One of my students before just debuted as a member of an idol group. You may be amazed with the increasing number of girl and boy groups debuting every year here in Korea. The more surprising thing is, the huge number of young Koreans wanting to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. Just found this very interesting article from chosun.com. Although it was published a year ago, I still think it's relevant.Please read!
In 1983, a popular children's magazine conducted a survey of 6,595 schoolchildren asking them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Their top choice was scientist with 23.3 percent, followed by teacher (14.1 percent), judge (11.5 percent), doctor (11 percent) and artist (7.8 percent). When asked what would bring them happiness, 63 percent of them said living a worthwhile life. When those children entered university, the Physics Department at Seoul National University was the preferred choice among applicants that drew the brightest minds from across the country.
Twenty years later, kids.daum.net, a popular Internet portal for children, surveyed 10,478 kids about their preferred profession as adults and found that 41.6 percent or 4,364 of them wanted to be singers. When combined with the 892 (8.5 percent) who chose actor, 50.1 percent of the children surveyed wanted to be entertainers. Only 110 respondents said they wanted to be scientists, ranking 19th out of the favored professions.
The trend is not restricted to elementary schoolchildren. Young Koreans are fixated on becoming stars. Last year, 4,157 people applied in a contest by broadcaster SBS to choose 14 new actors. The competition ratio for men was 397:1 and for women 222:1. Another contest that selected a single winner who will get to join a Japanese girl band drew 2,500 applicants from across the country ranging from 8 to 34 years of age. An audition by JYP Entertainment, one of the largest entertainment firms which manages 2PM and the Wonder Girls, drew some 23,000 applicants -- a 6,000:1 competition rate. A few universities that have majors specializing in entertainment-related fields are so competitive to get into that a student must beat hundreds of other applicants for a place.
Around 1,000 young trainees at talent management agencies spend all day practicing singing and dancing while missing school. The most popular profession among female university graduates is news anchor, and the competition ratio there often surpasses 1,000:1. The reason is that over the last few years a number of news anchors have become high-profile celebrities rivaling movie stars.
Being an entertainer is like running a venture business staked on a single product. Success means money and fame, but the flipside is that those who do not succeed have to worry where their next meal will come from. An entertainers' union surveyed 403 actors last year and found that 40 percent of them had been unable to appear even once in a movie or TV show a year. Moon Jae-gap, director of policy at the union, said 70 percent of members make less than W1 million (US$1=W1,133) a month. What is worse is that the factor that determines success or failure is pure luck. In the entertainment profession, hopefuls must stake their future on the eternally fickle tastes of the public.
The reason so many Koreans are caught up in showbiz dreams appears to be an increasing sense of disillusionment with the merits of climbing up the success ladder one step at a time. "There is probably no country in the world other than Korea where more than half of elementary school students aspire to become entertainers," one entertainment lawyer said. "I'm worried about the future of my country."
Of course, the country needs people who dream about becoming actors and singers. But it also needs people who fall in love with science or aspire to become great politicians or military leaders. It needs people who live passionate lives as artists too. Celebrity fever is a cause for deep concern.
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