A QUEST FOR K-POP GLORY
Fictional teen training academy serves up frothy fun on CBC’S Gangnam Project
Playing a K-pop star in training seems like a dream job for a theatre kid.
“Oh yeaaaaahhhh,” Coquitlam’s Brianna Kim confirms of her role on the new TV series Gangnam Project, now streaming on CBC Gem.
A graduate of the Musical Theatre program at Capilano University, Kim beamed over video from Toronto as she talked about the show. The largest role to date for Kim, who immigrated to Canada from Korea with her family when she was five, Kim plays Chan-mi, a prickly pop star “trainee” and the queen of the fictional K-pop training academy OME (One Mile Entertainment).
Shot in Hamilton but set in Korea, the show stars Julia Kim Caldwell as Hannah, a Korean-canadian teen who goes to Korea and becomes a tutor for Chan-mi. Chan-mi doesn’t make life easy for Hannah. Her coolness, both in persona and personality, is the direct product of the highly competitive world of K-pop training schools.
These schools are where kids as young as age 10 spend years training, almost militaristically, in the hopes of becoming part of the close to $6 billion-dollar K-pop music industry.
“I think Chan-mi is very guarded,” said Kim, who starred as Janet in the Arts Club touring production of the hit TV show/play Kim’s Convenience. “She knows that only the top three per cent make it ... She doesn’t want anything getting in the way. She wants everything to be perfect, so when someone comes in from Canada, she kind of feels like there’s a threat.”
The halls and rehearsal rooms at OME are filled with trainees dancing and singing their hearts out hoping to be one of the very few who go on to the kind of fame that K-pop stars such as BTS and Blackpink enjoy. Every class is a chance to shine and to stand out from the crowd.
“I know what auditions are like and how competitive people get. I think that’s where I really resonated with Chan-mi, that really wanting it,” said Kim, whose resumé includes appearances in Lionsgate’s joyride, the CW series Kung Fu, Hallmark’s Fit for Christmas, and the indie feature film Riceboy Sleeps.
“As artists, there is this competitiveness we are facing in every audition. I think that’s what I mainly channelled for Chan-mi.” Competition is a central character in the show. The show’s co-creator and showrunner Sarah Haasz doesn’t have a K-pop background, but says she knows a thing or two about artistic competition.
“I’m a dance mom. My daughter danced competitively, so that’s how I know about that world,” said Haasz during the video call from Toronto.
For the series, which is geared toward 8 to 12-year-olds and families, Haasz mined her own past to build the character of Hannah. Haasz was born in Seoul Korea and then immigrated to Hamilton as a toddler with her parents. She returned to Korea when she was 16 and spent that whole summer with family.
“When I went back to Korea, I had this fantastical view of what would happen. I would be accepted with open arms. They just couldn’t wait till I got there,” said Haasz. “It wasn’t the case. They were very loving, my relatives, but I just didn’t feel I was accepted as a 100 per cent, through and through Korean person. I didn’t speak Korean very well, and I was raised in a Western society. It wasn’t less love but more of ‘Oh, you’re westernized’.”
Hannah, who is biracial, has those same feelings as she tries to settle in with her dad’s family and the other teens at the training school. To get the K-pop training details right, Haasz and others from the show travelled to Korea and visited numerous K-pop schools. She also picked the brain of a friend’s husband who was in a K-pop boy group.
“This took six years to develop for a reason. We wanted to really try to make this as authentic as possible,” said Haasz, who defines the show as: “K-pop drama light.”
Gangnam Project is filled with bright clothes, catchy tunes, and a soundtrack composed by recording artist and producer August Rigo, who has written songs for BTS, Justin Bieber and One Direction.
Nothing bad really happens at this school, which was a conscious choice by the creators due to the younger audience the show is courting. While a quick Google search about real K-pop schools yields news reports of stars suffering, and some even ending their own lives, in the world of Gangnam Project, the heaviest it gets is a brief bout of social media bullying — complete with the hashtag #k-flop. Spoiler alert: That incident ends with the victim turning the painful online onslaught into fuel for a jaw-dropping performance.
“I think it is very important that we do have that redemption and it really uplifts people,” said Haasz. “You know, it’s a tag line: they can push you down, but you always get up.”
That’s not the only lesson to be learned from this frothy, fun, and sometimes a bit dramatic — it’s for teens, after all — kids show.
“I feel a great moral in the story is it’s not really what matters on the outside. It’s cliché, but it’s what’s on the inside that matters,” said Kim. “I think that is one of the best messages I hope the kids get.”