Review of Pop Star Academy

I’ve been in the Korean pop hole for over a decade now, which means compared to some of the younger, newer fans, I remember some pretty awful things that happened in the industry. I started paying attention to Korean pop back in 2012, and I remember exactly where I was where a certain idol committed suicide, or when the news broke that the Sewol sank (a national tragedy for Korea).

So now, as an adult, it feels interesting to return to the systems that have been created by K-pop, as well as understanding the global popularity that emerged in like 2015 and continued on to the modern day. It’s an ugly system in Korea that has gotten somewhat better, but still needs a lot of work.

Anyways, I watched the Katseye reality show slash documentary when it first came out on Netflix. I had not heard of the group beforehand, so this was my introduction into their music.

This review is coming out way later than when the documentary first aired; that’s the nature of this blog I run, as I have an incredible amount of backlog to get through, so I scheduled it in advance. But I will say: when I first watched this, I went through it in the course of two days.

Let’s get into the review! I feel like I’m rambling a little too much.

Scores of talented girls fight for a spot to be in the idol group Katseye.

One important thing to know about this documentary: it documents and tracks how groups of girls were training to be in the Korean-inspired group Katseye. Many auditioned originally and were selected to train for many months, but in the later episodes, other girls are brought in through scouting.

Upon doing extensive Googling after the show, not every girl is shown in the documentary. I don’t think we know the actual reason why certain girls were cut out of scenes or edited out, but there are some signs (i.e. we can see their name on a board or the flash of someone completely new).

The scouting creates some friction, as these girls were clearly picked because of their looks and talent. Some were brought pretty late on too, like Lara. We can see how this is also an international effort, as the girls are from all over Asia, Latin America, the United States, and Europe.

They weren’t training as much as the other girls, such as Manon, and then there were more problems when Manon seemed to get more special privileges. That made it more obvious that she was going to get picked because of that, but there was some framing to make it seem like people were against her.

Anyways, the girls are trained in singing, dancing, and charisma. One of the guys who worked with BTS is one of the leads in this project, and this is a classic Korean style training for idols. I will say this looked a little less intense than that from what we can visibly see on screen, but there are some rough moments because of that.

However, I was pretty horrified when I got deeper into the show. Once the girls completed their training, they expected to be selected on the promise they showed throughout their training period.

This didn’t happen. Despite being told this would not be a reality television series, it would become a competition, with fan voting becoming a key part of who gets eliminated and who ultimately gets selected.

I had mad respect for the Swedish girl later on in the show who backed out because she thought this was unethical and becoming toxic. There was some friendship between the girls at first, but then when it became a competition the vibe changed completely, especially when their personal voting was revealed to each other.

Overall Thoughts

For me, I think the documentary worked in the way that it made me interested in Katseye. I remember reading some discourse when it first came out about how people wouldn’t want to support the group after watching this, but I think it does the opposite for a lot of people.

There was some cruelty, in an emotional way, throughout the documentary though. It reminded me of the 9Muses documentary because of that, especially as we got further into the competition and we had to watch some girls’ dreams die right before them. That was hard to watch.

In the end there are winners and losers, and this just exposed that fact. I hope the girls eliminated have solid futures; the entertainment industry is difficult.

Watch this if you’re interested; I think it’s worth watching at least once if you haven’t seen it already.

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