Prince Mak Podcast

This week Prince Mak gives us fun facts about our favourite K-pop idols. Some may surprise you! BTS' Jin has a funny story from his debut stage, Suzy and Rain have interesting audition stories, Girls' Generation's Sunny  has a crazy birthday fact and Girl's Day's insured her legs for a huge amount of money. And, that's only just the beginning...

This week, Prince Mak spills all the deets about the life of a K-pop trainee. Each company's trainee regime is different, but every trainee will have to stick through some kind of rigorous program in order to become K-pop idols.

For Prince Mak, he had to get up at 5:30AM every day and train for the whole day until 1AM. Various lessons will be packed into each day, such as vocal, dancing, acting (which is essential since this is where most money is made), and language lessons. Trainees will have to work hard at these lessons because there will be regular tests, which will gauge the progress of each trainee. For younger trainees, they will have to juggle both school and lessons.

Sadly, despite all the work put in by trainees, not everyone will be able to debut as a K-pop idol. Some will quit partway through training, but on average, only 1 in 3 trainees will ultimately debut as an idol.

This week Prince Mak let's us know how to deal with failure, and gives his best audition tips. Rejection happens to everyone. Everyone fails, and that's where success grows from. Prince Mak tells us what he's failed at and how he's overcome that.

This week Prince Mak talks about the differences between the South Korean pop music industry and the Western pop music industry (mainly in America). In Korea singers are known as 'idols' and they don't always have to be really good singers; they have to have a range of skills. Korea's 'trainee' system doesn't exist in America, because the Western pop industry chooses artists' on their talents, whereas in Korea they believe hard work and training is just as (if not more) important than natural skill. Talent shows are different between the two countries, K-pop groups have 'visual' members who are based on looks, and K-pop groups always have a rapper, and rapping parts, whereas Western pop groups don't always have rap in their pop music. Prince Mak has more examples...

The life of a foreign K-pop fan: The songs are in Korean so you can't understand them, except for the English parts. If you use an iPhone to translate words from Korean to English, words come out wrong, like 'oppa' become 'oops.' Your non K-pop fan friends think you must be a fan of 'Gangnam Style' because they assume it's the only song that's ever been released in Korea. The struggle when you're waiting for subtitles; you watch a video without knowing what they're talking about until someone subs it. K-pop fans know about idols' blood types, so you have to learn them too. There's not heaps of concerts outside of Korea, especially if you're not in a big city. The time difference is difficult sometimes. K-pop changes your life.