Blackpink’s Rosé Recalls Experiences As Idol Trainee: ‘I Had No Time To Slack Off’

Blackpink’s Roseanne Park opened up about her experiences from trainee days before she was chosen to join the world’s current most popular girl group.

More popularly known as Rosé, the Australian-native said she flew to Korea as a 16-year-old girl who tried her luck to become a K-pop idol.

She said she had a grasp about the strict and grueling schedule K-pop trainees go through having watched a lot of videos before coming to Korea.

But when she got accepted as a trainee, she realized she was unprepared for the pressure and demands the role entails.

“I thought I knew what I was up for. They were like, ‘As soon as you get there, you have to practice hard. Have you ever danced before?’ And like, I’ve never danced in my life except for being silly in class with my friends,” the 25-year-old singer told renowned film director Baz Luhrmann in an interview for Vogue Australia.

“But I get there, and I notice that there are like 12 other girls who have been training day and night for about like five years ahead of me. And I had just gotten there, I’m 16. I came from Australia,” Rosé said, adding, she felt uninitiated about K-pop because she went to school thinking she would someday become an art teacher.

“And so when I got there, I was like, ‘Ok, so this is quite intense,” she stated in the interview.

Rosé trained for several years under YG Entertainment before finally being launched as one-fourth of the highly successfully Blackpink.

K-pop training labels are known to enforce strict rules to their recruits who are expected to dedicate their days to practices on singing, rapping, acting, modeling and related skills.

In 2017, Rosé revealed that male and female trainees were not even allowed to say "hi" to each other or be left alone in the same room. Other labels also prohibit trainees from owning personal phones. Most K-pop trainees also mostly live on a strict diet plan.

“I didn’t want to fly back without having achieved anything. So I ended up fighting for my life, training for my life because I couldn’t accept the fact that I’d just be cut and sent back. So I had no time to slack off,” Rosé said.

Blackpink has been on an extended hiatus since they launched “The Album” in 2020. The quartet is expected to reunite and release a new album soon.