Popular Kpop Idol Reveals The Dark Side Of The Industry, Got Scammed By A Former Agency Before Debut

Lovelyz member Lee Mi Joo confessed that she was scammed by an agency before her debut.

Recently, Lee Mi Joo conducted a Q&A session through her YouTube channel to commemorate surpassing 100,000 subscribers.

Lee Mi Joo, who recently left Antenna and moved to AOMG, filmed the YouTube video at the AOMG building. The production team joked, “People were very surprised that you came to AOMG. They thought you were doing hip hop again,” to which Lee Mi Joo responded, “Everyone was surprised. While it is a hip hop company, it has started as 2.0, and I became the first runner for this new beginning. I have to make a good start.”

Regarding the happiest moment of her life, Lee Mi Joo first recalled Lovelyz’s debut. She shared, “It was extremely competitive back then to become a trainee. There was an open audition, so it was even more intense. There were about 40 people, and people kept getting eliminated during every monthly evaluation. I was so scared I would fail because I didn’t have the confidence that I could make it into the final group.”

Lee Mi Joo mentioned the difficult debut process, saying, “Every time that happened, I wanted to go home so badly. If I called my mom and said ‘I miss you so much,’ she would yell, ‘You said you wanted to do this!’ I would say ‘Okay, I’ll try,’ and endured it for a month, then two months. That’s how I debuted.”

When the production team asked, “Did you audition for other companies?” Lee Mi Joo revealed, “I did. This is the first time I’m talking about this, but it was when I was in high school and the company was new. But they were scammers. They just made us sit in the office and didn’t give us any training. They just made us sit there. However, since they kept saying they had invested in us, they told us to pay a penalty fee if we wanted to leave. It felt dirty and unfair, but I paid the penalty and left.”

Source: (A)