Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Jay Park was a recent guest on the ‘The Glow Up Podcast,’ where he talked about all kinds of stuff. What will undoubtedly get the most attention, though, starts at around 17:32 when he talks about his experience as a trainee, which came under JYP Entertainment before debuting in 2PM.
Jay says the training killed a lot of his passion and compared it to programming, “It helped in a lot of ways, but it also killed my passion and creativity in a lot of ways as well. It’s kind of like programming almost. Sing it like this, do it like this. So like you lose your individuality.” He went on to say that the training caused him to stop listening to music and writing lyrics.
Later, he talked about trainees getting hit over making mistakes, “The culture in itself was kinda like when you get certain lyrics wrong or you get a certain dance move wrong they would literally hit you. That’s kinda like the Korean way, you know? It’s not like that now, it’s much better now, but back then [if you got a dance move wrong] they were like, “You mothafucka!” (Laughs) They wouldn’t do that to me because I was very good at dancing, but I would see this dude next to me and he was getting some shit wrong and he getting his ass whooped.”
While some are busy defending JYPE, this should come as no surprise to people who didn’t have their heads buried in the sand. Fucked up? Yeah, but the military-esque training, complete with corporal punishment was what I expected. I mean the companies never specify what kind of family they are, after all.
Even including all that, though, the whole podcast was generally just chill and worth a listen, especially if you’re a fan of Jay.
