As K-pop increasingly looks beyond South Korea for its next generation of idols, one of the genre’s leading entertainment agencies is holding its first-ever global audition aimed at assembling a new girl group.
SM Entertainment—the company behind some of K-pop’s most successful acts, including Super Junior, Girls’ Generation, Shinee, NCT, and Aespa—is opening auditions to girls of any nationality who were born between 2005 to 2011. (Those under 14 years old will need parental consent.) SM Entertainment has also shared multi-language posts for its application and audition tape requirements.
The application is open until June 22, after which a select few will be invited for in-person auditions.
SM Entertainment has held annual global auditions for over 10 years, but this is the first time that it is holding them specifically for a new girl group. In 2021, it similarly opened auditions for a boy group. SM Entertainment said that it would debut four new groups this year, including a British K-pop boy band and a virtual artist.
Last month, Big Hit, the company behind BTS, announced its own global audition for a new boy group. And YG Entertainment, which gave rise to Blackpink, has since March been holding idol auditions across the world, from China to Australia to Indonesia to the U.S.
Once they’ve passed the auditions, aspiring K-pop stars usually spend several years as trainees—some can even take over 10 years—before they debut as idols. Behind the glamor of stardom, though, is the grueling pressure of staying in an industry known for churning out pop stars with more efficiency than empathy. A whopping 63 K-pop groups debuted just last year; meanwhile, celebrities have become increasingly vocal about rampant mental health challenges in the industry.
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But such concerns haven’t dampened youths’ dreams of breaking into “Hallyu-wood,” with the proliferation of boot camps and schools aimed at helping young K-pop hopefuls, no matter where they come from, get their foot in the industry.
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