Australian singer and former K-pop idol DPR Ian, real name Christian Yu, has spoken about his days as a trainee and the stressful demands of the K-pop industrial complex.
In an interview with SBS the feed, Ian, formerly known as Rome of third-generation K-pop group C-Clown which disbanded in 2015, has revealed how difficult his artistic journey has been.
In the first three months of his stay in Korea, Ian had lost money in a scam, joking that he was afraid to tell his mother that he had been deceived.
From there on things only got worse after he began his “very severe” C-Clown training program.
“If you’re a minute late, you have to kneel on the floor and sit in the corner, like for a break,” Ian said.
“It’s much better now, from what I hear, but in 2010-2012 it was at its peak. There were slave contracts, it was all so shady, and to get the backhand of that… it did something to me.”
Ian added that he thought the intensity of the program was “inhumane”, to the point of exacerbating his bipolar and dissociative identity disorder (DID), in which he was dealing with multiple identities and personalities.
“It’s fine in the beginning, but the more you’re faced with trauma, the moment you feel it, you’re out,” he explained.
“So it’s not like I’m going to go back anymore. It’s like your body’s immediate response opening the door and kicking you out. So I didn’t know. So I didn’t know during my idol days. I just thought that this was the only way I could deal with it. So I kept doing it.
“Being an idol has taught me what I shouldn’t do,” Ian added.
“There was no independent show for the artists because we had to follow a systematic rule to make it happen. But I wanted to break it.”
