Jay Park was recently a guest on an American podcast, where he discussed seeing fellow trainees being physically reprimanded at JYP Entertainment.
On February 27, a Seattle-based podcast called “The Glow Up” published a podcast that had Jay Park on as a guest. During the podcast, Jay Park explained how he came to be where he is now and touched upon his days as a trainee as well.
Jay Park mentioned how the drastic change of environment was very hard to swallow in the beginning. He talked about how creativity and individuality were killed while going through the systematic training process of an idol trainee.
He also confessed that he cried during those days.
“I was thinking very naively and thinking I would make some money and come back. Then I went over there and trained for about 3 and a half years and we got vocal and dance training. It was kind of like a bootcamp.”
“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.”
“At first it was really hard you know? I’m not gonna front. I like cried and I did all that you know? It was stressful.”
– Jay Park
Jay Park later went on into more detail and talked about a specific instance during his trainee days at JYP Entertainment. He mentioned that there was verbal and physical abuse if you didn’t dance or sing properly.
According to Jay Park, he was spared from the abuse but other trainees weren’t good at dancing like him and got disciplined physically.
Jay Park stressed that this was mainly due to cultural differences and that the situation is not like that now.
“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 they were like, “You mothafucka!”
“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.”
– Jay Park
Even though Jay Park had some tough times during his trainee days, he admitted that some parts about it helped him as an artist.
Listen to the full podcast below and hear Jay Park tell his story.
(He talks about the abuse on the 18:50 mark)
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