Park Kyung Shares Some Thoughts on the Idol Profession in BBC Korea Interview

[elisaorange.livejournal.com]

"When I was having a hard time, one of my colleagues (celebrity) told me: "Don't try to take all the burden in the world (with you)... you're just one person... so put that burden down" and I think that helped me a lot...

   To be honest, I've never opened my heart to anyone, I've never shown anyone how I really feel for 100%, because I'm scared they'll be burdened by it and because I know they'll be worried about me.. I've never opened up to them 100%

    When you're having a hard time,being an entertainer, it brings a lot of public reaction/criticism. There are a lot of ppl who debut with no sense of self yet & they come to realize later that every move they make, every word they say is now observed, so they become cautious and lose their freedom.

    So personally, I think celebrities have a hard time dealing with their emotions. Because they deal with people a lot (communication/performance), they don't get to express themselves (reveal how they really feel) because their job requires them to hide their emotions.

    I think being an entertainer is a very unstable job, right after you debut you start living your life in anxiety, always being nervous. Because everyday, u have to feel the weight/ live in fear of getting removed one day

    You always have to live worrying about your future.
To be honest, the meaning of the word "adult" is still vague for me. I think that I'm not an adult yet. Because in Korea, you become an idol in such a young age and start working, your life becomes your work.

    It becomes a situation where you have to live your job while having no freedom, and that wears you out, which you can also see it as getting tired of your life. If you do this job for a long time, there comes a time when you get sick of it."

Note: They had opened the floor for people to send in questions/comments about mental and psycological issues (though I heard most people just sent in unrelated questions) Still, it's good he chose to address this topic

Sources: Amanda Hensem, BlockBeesEllie

Comments

[daynr.livejournal.com]

very interesting, thanks for posting.

[callherblondie.livejournal.com]

I'm very impressed with his candor and thoughtfulness in his answers. He strikes me as being intelligent and also having emotional intelligence. I don't follow Block B but they are a group I respect. If he ever decides to leave the entertainment industry, I think he would make an excellent therapist or psychologist with the proper training and education.

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

Kyung is in MENSA so I guess he's supposed to be pretty smart lmao he's also a weird nice guy ableist with a wallet full of massage parlor business cards tho so idk about emotional intelligence... idk Kyung is a person who you will want to like if you watch an interview with him but I've followed Block B since their debut so I know all his dirty laundry and can't bring myself to support him too much lmao.

[elisaorange.livejournal.com]

Kyung had apologized about those lyrics. Considering he had written them when he was a dumb teen and has since taken to writing bubbly love raps, I think he's indeed grown out of that edgy phase a long time ago..

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think he's the devil or anything but since I was even younger than him at the time and knew better, I only have a little bit of sympathy lol. I want to like Kyung but in general he makes it hard when he plays up his insecure-nice-guy-why-won't-girls-be-nice-to-me image. He's doing way better music than Zico atm tho, I can't deny his talent.

[callherblondie.livejournal.com]

disappointing but unsurprised. #allmenaretrash

[elisaorange.livejournal.com]

The ableist lyrics were disappointing but I'd like to believe that the person he is today isn't defined by something he wrote several years ago and has since acknowledged and apologized for.

https://twitter.com/beesubs/status/935924898530189313
https://twitter.com/beesubs/status/935925097851789312
https://twitter.com/beesubs/status/935925716415213568

That massage parlour comment isn't true, I don't think such speculations should be made without actual proof.

[yixingsforehead.livejournal.com]

....and this is from a member of one of the more relaxed groups.

[epls6.livejournal.com]

that's not quite correct, they have dealed with more hate than many groups, specially if you consider their fandom is almost inexistent. They used to be relaxed in the past but there were the huge scandal with the thai interview being mistranlated and the whole stardom ceo suicide, they are not the same guys even tho they look cheerful and all, they are very careful with interviews and even sns they do it but with caution.

I don't really think there are idols with less stressful life, cause as humans even when we say "turning the F buttom on" is quite difficult to ignore situations that make you disconfortable.

As someone that follow block b I can tell u 2017 was difficult specially with fans, kbbcs demanded more from them in korea, complained more activities in japan and they censored PO's debut song demanding a dancer to be removed, cause they decided was innapropriate to have a cabaret dancer in a video that shows people enjoying the night. They complained so much they actually edited the video and removed the dancer and in the end they didnt stream the video or the song at all as a protest. The thing is being a dancer is nothing bad is a job, a legal and proper one and the fact women did that to the girl was a shame, was her work and she was proud of it, and she got upset and posted on twitter saying how many hours she endured hanging on the wall to be cute from the mv in the end. Was stressfull for PO that had no korean fandom support and for the people involved.

In the end of november when olitti posted the chat talk about how big was Nick Minaj's butt and zico just replied the chat when he saw with LOL that caused a huge stress, the same fans that attacked PO's debut song also dropped Zico saying that he was being offensive to women and etc. So their fandom from 50.000 droped to 15.000 max and Zico since november stoped posting on his twitter and instagram and his last post was apologizing for getting the mama award people said GD should have won and flooded the internet talking crap.

This is what I know as fan that follow sns, and I only know cause of that, so in the end, they are honestly scared and for that reason they learning to be careful. The things usually that bring problems from ifans and kfans are usually different. But they are honestly learning the hard way. In the problemaic list of stuff ifans name to block b one is the lyrics that park kyung wrote to their mix tape when he was a teen and he did apologize for it recently too and was a good honest apology.

https://twitter.com/beesubs/status/935924898530189313
https://twitter.com/beesubs/status/935925097851789312
https://twitter.com/beesubs/status/935925716415213568

PO in one of the montage promo videos was wondering if they would have fans at all to attend to their event and was kind of sad to watch them worried about that.

So what I mean is they all have stress and difficults to deal with that kind of job, the fear of not making it, being hated, feeling lonely and being forgoten. I don't think any group have it easy at all, no matter how hard they work to show only their good side, there are tons of things they hide from fans and family. I know Kyung tried his best to reply in the less troublesome way to avoid people bashing or giving opinion about others cause is honestly something he cant, even so this interview he gave still got a lot of hate in korea cause people cant relate to idols, they think their life is easy and only for a little time when someone end giving up life they show sympathy but still keep the unnacessary hate and comments cause they feel entitle to it.

Dont take me wrong I dont mean to say they have harder than anyone, I was just showing what I know as fan and probally people that follow other groups would have tons of sad and difficult stories to tell too.

[yixingsforehead.livejournal.com]

by relaxed i meant relaxed rules like
- they have had phones
- at least a few of them had time to date
- some of them do their own thing eg. writing their own material
obviously i cannot tell how relaxed or stressed they actually feel.

just the fact that kyung was able to do this small interview bit shows how much more chance he has to do his own thing compared to others. i really don't want to namedrop people, but it's just not a thing for idols to speak about these sort of topics.

[nekobot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, being idols means they've probably had a hard time but I can't imagine any group that would be allowed to speak like this on the record without an angry manager swooping in to stop things/give them a stern talking to afterwards unless it's rehearsed for sympathy. They definitely get a bit more leeway than most standard boy groups.

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

In general I think of Block B as a very relaxed group at this point in time, though. It's true they've had just... an insane number of scandals, their issues with Stardom, getting basically robbed of all their parent's money, not to mention all of the attitude scandals from 2011/2012, it's true. Their early years were incredibly rough, I can't argue with that lol.

But these days, they get way more time off than most idol groups, have had multiple members dating that were received pretty well by fandom, they are able to openly talk about everything from drinking to partying to dating to plastic surgery all while still having REALLY good digital numbers for a boy group, etc. They definitely feel like one of the only idol groups that has a semi-healthy work/life balance to me. So I think this is why people see them as a more "relaxed" group than many others. Not gonna lie, I was surprised by Kyung's statements here because I figured things were much happier for them in a post-Stardom world but he spoke in present tense so I guess not :(

Not many boy groups can take nearly a year between comebacks and still pull as much public interest as Block B, even if a lot of that is simply due to Zico's fame. The members other than ZiKyung have the freedom live completely normal lives when the group isn't promoting and based off their SNS, they do. I feel like there are very few active idol groups I can say that about and I wish that weren't so. :(