On Average, I Sleep For 2 Hours [laughs]
Disturbing interview with Qri, of T-ara - the clip seeming to lack any knowledge that it is disturbing. "Tiara Cutie and Pretty," says the screen.
[EDIT: YouTube deleted the copy with Eng Sub, and this was the only other I could find.]
From what I've read, I wouldn't be surprised if Ashlee, Lindsay, et al. subjected themselves to the same thing over here. But I believe they had far more power and far more choice, could have chosen to work less, and to walk away, if need be. Whereas in Korea - again, I don't know this for sure, have only seen some Wikip writeups and a few other reports about court cases - if you want out but to stay in music, you've got to sue. Only a few performers - JYJ, KARA, Han Geng - really thought they had the muscle to pull that off. Of those three, the latter two have settled under undisclosed terms. JYJ, meanwhile, is still blackballed from Korean TV performance shows.
(I think the key is, once you hit in Japan, you've got more leverage to renegotiate, since the Korean conglomerates have less sway there. And I'll reiterate, this opinion is based on casual second-hand reading, not on knowledge.)
There's an exposé by Al Jazeera that I haven't had the chance to look at yet. The intro text:
But punishing schedules and contracts, plus links to prostitution and corruption have revealed a dark side to the industry.
Meanwhile critics claim K-Pop is too manufactured to create mega-international stars or to sustain its future.
I wish Al Jazeera had stayed away from the "manufactured pop" subject, since by including it they make the smug class prejudice displayed in the second paragraph seem aligned with the necessary muckraking promised in the first. How the liberal-left shoots itself in the foot, time and time again. (Not that I know if the reporters are liberal-left. And since I haven't looked at it yet, of course I don't know if the actual report contains the smug attitudes that that sentence signals.)
[EDIT: Of course, I don't know how widespread these conditions are, what the workload is for different performers and different labels.]
Click to view[EDIT: YouTube deleted the copy with Eng Sub, and this was the only other I could find.]
From what I've read, I wouldn't be surprised if Ashlee, Lindsay, et al. subjected themselves to the same thing over here. But I believe they had far more power and far more choice, could have chosen to work less, and to walk away, if need be. Whereas in Korea - again, I don't know this for sure, have only seen some Wikip writeups and a few other reports about court cases - if you want out but to stay in music, you've got to sue. Only a few performers - JYJ, KARA, Han Geng - really thought they had the muscle to pull that off. Of those three, the latter two have settled under undisclosed terms. JYJ, meanwhile, is still blackballed from Korean TV performance shows.
(I think the key is, once you hit in Japan, you've got more leverage to renegotiate, since the Korean conglomerates have less sway there. And I'll reiterate, this opinion is based on casual second-hand reading, not on knowledge.)
There's an exposé by Al Jazeera that I haven't had the chance to look at yet. The intro text:
But punishing schedules and contracts, plus links to prostitution and corruption have revealed a dark side to the industry.
Meanwhile critics claim K-Pop is too manufactured to create mega-international stars or to sustain its future.
I wish Al Jazeera had stayed away from the "manufactured pop" subject, since by including it they make the smug class prejudice displayed in the second paragraph seem aligned with the necessary muckraking promised in the first. How the liberal-left shoots itself in the foot, time and time again. (Not that I know if the reporters are liberal-left. And since I haven't looked at it yet, of course I don't know if the actual report contains the smug attitudes that that sentence signals.)
[EDIT: Of course, I don't know how widespread these conditions are, what the workload is for different performers and different labels.]