K-pop star Kino on going solo, his new album and surviving the gruelling K-pop training schedule

There is one constant, however. “I can’t remember a time in my life when I was not dreaming of becoming a singer,” Kino tells the Post in the office of Naked, his one-man entertainment agency.

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“After that day, there were around 4,000 hate comments made daily in our online fan community. I almost never went outside my home for around a month and filled my room up with tears,” Kino says.

What kept him centred was his unshakeable love of music, performing and his faith in his path. After all, he had decided that he would be a singer when he was 12 – a decision that his parents had seen coming all along.

“Apparently, since my early childhood, whenever there was any sort of a family gathering, I sang and danced to at least five songs in front of everyone,” he says.

Three months after declaring his goals aged 12, he passed an audition and became a trainee with JYP Entertainment, one of the most prestigious entertainment management companies in South Korea.

What the 12-year-old found in the world of K-pop was a highly systematised idol grooming regimen. To the layman’s eyes, the process appears inhumane and incredibly demanding. But Kino credits it as something that built him up as a person.

“The management companies really make colossal investments in talent. They first find a lot of people who show potential. Then they take in and teach all of them.

“I took more than 10 lessons a week, and by that I don’t mean the number of classes, but 10 subjects. Singing and dancing lessons were the most basic. I also learned rapping, acting and different foreign languages,” he says.

“During my trainee days, I would take an hour-long bus ride after school at around three, to get to the company in Seoul. I would take lessons and practise until around 11, get home at around 1am, wake up at 7am and do it all over again,” says Kino.

“But sometimes I would personally add early morning practices on top of that. I caught up on sleep during school break times, lunch hours and on bus rides to and from Seoul.”

There was a sense of competitiveness that motivated him – he was surrounded by people who were working equally hard.

“I always knew that pursuing this was my calling. But had I fallen into this entertainment industry scene on my own, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it.

“I think I was able to do what I did [because of ] my desire to win. Other trainees surrounding me worked even harder than I did, and I felt that to win against these people, I had to do more,” he says.

“My school friends were going to internet cafes after school to play computer games. But I didn’t even have time to question what I was doing because everyone around me in the entertainment industry was living the same way as me.”

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This method of training individuals from an early age is normalised in the K-pop industry, but it has its detractors. Critics suggest that such a system creates idol groups and members that are essentially nothing more than products and lack authenticity and personality.

Kino disagrees. “The K-pop system is actually really good at discovering the innate talent and character in each individual and nurturing them effectively,” he says.

“Groups are built with a delicate balancing of different members complementing each other. I don’t know why other countries are not adopting this system.”

The view that K-pop idol groups lack agency is countered by many groups that self-produce. Pentagon was one of them; many of the songs were created by its members, even during the busiest of times when they were releasing three albums a year.

But everything came at a cost. The intensity of his early trainee days paled in comparison to the lives of idols. Kino said during his Pentagon phase, severe headaches from lack of sleep ironically prevented him from falling asleep. Even painkillers didn’t give any relief.

“I don’t dare to return to that time, just because of how brutally hard we were all working. But it was by choice. I wasn’t asked to write any songs for our albums. I did it because I wanted to.”

Setting up a solo agency presented Kino with new challenges. Now there is more pressure to succeed financially, without the security that a big company can provide.

“For me, my confidence overcomes uncertainty. As for the distant future, to be honest, I lack the confidence to fail. So for me, uncertainty is not a big problem.”

For now, the future is solid. His new solo album If this is love, I want a refund drops in early May and he is in the middle of his Asia tour, which has taken in Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo and Hong Kong, where he performed his debut solo concert in late April.

The concert was held at The Box theatre, at Freespace, in West Kowloon. With only 450 seats, it’s not the biggest venue in the city, but the tickets were not cheap either, priced at HK$1,480 (US$189).

Excited fans, many waving light sticks with the Pentagon logo, took photos in front of life-size banners featuring Kino.

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“We’ve all been a fan of Kino since he debuted in 2016,” said one fan, who came to the show with five friends, all in their twenties. “We love Kino because he’s Kino,” one of them said, and everyone else agreed.

When the show began, Kino made a dramatic entrance to the sound of the live band and fans frantically screaming.

He alternated between Korean and English when addressing them. “Did you miss me? I missed you guys too,” he shouted. “Promise me that you will stay until the end of the show!”

The fans screamed back, a testament to the hard work that Kino has put in along the way.