1. Ori While it’s quite normal to see tons of idols
giving up half-way in the fierce competition of the entertainment industry, Baek Jihyun—or
also went as Ori for her stage name, is one among rarest cases of KPOP that managed to
draw lots of attention, though it wasn’t for any good reasons, but still disappeared
mysteriously after that.
So, can you guess why I said she had all eyes in the room but “not for any good reasons”?
If you’re not a KPOP fan since gen 1 or 2, there are high chances that you wouldn’t
know how Ori used to be super well-known for being the artist with “the worst debut of
KPOP.” However, you can still find a lot of information about her debut with Its’
Snowing because on Youtube, two videos dedicated only to describing her “legendary worst
debut”, as titled by the poster of this video, received up to 987k and 209k views
respectively. Under the pressure of the public, Ori chose
to withdraw and even completely gave up on the dream of singing. Another sad thing was
that while other idols at least tried to have several more comebacks to leverage on those
attention and gauge the reactions to their music, Ori just simply disappeared into thin
air after her debut and her sole live performance.
Debuting in 2009, her poor performance could be attributed a lot to anxiety because honestly,
she was just fourteen, had to perform at one of the most viewed music shows of South Korea—Music
Bank, and even had to promote at the same time with many monster names like SHINee,
IU and KARA. However, considering how Knets have always been quite aggressive with those
who don’t meet the bars they hold up high, Ori apparently had to receive the amount of
bricks that were enough for her to build a whole darn castle. The worst thing was that
besides being called out for having a shaky and out-of-breath vocal, Ori was also shamed
for her visuals and body. Also, for the fact that she ticked no boxes
of a standard idol yet could not only debut but also got a ticket to sing at a big show
like Music Bank, many people started to question whether she had used money for a backdoor
entrance.
Besides that rumour, there were also two other conspiracy theories proposed to satisfy the
curiosity of netizens back in the day. While the first said that she was the chaebol of
a mysterious rich family, the second believed that the company intended to debut Ori following
the “ugly duckling” concept where she was set to be not so visually pleasing at
the first public appearance but quickly transformed her look after that. While the last case didn’t
sound so right, it was actually the case of UEE when she was still in After School so
obviously, there were reasons for netizens to believe in that.
The criticism pointing at the fourteen-year-old girl was so huge that when Girls’ Day’s
Minah debuted long after the departure of Ori, many people also threw hands at her as
they thought Minah was the post-plastic surgery version of Ori. People even googled “Is
Minah a Ori?” and the rumour then started to grow so big that at one point, Minah was
even explicitly asked about this uncomfortable coincidence on MTV ‘LET ME SHOW’ and her
management agency Dream T Entertainment had to step in and stated that they were two different
persons.
Besides Minah, former member of Wonder Girls’ Sohee also got caught up in the same awkward
situation because of the similarity in visuals and vocal capabilities with Ori.
Newkidd’s Han Sol, Jiann, and Seung Chan Despite debuting in 2019 under a pretty small
company named J-Flo Entertainment, Newkidd was actually assessed to be among some potential
faces in the bloody competitive industry of KPOP. While the group managed to draw a fair
amount of good attention for having Hansol—the former artist of SM Entertainment and also
the former trainee in the survival show The Unit, things didn’t seem to go well.
Around July 2020, doubts from fans started to build up after Newkidd had up to three
members silently went under the radar: Han Sol, Jiann, and Seung Chan and only four out
of seven members showed up on Twitter and the group’s Youtube. Not only that, fans
also noticed how the company even tried to re-post some old pictures of Hansol on Instagram
since January 2020 to pretend that he was still there and actively update his status.
Since there was no official statements about these three “missing” members, fans started
to trend the hashtag #Newkiddare7 on Twitter to ask for information about them and eventually,
through the group’s fan cafe, which was only accessible to Korean fans, J-Flo Entertainment
released an announcement, saying that some members were hospitalized for medical treatment
due to health issues. Unlike other statements made by entertainment companies, they opted
not to specify which members were getting treatment.
Up to here, you may wonder: “Why Newkidd members are on this list despite the company
having already clarified the reasons for their disappearance”, right? So well, because
things are not always as simple as they seem and so is the case of Newkidd.
Since the time news about these three disappearing members started to blow up online, more than
a year has passed and still nothing about them was heard. The fishier thing about this
story is that even when the official Instagram account of NewKidd congratulated Seungchan
on his latest birthday and the Youtube channel still had that cover of all seven members,
no other things about them were updated. For the performance video of Left Hand where Newkidd
appeared as OT7 six months ago, some also pointed out that this was just another old
video posted to do nothing more than reassure fans and possibly keep them from leaving the
fandom.
Cha Yoon Ji Debuting in 2017, Cha Yoon Ji soon went under
the radar after releasing the sole EP called “I Wish” though she was dubbed as the
second BoA. While after that the public still saw Yoon Ji at The Unit, she unfortunately
couldn’t maintain the good performance for long and also left the show due to health
issues.
So do you wonder why an artist from a medium company like that could be compared to a one-of-a-kind
star like BoA? Well, the story first started with how she was introduced as the sister
of B1A4 member Baro and started to gain some reputation. To push her fame further, WM Entertainment
decided to go for a not so clean route and basically recreated some iconic scenes of
BoA’s ID Peace B in the opening of Yoon Ji’s debut MV.
As you can see, there is no way this is a mere coincidence.
Of course, by aiming high and using BoA to create a sense that “Look at Yoon Ji, she’s
the second BoA”, WM Entertainment got the public fussy over this hype and while the
reactions weren’t so positive, Yoon Ji had all eyes on her as planned. However, the problem
was that, while BoA rode to the top of Asia pop music world on the back of catchy dance
tracks, “I Wish” was a song that wasn't anywhere near interesting.
In fact, that was quite odd because though WM Entertainment was great at giving lively,
danceable tracks to Oh My Girl, and they’re clearly spending a lot to hype Cha Yoon Ji
up as BoA, the company somehow just handed her a sparse mid-tempo that would fit more
with an indie electronic artist than a dance-pop diva.
So, since they solicitly compared her to the authentic BoA but failed to give a good first
impression and an earworm danceable track to match the expectation, it’s also not
hard to see the results didn’t come out as wanted [meme disappointed] and Yoon Ji
just suddenly stopped everything and even left WM Entertainment all together.
So, of these idols on the list, which is the one you think deserve better and could have
had a brighter route had they stuck to the industry for some more? Comment down below
to share your thoughts with us. Also, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe to BeBossTV
for interesting content. Thank you for watching!