K-POP IDOL TELLS WHAT IT TAKES TO SUCCEED
Kino, former member of the now disbanded boy band Pentagon, is going it alone and is on tour in Asia, with his debut solo album about to come out
Everybody has their own take on K-pop. Some cannot get enough of it. Others discount it, saying they cannot differentiate between individual singers and groups.
It’s hard to argue against the fact that it has gained international success – and there is no denying the gruelling process of becoming a K-pop idol.
For 26-year-old Kang Hyung-gu, better known by his stage name, Kino, the journey has not been smooth, predictable or full of success.
There is one constant, however. “I cannot remember a time in my life when I was not dreaming of becoming a singer,” Kino says in the office of Naked, his one-man entertainment agency.
He founded the company last year after Pentagon, the boy band that he debuted with in 2016, disbanded. The name alludes to how, in this new, vulnerable phase of his career he is reborn, purely as himself, naked.
Pentagon were certainly no BTS. But throughout their seven-year run, the group had several songs that topped the charts, such as “Daisy”, “Feelin’ Like” and “Shine”. The boy band’s career however, was affected by dating rumours involving Kino’s band mates.
For K-pop idols that rely heavily on their fandom’s support, these rumours can be devastating. On a summer’s day in 2018, photos of three Pentagon members allegedly out on dates were leaked online.
“After that day, there were around 4,000 hate comments made daily in our online fan community. I almost never went outside my home for around a month and filled my room up with tears,” Kino says.
What kept him centred was his unshakeable love of music, performing and his faith in his path. After all, he had decided that he would be a singer when he was 12 – a decision that his parents had seen coming all along.
“Apparently, since my early childhood, whenever there was any sort of a family gathering, I sang and danced to at least five songs in front of everyone,” he says.
Three months after declaring his goals aged 12, he passed an audition and became a trainee with JYP Entertainment.
Since its founding in 1997, the company has produced some of the biggest K-pop stars in the industry, including Rain, Wonder Girls and Twice.
His debut in 2016 as a member of Pentagon was not with JYP, though, as he was fired several years after training with the company, along with a legion of other trainees who weren’t selected as one of the seven members of JYP’s boy band Got7.
What the 12-year-old found in the world of K-pop was a highly systematised idol grooming regimen. To the layman’s eyes, the process appears inhumane and incredibly demanding. But Kino credits it as something that built him up as a person.
“The management companies really make colossal investments in talent. They first find a lot of people who show potential. Then they take in and teach all of them.
“I took more than 10 lessons a week, and by that I don’t mean the number of classes, but 10 subjects. Singing and dancing lessons were the most basic. I also learned rapping, acting and different foreign languages,” he says.
“During my trainee days, I would take an hour-long bus ride after school at around three, to get to the company in Seoul. I would take lessons and practise until around 11, get home at around 1am, wake up at 7am and do it all over again,” Kino says.
“But sometimes I would personally add early-morning practices on top of that. I caught up on sleep during school break times, lunch hours and on bus rides to and from Seoul.”
There was a sense of competitiveness that motivated him – he was surrounded by people who were working equally hard.
“I always knew that pursuing this was my calling. But had I fallen into this entertainment industry scene on my own, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it.
“I think I was able to do what I did [because of ] my desire to win. Other trainees surrounding me worked even harder than I did, and I felt that to win against these people, I had to do more,” he says.
Critics suggest that such a system creates idol groups and members that are essentially nothing more than products and lack authenticity and personality.
Kino disagrees. “The K-pop system is really good at discovering the innate talent and character in each individual and nurturing them effectively,” he says.
“Groups are built with a delicate balancing of different members complementing each other. I don’t know why other countries are not adopting this system.”
Kino said during his Pentagon phase, severe headaches from lack of sleep ironically prevented him from falling asleep. Even painkillers didn’t give any relief.
“I don’t dare to return to that time, just because of how brutally hard we were all working. But it was by choice. I wasn’t asked to write any songs for our albums. I did it because I wanted to.”
Setting up a solo agency presented Kino with new challenges. Now there is more pressure to succeed financially, without the security that a big company can provide. “For me, my confidence overcomes uncertainty. As for the distant future, to be honest, I lack the confidence to fail. So for me, uncertainty is not a big problem.”
For now, the future is solid. His new solo album
drops early this month and he is in the middle of his Asia tour, which has taken in Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo and Hong Kong, where he performed his debut solo concert late last month.
The concert was held at The Box theatre, at Freespace, in West Kowloon. With only 450 seats, it’s not the biggest venue in the city, but the tickets were not cheap either, priced at HK$1,480.
Excited fans, many waving light sticks with the Pentagon logo, took photos in front of lifesize banners featuring Kino.
“We’ve all been a fan of Kino since he debuted in 2016,” says one fan, who came to the show with five friends, all in their twenties. “We love Kino because he’s Kino,” one of them says, and everyone else agrees.
The K-pop system is really good at discovering the innate talent … in each individual KINO