"Once school ends, you go straight to the practice room," one trainee recalled. "There's no time to see friends or even grab something to eat together."
For thousands of teenagers, that routine is the price of pursuing one of the country's biggest dreams.
K-pop has built one of the world's most sophisticated talent factories.
It knows how to train young performers to sing, dance and captivate audiences before millions of fans around the world. What it has been far less successful at is preparing them for the outcome most trainees ultimately face: never making their debut.
That imbalance is becoming increasingly visible as entertainment agencies pour more money into developing globally competitive acts while the number of trainees narrows.
According to the latest nationwide figures cited in a doctoral dissertation by Clon member Kang Won-rae, the number of registered trainees in South Korea's popular-culture industry fell from 1,895 in 2020 to 1,170 in 2022. Of those, 752 — or 64.3 percent — were training to become singers.
The figures do not show whether the decline continued after 2022. They do, however, suggest that the formal trainee pool was shrinking even as K-pop expanded into a truly global business.
The financial rewards for those who succeed have rarely been larger.
HYBE reported record second-quarter revenue of 1.45 trillion won ($1.04 billion) and operating profit of 170.9 billion won in 2026, buoyed by BTS's long-awaited return. Concert revenue surged 630 percent from the previous quarter to 647.7 billion won.
BTS's album ARIRANG topped the Billboard 200 for three consecutive weeks, while its lead single SWIM remained on the Billboard Hot 100 for 17 weeks. HYBE's newer group CORTIS also surpassed three million cumulative album sales with its second EP and debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.
Those results demonstrate what the trainee system can produce.
Kang's research asks a different question: what happens to the far larger number of trainees who never reach the stage?
Drawing on interviews with nine current or former trainees and three industry professionals, Kang explores the realities of education, health care, personal autonomy and career preparation inside South Korea's trainee system.
The sample is too small to represent the entire industry, a limitation acknowledged in the dissertation, but the interviews provide an unusually detailed glimpse into a world that largely operates behind closed doors.
One trainee described entering the system convinced that success was simply a matter of working harder.
"Everyone wants to become BTS or BLACKPINK," the participant said. "But only a small number of trainees debut. There needs to be a safety net for those who succeed and those who do not."
Built to debut
The modern trainee system emerged during the 1990s as entertainment companies began recruiting teenagers years before their public debut.
The success of H.O.T. established the blueprint of carefully selecting members, refining their vocal and dance skills and launching them as a coordinated group. BoA later demonstrated how foreign-language instruction and cultural education could prepare artists for overseas markets.
Over time, casting, training, music production, image management and marketing evolved into an integrated company-led development process.
A 2021 study by Chung-Ang University researcher Lee Ye-il described South Korea's approach as producing "full-fledged" idols expected to perform at a professional level from their first appearance. Japan's idol industry, by contrast, has traditionally emphasized performers whose growth unfolds in public after debut.
That distinction helps explain why Korean idols are often admired for their polish. Trainees can spend years studying singing, dancing, acting, foreign languages, fitness, communication and media skills before audiences ever see them.
Yet while the goal is standardized, the path is not.
One participant recalled spending long days inside an agency with little structured instruction.
"It was basically, 'Show up at one in the afternoon, leave at eleven at night, and figure it out yourself,'" the trainee said. "I expected manuals and teachers. That wasn't what happened."
The system has become remarkably efficient at preparing performers for debut. The quality of training and support they receive before reaching that point, however, varies widely from one agency to another.
Where artist training and education diverge
Many trainees enter agencies while still attending middle or high school.
Kang's interviews found that balancing education with training often proved difficult. Some participants regularly arrived late to class or left school early. Others became isolated from classmates or were simply too exhausted to participate in school life.
Several interviewees said the uncertainty surrounding debut was harder than the demanding schedule itself. Trainees rarely know when — or whether — they will debut, how long they will remain under evaluation or what will happen if they are released.
Some agencies help trainees attend arts schools, enroll in online classes or prepare for South Korea's high-school equivalency examination.
Such support, however, depends largely on individual company policies.
Career preparation for trainees who fail to debut is even less developed.
That exposes a structural weakness in the current model.
K-pop's trainee system excels at preparing teenagers for one highly competitive career. It provides far less preparation for the career most trainees will ultimately need — the one after they leave the agency.
Years spent training may leave former trainees outside conventional education pathways while providing no formal qualification recognizing the skills they acquired.
Health and autonomy
Education is only where the imbalance begins.
Participants described severe dieting, nutritional deficiencies and menstrual irregularities among female trainees. One interviewee said disrupted menstrual cycles were common and that agencies remained primarily focused on maintaining a particular appearance.
Others reported anxiety, panic attacks, depressive symptoms and breathing difficulties under the pressure of constant evaluations.
The interviews cannot establish how widespread such experiences are across the industry. They do, however, illustrate how intense performance expectations can conflict with adolescent physical and mental health.
Access to counseling also varied significantly. While larger companies often offered psychological support, several participants questioned whether seeking help might influence future evaluations.
Interviewees also described restrictions on mobile-phone use, social media and personal relationships. Some reported having messages monitored, while others said they experienced pressure regarding cosmetic procedures.
Questions over fairness surfaced repeatedly.
One trainee pointed to Mnet's Produce series.
"If I don't make it because someone else is better, I can accept that," the trainee said. "What hurts is thinking the result may already have been decided while everyone is told it's a fair competition."
That concern is not without precedent. South Korean courts later confirmed that producers manipulated the final lineups in two seasons of the Produce franchise regardless of audience votes.
Agencies, however, also face commercial realities.
Industry participants interviewed by Kang estimated that training costs can reach roughly 15 million won per trainee each year and exceed 200 million won to prepare a five-member group over three years.
From the company's perspective, every trainee represents a significant investment with no guarantee of financial return.
That creates a structural contradiction.
Trainees are simultaneously students, audition participants and commercial investments. Yet legally they fall neatly into none of those categories. South Korean labor authorities have generally regarded entertainers as parties to specialized contracts rather than employees protected under labor law, leaving trainees in particular without clearly defined legal status.
Establishing a common floor
The government has begun strengthening protections.
On Jan. 1, 2026, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism introduced revised standard contracts for trainees and minor entertainers following amendments to the Popular Culture and Arts Industry Development Act.
The revisions prohibit specific misconduct toward minors, require agencies to appoint youth-protection officers from the beginning of every contract and make access to mental-health treatment easier by removing the previous requirement that depressive symptoms be deemed "severe."
The reforms establish a stronger legal framework.
Whether they transform trainees' daily experiences, however, will depend largely on how individual agencies implement them.
Kang proposes four additional reforms: requiring agencies to establish internal education policies for minors, introducing income-protection measures modeled on California's Coogan Law, making career education and health examinations mandatory parts of trainee contracts, and creating an independent entertainment-industry ombudsman to investigate complaints before problems escalate.
K-pop's weakness has never been a lack of training.
Its blind spot is that the industry has invested farmore systematically in creating stars than in protecting the young people trying to become them.
The next stage of K-pop's global evolution, therefore, may have less to do with producing better performers than with building a system that values education, health care and life after training as essential parts of artist development itself.
Until then, South Korea's trainee system will remain exceptionally good at preparing a handful of teenagers for the spotlight — and far less prepared for the many whose dreams end before the curtain ever rises.
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