While nothing on Earth can draw Knetz’ attention faster than discussions about idols’, especially
female idols’, visual, one ironical truth remains that there are still lots of hidden
gems whose beauty is just as stunning as those who people duped as gen4 visual queens like
Karina, Wonyoung, and Yuna, but are criminally underrated just because they come from a small-to-medium
entertainment agency.
In fact, certain idols here even share staggering resemblances to the classic and iconic visual
of their seniors, but somehow, their names were hidden so deep down the basement that
it wasn’t until I did research about this topic did I learn about them.
Kim Dayeon (KEP1ER)
Making her very first appearance on Produce48 at the extremely young age of fifteen, Kim
Dayeon still managed to garner great attention thanks to her refreshing visual and undeniable
talents.
It was also thanks to such a promising combo that on the first episode, she was sorted
to rank B though she had just been training for eight months under CNC Entertainment.
Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on her side so gradually, her position plummeted, making
her early journey to the idol industry stopped in the fifth episode.
As the recognition for Kim Dayeon’s visual in the early stage was apparent and she herself
also seemed to be well aware of that, Kim Dayeon quickly moved to a new agency, Jellyfish
Entertainment, aka the home to popular names like VIXX and Veriveri, and had another shot
with Girls Planet 999.
With the inherently attractive visual, it wasn’t hard for Kim Dayeon to quickly have
her position go up.
Even when her group lost to another in the mission covering BLACKPINK’s How You Like
That, Kim Dayeon’s individual fancam still got up to 427.000 views on Youtube.
As the heat around her reputation exploded, netizens started to dig deeper into her past
and realized that she actually shared great resemblances to Red Velvet’s Joy visual-wise.
Especially for the eyes as bright as sunshine and small face fame, Kim Dayeon’s beauty
easily proved itself to easily fit in the strict beauty standard of both SM Entertainment
and society.
In raw photos where Kim Dayeon barely put makeup on, the visual similarities between
her and Joy came across even more prominent, starting to make people confused as to why
she has never made it into any beauty ranking lists of Kpop.
Even in KEP1ER, her visual has also frequently been underrated at the rank of eighth, while
the act has a total of nine members.
When netizens tried to have a more “objective” view by sorting the girls’ visual based
on South Korean beauty standards, Kim Dayeon was still at fifth place only.
Even with international fans, whose perspectives about beauty are often more diverse, Kim Dayeon
was still somehow ranked sixth on average.
When unbiased data was involved, for example this site claimed to have collected information
from social media and filtered out the frequency with which each member was mentioned with
the word “beautiful,” Kim Dayeon could only climb up one rank to be at the fifth
position out of nine girls.
Most recently when Kim Dayeon shredded tons of weight to prepare for the promotion UP,
she has obviously checked off all the criteria for one to have a CGI-generated beauty.
However, she didn’t go viral on Pann for this drastic glow up and as you’ve already
known, when people on Pann don't care about something, it means that thing isn’t worth
any hype either.
Park Sohyun (tripleS)
As tripleS is the world’s very first decentralized Kpop act where the members will rotate between
sub-units, and solo activities according to the votes of fans counted through NFT photocards
called “Objekts.”
Since this infinite system is extremely costly and complicated to manage and such a voting
process also requires the members to meet the strict South Korean beauty standards to
a certain extent, obviously those who debut will need to have a visual appeal enough to
ensure this whole decentralized concept garners enough public interest and not fall apart.
That explains why Park Sohyun, the fourteenth member of tripleS who has just been introduced
on April 14, has such a stunning visual that could easily make it to the top ranking of
the industry.
In raw photos, her beauty shone through even brighter and at first sight, many said they
had already recognized a mixture of various iconic Kpop visuals in Sohyun like Kairna,
Jiwoo, Suzy, and Shuhua.
With the puppy eyes, high nose bridge, plump heart-shaped lips and especially the tiny
quail-egg face that is extremely rare in Kpop, there is no way SoHyun can’t make her way
into the top visual rankings of Kpop.
That is not to mention how she also builds herself a trendy clean girl image with her
long healthy black hair, bare minimum makeup and literally only uses red lipsticks to add
to her image a classic-beauty vibe, many predicted on the day she would soon make headlines everywhere
on the day Kakao Entertainment announced her debut.
Unfortunately, things soon turned out to be the complete opposite and regardless of the
highly similar visual to Karina, aka the only female idol recognized to have no dead angles
until now, Sohyun couldn't draw much attention from netizens.
Despite coming from a fairly influential company, Kakao Entertainment, Sohyun’s introductory
video on Youtube didn’t go viral and just had 68k views after two weeks.
Fans also noticed the sluggardly figures of Sohyun’s content and said it was probably
because the company didn’t do her visual any justice but seemingly, it was just that
netizens weren’t interested in her visual enough to care.
Until now, there have still not been any topics talking about Sohyun’s visual on Pann, aka
the discussion hub of netizens about whatever is most trending in Kpop.
On allkpop, reactions to articles talking about Park Sohyun’s debut as the fourteenth
member of tripleS also were also extremely underwhelming.
Despite having been on the platform for eighteen days, the post only had forty-three upvotes,
eight downvotes and two comments, none of which cared that she had the visual mix of
various legendary beauties in Kpop.
When searching her name on Google along with the keyword “visual,” the search engine
didn’t even fully recognize who she was and returned lots of irrelevant information,
proving that international Kpop fans didn’t bother to look her name up let alone love
Sohyun enough to vote her way into the top visual ranking of the industry.
Leeseo (IVE)
Being the first generation kid model under SM Entertainment and being cast by Starship
Entertainment to be trained as an idol, it’s literally undoubtable that Leeseo’s visual
belong to the top rank in Kpop since there is no way two companies placing considerable
emphasis on visual would both give Leeseo a nod without her being extremely stunning.
In fact, her visual was even said to be on the same par with Jang Wonyoung as they both
have the big shiny eyes of Barbie, a small nose with high bridge, lips as plump as a
peach and even their facial frame also shared a great similarity: both small, a bit round
but still perfectly aligned with the V-line criterion of Kpop.
In certain photo angles, Leeseo looked so similar to Jang Wonyoung that she even made
headlines for one, people didn’t expect her to be on the same part as Jang Wonyoung
visual-wise and two, they didn’t realize how long they had slept on Leeseo’s visual.
The staggering similarity stood out even more when Leeseo did the winky pose and even for
those who have been following the girls since day one, mistaking the two for each other
at first sight was still unavoidable.
Ironically, regardless of the beauty extremely similar to Jang Wonyoung, who has frequently
been referred to as the legit IT girl and one of the most recognized visual representing
Kpop gen4, Leeseo is still nowhere to be seen on lists ranking top visuals of the industry.
Just talking of the visual ranking in IVE alone, Leeseo has already been criminally
underrated since she is often voted to be out of the top3.
Similarly, many international fans also ranked her fourth when it came to the discussion
about IVE’s beauty and in cases where Leeseo made it to the top three, she would be left
far behind with 10% fewer votes than the second-ranked member.
In one post about Kpop idols whose visual was severely underrated, Leeseo was sadly
mentioned as her stans couldn’t stand seeing people constantly leave her out of the top
visual representing gen4 list while she looked just as gorgeous as Jang Wonyoung.
This confusing situation has led me to start digging into the reasons and later, I found
out that her underrated visual boiled down to the fact that Starship Entertainment debuted
her too young.
As a result, people found it hard to love and support her like an idol because at the
time of debuting, she was literally a secondary school kid.
Plus, voting a secondary schooler to represent something in an industry only suitable for
adults made people feel guilty as if they were objectifying a kid so as a norm, they
avoided mentioning Leeseo as much as possible, including on visual ranking lists.
I. L (IRRIS)
Probably for debuting under Justis Records, a rather small entertainment agency, I.L’s
visual didn’t manage to draw much attention though until now, there have been several
times when she made headlines for being a doppelganger of BLACKPINK’s Jisoo.
When doing light makeup and having her hair in dark color, the striking resemblances stood
out even more as not only did I.L’s facial features like eyes, nose, and lips remind
people of Jisoo but so did her hazy, innocent yet resolute gaze.
When seeing I.L on stage, many also said they could see how much she and Jisoo had in common
and down the road, they hoped netizens could give her more justice visual-wise.
Ironically, regardless of how heavy netizens’ obsession with visual and how deeply-rooted
the Kpop industry revolves around finding out the most gorgeous people on Earth to max
out profits on their image, I.L’s visual has still been criminally underrated.
While ten months have passed, the only time she made headlines was about how much she
looked like Jisoo.
On Pann, netizens also had no clue about either her or her alluring beauty, which is obviously
not only on the same par with Jisoo but also with the famous Chinese actress Tang Wei and
S.E.S’ Eugene.
On Google, when searching “I.L visual,” the search engine couldn’t even make out
a single piece of information related to I.L herself, further proving how much the public
had been sleeping on I.L’s visual just because she came from a small company.
So, do you know any other idols whose visual is just as stunning as top famous celebrities
but never makes it to the top?