Australian singer and former K-pop idol DPR Ian, real name Christian Yu, opened up about his trainee days and the stressful demands of the K-pop industrial complex.
In an interview with SBS The Feed, Ian, known formerly as Rome of the third-generation K-pop group C-Clown which disbanded in 2015, revealed how difficult his artistic journey was.
Within 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 about getting duped.
It only went downhill from there after he started his "very strict" C-Clown training program.
"If you're late a minute, you have to kneel on the floor and you have to sit in the corner, like a time-out," said Ian.
"It's a lot better now is what I hear but back in 2010-12, it was at its peak era. You have slave contracts, it was just so shady, and getting the backhand of that... it just did something to me."
Ian added that he thought the intensity of the program was "inhumane," to the point where it exacerbated his bipolar and dissociative identity disorder (DID), where he dealt with having multiple identities and personalities.
"It's okay in the beginning, but the more and more you're faced with trauma, the minute you feel it, you're out," he explained.
"So it's no longer like I'm going to go back. It's like your body's immediate response to just open the door and kick you out. So I didn't know that. So I didn't know that during my idol days. I just thought this is the only way I can cope with it. The only way. So I just kept doing that."
"Being an idol taught me what I shouldn't do," Ian added.
"There wasn't an independent show for artists because we had to follow a systematic rule in order for us to make it. But I wanted to break that."
