. They want to be famous and are willing to go through with every single thing asked of them, no mater how repulsive you or I may find it.
But the fact is, not everyone in the industry has ASKED to be there.
You have idols who had submitted TEN or more audition tapes, getting rejected each time but never giving up, before they get their chance. You have idols who submit ONE audition tape, and are signed right then and there. You have girls and boys who show up at tryout events just to try to earn a spot on a major label.
...Then there is another arm of this recruitment process on how companies get talent. Scouts. I will not sit here and say I did not like singing, nor will I say I was not good at it. But enjoying singing as a hobby and wanting to make a career out of it?
So, imagine you are NINE years old, your whole life ahead of you, and you decide to sing at a talent show for children under 15 being put on by a TV station. Winner would get... you know I forget how much money it was. But if I won, it was enough to get me through college. At least for a year or two.
It was not some sort of early version of X-Factor or Pop Idol, or any of those Got Talent Shows, it was just a small talent show put on by a local station, not a national station. Was for any act you wanted to perform in front of a crowd, and at the end the crowd votes. So when I proposed the idea to my parents, they loved it. So when the day came, they happily took me to it.
It changed my life. I came in second place, yet it changed my life. I doubt anyone remembers the boy who won, he was some sort of magician, and I hope he enjoyed the prize money. I won a nice little pot coming in second my self but... You could say I was the real winner if you wanted to look at it that way.
There was a scout in the crowd from SYC Entertainment, a record label owned and operated by former idol SooYoung Choi. My mom was a huge fan of hers back in the day and was smitten the second the scout said her name.
The scout praised my voice, my look, almost everything about me. He told my parents if they signed a contract for me to join SYC Entertainment as a Rookie, he can all but guarantee with my voice and look, that not only will I make it past being a rookie, but become a mega star. He told them I was one of the best singers he has ever discovered at one of these events. I am sure he gave that pitch to everyone he approached...
But he was not wrong...
More than that, my parents took it hook, line and sinker.
My parents took me aside later that night, and explained how big this would be for me. But for it to be so, I would have to leave home. I was scared, I didn't want to leave home for about six months at the least and for as long as three years. They wanted what was best for me, and they wanted to see me succeed as a idol... They never once asked if this was something I wanted, and frankly when I said "No!" and "I don't want too!" I was told, I was too young to realize how good this was for me and I was just scared about leaving home...
It was a choice I had no say in.
If you asked nine year old Yun Goeun where she saw her self in the future, it would not be singer.
In fact, at that age I still wanted to be a doctor. I think, maybe I was in my lawyer phase. But that is here nor there... What is important is what happened three days later...
Three days later, SooYoung Choi her self came to my little house in Seoul, and had all these documents for my parents to read and sign. So while her lawyer and my parents went over the documents, I was introduced to SooYoung Choi... I was scared of her, the first time I saw her. She has a presence that you don't forget, it strikes you the moment you see her.
She asked me if I could sing for her.
I told her I was scared. She smiled and assured me it was alright, "You will grow out of that" she told me. She then sat me down and told me she saw the tape the scout recorded and was floored to hear such a voice from someone so young. She told me the same thing the scout told my parents, I would be a star with a voice like mine...
I wanted to be anywhere but there, so I can't recall many of the details to what she actually told me. But what little I do remember involved telling me that I would live with girls like me, train to become an idol and in a few years time debut.
If I am going to tell the truth.
I wanted to run away. Just... vanish from everything.
The following week, after a tearful good bye with my sister, my parents took me to the office of SooYoung Choi in the heart of Seoul. It was a huge building, and with the fog hugging the city that morning I could not see the top of it. I felt more fear in that moment than I had ever felt in my life up to that point in that moment. Because out came SooYoung Choi with four men in suits, and before I knew it I was being escorted in to the building...
I was crying.
I was screaming, still, that I did not want to go.
But the one vision of this moment that haunts my dreams more than anything is the fact that my parents were smiling. There was not one drop of sorrow on their face. They looked happy. I am being hauled off for who knows how long, told they would not be able to see me for at least the first six months... And there they were. Happy.
That stayed with me all through out those first six months.
My parents saw me more as a cow to milk, as a product, than as a daughter...
Do you know how heartbreaking that is to a nine year old girl, taken away from her home against her will just so her parents could make some money?
Sure, most of these girls WANTED to be there.
But I did not, not from day one, but here I was BOUND by a contract to be here.
I tried to leave once and there was talk of breach of contract if it happened again and my father yelled at me so much, that for the first time in his life he laid his hands on me.
I didn't want to be there.
They didn't want me to be home.
That was when I just... gave up and fell in line.
My whole life changed from that point on.
I was put into a dorm with four other girls, around my age.
I use the term dorm loosely. It was a corner room in the basement of the building.
It had no heating, no air conditioning, only one window that was maybe 6 inches deep and three feet wide, covered in tin foil so people outside could not see inside. There was only one room, which we all had to share. There was no bathroom, so no toilet or shower, in our room. Worse then all there was no door. It was maybe the worst environment imaginable. The only bathroom on the floor, was a public style restroom that everyone on the floor had to share. It had 5 shower units and 5 toilets, with out any means of privacy...
Our meals were brought to us twice a day.
If you want to call them meals. We all ate the same thing.
It was always the same thing, half of a chicken breast, and vegetables in extremely limited portions.
You see, we had a daily caloric intake we were, as per our contract, not allowed to exceed. This diet designed with our daily workouts, designed to keep our shape... inhumanly thin.
My whole day was devoted to studies for the first year.
I was assigned to a new public school, one closer to the SYC building.
Me and all the girls and guys in the basement were sent there.
Private schools were only afforded to those who had actually made it.
When I would get back to the building from school, it was then singing lesson for hours, then dance lessons for hours. I was taught English. I was taught Japanese. I was taught how to be the perfect idol.
I would wake up at 5 in the morning, and by the time we were done for the day it would be a little after 11 at night. The life as a trainee or rookie is one of the worst periods in the Korean Entertainment industry, and you hope the whole time it will only get better but... It never does.
The six months minimum came and went. I was told when the six months were up my parents could visit me if they wished. But they never did. My sister would show up from time to time but.. as the six months extended into two years as a trainee, she came less and less. She never said it, but I could see it in her eyes. She hated to see me that way.
About every four months, SooYoung Choi her self would visit the basement for a minute or two at a time. Every time she would post up two pieces of paper. On one sheet she would list a new boy group, or a new girl group, and the members from the trainee pool she wanted to join them. The other piece of paper was the list of the girls and boys who had been cut... released from there contract.
For those who wanted to be here, this was a moment of great tension. If you saw your name on either list, you had made it, or flunked out. If your name was not there, it was another four months of this hell for you. If you were like me, you always hoped to see your name on the cut list.
...It never came for me.
Then after two long years as a trainee, the day finally came I saw my name on one of the two lists. The first group listed on the "made It" list was a new female group called "Pink Dolls" and right below the name of the group, first on the list, was my name... and in that moment my heart dropped, but I had some hope that maybe... just maybe from here on out things would get better.
... I was a fool.
[To Be Continued...]
~~~~~~~~~
Yun Cam
~~~~~~~~~
Hey, Maurice. Remember me?
My name is Yun Goeun, and I beat you a few months ago.
I mean I kicked you in the head pretty fucking hard, so I was just making sure you remember me. Okay so you do? You know, I ask for one simple reason... You said something last time and I just really want to see how you feel about that shit now.
AND I QUOTE: "Yun Go-Eun beating me is next to impossible! Surviving me aint looking to good either."
So Maurice, how you feeling about that? You want to maybe recant that? Maybe take the time to tell the world I made you look like a buffoon in the ring? No, you want to live by that shit then eh? Okay then I guess I pulled off the impossible? I guess I am better than I always thought I was because now I am Yun Goeun, THE GIRL WHO CAN DO THE IMPOSSIBE.
But you know, you failed on two counts there, Maurice. Because not only did I beat you in the center of the ring, with your shoulders on the mat looking up at the ceiling lights, I'm also feeling pretty fucking good right now. Like, I went to the doctors this week and everything to make sure I was indeed still alive... So I think I survived too.
I hope you don't make predictions often, because, man.
You are pretty bad at them.
But it is cool, I really like proving that I can do the impossible. I also like proving that I can do the impossible twice, because I mean if beating you once was impossible I sure am not going to be able to beat you twice eh? Maybe I got lucky. Yeah. I am sure that is what you told your self.
You gave it your all.
She just got lucky, right?
You should have won that match.
You just got careless.
I mean, that is after all the same excuses out of your mouth every time I've heard you after a loss. Okay, perhaps I am not one to talk as I've not been on the most impressive run lately, and maybe I've been a bit down by that fact. But I don't need to fluff my ego and say I got careless and lost a match I should have won.
Cordy beat me because on that night she was better than me.
Izzy beat me because on that night she was better than me.
I beat you because on that night, I was better than you.
...and frankly I am going to beat you again because I am just better than you.
I am not the old feeling sorry for her self Yun anymore, Maurice, that you may have heard in recent weeks. You are getting a Yun Goeun who has her mind back in the game, and is focused to regain her path up the ladder of success.
I may have fallen down a few rungs of late, but my rise comes, and this week it comes at your expense, Machine. You know, for a machine you may want to bring your self in for a check up, I am pretty sure there is a recall on your model, because it is just terrible.
This week begins the rise of Yun Goeun, Maurice. I hope you don't get Vertigo as you watch it.
Beating ME is next to impossible, and you know what? Surviving me ain't looking so good either.
...Yun Goeun! HWAITING!
