Legal Services. Life Sciences and Healthcare. Biopharma Intelligence. Medtech Intelligence. IP Intelligence. IP Lifecycle Management. IP Services. Clarivate Innovation Exchange. Researcher Recognition. Executive Leadership. Customer Delight. Who is it? It is BTS. They are also famous with their name gracing the billboard charts. Hyundai, the well-known automobile company, also uses BTS as its advertising model and their value is beyond imagination.
In South Korea, where the idol industry has been activated, there have been cases of major trademark disputes related to these group names. Most recently, a group name trademark dispute related to the first generation idol H. T has become an issue. T is the first-generation idol group created by SM Entertainment. T, which has enjoyed tremendous popularity, holds an upcoming September concert this year What led to this situation?
Kim Kyung-wook, who was the early representative of SM Entertainment, is the person who took up the fostering, debut, and early activities of H. After H. The judge stopped me halfway through. The judge halted me and asked to see me dance. I hadn't prepared for that either, and felt like an idiot. So they put on a dance track and I did some freestyling. After conferring with assistants, the judge gave me a yellow piece of paper. I was through to the next stage. I was directed to a room where I was asked to walk along a line taped on the floor, and my face was photographed from different angles to see how I would look on camera.
Within days, I was asked to come back with a parent to discuss a contract. Under the terms of the contract, I would leave my family and move to South Korea to live and train at the company. If I chose to leave before the contract was up, I would have to repay the full cost of my training, which would run into thousands of dollars. Mum reluctantly signed a two-year contract - the shortest they offered - on my behalf. After the meeting we had an argument and mum didn't talk to me for a month.
Soon after I started as a trainee, the entertainment company that had signed me up transferred my contract to another firm. Such moves are common and trainees don't get any say in the matter. My new company was strict. I had to live in their building with the other trainees who were all aged between nine and The sexes were separated. We only left the building to attend our normal school lessons. Korean trainees went to local state schools but because I was British I went to an international school.
Other than that we weren't allowed out without permission, which was usually refused. If parents wanted to visit they had to get approval in advance. Relatives who turned up without notice were turned away.
On a typical day we trainees would wake up at 5am to get in some extra dance practice before school started at 8am. When the school day ended we would return to the company to be trained in singing and dancing. Trainees would stay up practising until 11pm or later, in an attempt to impress instructors.
At night we were left to look after ourselves. We had a strict curfew to make sure we'd be back in the dorms before they locked up the building. Dating was banned, though some secretly did. Trainees were all supposed to act straight even if they weren't. Anybody who appeared to be openly gay was ostracised by the company.
Both male and female trainees would have "managers" - uncle-type figures who would text us at night to keep tabs on us. If we didn't text back, then we would immediately get a phone call, asking where we were.
There was no such thing as weekends or holidays. On national holidays like the Lunar New Year, trainees would remain in the company building while staff took the day off. The company sorted us into two main groups, kind of like a Team A and Team B. I was one of the 20 to 30 members of Team A - we were thought to have the most potential. Team B had around trainees. Some of them had even had to pay their way into the company. They could train for years and years and never know if they would actually "debut" - the word used when someone is launched as a K-pop performer.
Team A trainees slept in dorms with four girls to a bedroom. The regular trainees would sleep together in a huge room and had to make do with mats on a wooden floor. I saw exhausted Team B trainees sleep in the dance studios after training, because the mats there were just like the ones in their dorms.
I only ever saw one Team B trainee get promoted to Team A. If Team A trainees misbehaved, or complained about something they might be threatened with being thrown out or moved to Team B. But generally nobody complained.
We were all really young and ambitious. The company's attitude was that everything we experienced was part of learning the discipline needed to be a K-pop idol. So we just accepted everything. Inside the company building, we didn't use our own names, except with other trainees.
We were each given a number and a stage name in keeping with the sort of character they had picked for us. I was given the name Dia, but our instructors would only ever call us by our numbers, which they read from stickers on our shirts.
It felt weird, a bit like we were in some sort of science experiment. The company favoured me, because I am very small - instructors constantly praised me for being petite. Don't get me wrong, I love eating, but I'm lucky to have a high metabolism and don't gain weight easily. Weight was the constant obsession of everyone there. Everyone was required to be no heavier than 47kg 7st 6lb or lb regardless of their age or height.
At weekly weigh-ins, your body would be analysed by the trainer, and then they announced your weight to everyone in the room.
If you were over the designated weight, then they would ration your food. Sometimes they would even take away entire meals and those "overweight" trainees would just be given water.
I thought that was really harsh because some of those girls couldn't help being tall. Starving yourself was really normalised. Some trainees were anorexic or bulimic, and many of the girls didn't have periods. It was common to pass out from exhaustion. Often we had to help carry unconscious trainees back to the dorms. I passed out twice during dance practice, probably because I was dehydrated or hadn't eaten enough. I woke up in bed not knowing how I got there.
The attitude among the trainees after that was like, "Good for her! She wants it so much! I found that I didn't really have good friends there, everyone was more like a colleague. The environment was way too tense and competitive to forge real friendships. The stressful atmosphere was heightened by the monthly showcase events. Each trainee would perform in front of everyone and be evaluated by the instructors. If a trainee didn't get a good grade, then they would be kicked out immediately.
They would be replaced by a constant stream of new arrivals. What was even more intimidating was that some of the new trainees had already had plastic surgery done, so they already looked more like K-pop stars than the rest of us.
There was also bullying going on among the trainees. One girl was picked on because she was over the maximum weight. Another trainee who was a good dancer had his dance shoes stolen. I missed my old friends back in England but I couldn't really keep in touch with them as instructors made us hand in our phones so we would focus on our training. The company also wanted to make trainees seem more mysterious before they debuted, and didn't want us posting anything embarrassing on social media.
We could get our phones back for 15 minutes at night, and I would use that time to call my mum. But most trainees also secretly kept a second phone. My parents knew that training was difficult, but there really wasn't much they could do because I was under a contract and they were so far away. Most of the Korean trainees wouldn't tell their parents anything at all because they didn't want them to worry. What kept me going was the belief that I would eventually debut as a member of a group.
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