Idols often found themselves dragged into a schedule even after their promotional activities had finished.
It was none other than for the
Idol Sports Championship
.
It was a special program featuring more than 10 idol groups competing in various sports, held twice a year—once in the first half and once in the second half.
‘How long are they planning to continue this program?’
To be honest, I didn’t look forward to appearing on this program at all.
It was obvious that if you took a bunch of amateurs who weren’t properly trained in sports and suddenly threw them into a competition, injuries were bound to happen.
‘It’s even more dangerous since they don’t properly set up an environment for the games or a system to handle injuries like in official competitions.’
In such extremely sloppy situation, if an idol were to get injured, they would be left with no choice but to sit out of future activities or push through their performances, even if their injuries weren’t fully healed.
‘…The members must not get injured.’
Beyond the physical risks, the program was fraught with issues like fights and controversies caused by competitiveness, cast members trying to flirt while being watched by fans, and staff’s abuse of power. With minimal promotional effect, there was little merit for idols to participate. Especially for a group like Pantheion, who had no real need to promote themselves, taking such risks was even more unnecessary.
Despite the ongoing criticism and questions about why this program was still being maintained when everyone disliked it, the Idol Sports Championship would continue to exist as long as no major accidents occurred.
Because in reality, not
everyone
disliked it.
Disliking the Idol Sports Championship was limited to idols and their fans, as the general public didn’t really care whether idols got injured or not. They ended up watching the program, which featured familiar faces and offered plenty of things to watch.
For this reason, from the broadcasting station’s perspective, the Idol Sports Championship was a filial piety program, so there was no real need to cancel it.
“You have to go to Idol Sports Championship … Please don’t ask me why. I can’t tell you.”
I still vividly remember the empty smile our manager gave us when he first told us about the Idol Sports Championship schedule. He didn’t say it outright, but I had a pretty good sense of what he meant.
‘There must have been pressure from the broadcasting station.’
Since the Idol Sports Championship was a program on a major broadcasting station, refusing to appear on it could lead to potential disadvantages when it came to appearing on the station’s other programs. Even if it didn’t go to such an extreme, it could still plant the seeds of discord between the broadcasting station and the agency.
‘They’re doing all sorts of things.’
Since it was uncertain how the members of Pantheion would continue their activities after the group’s contract ended, it was best to avoid causing any problems as much as possible.
The younger members, especially the two idiots, had a secret desire to participate in the the Idol Sports Championship they had been watching on TV, so they accepted the participation without much hesitation.
‘Our chicks didn’t know anything and were going crazy wanting to go out.’
As I thought about how the members were preparing for the Idol Sports Championship, I remembered Zen, who had flown away without even being able to scream.
‘Well, it looks like one of the two idiots is already regretting it.’
“I’m just a regular person. Please have mercy. My life is in danger.”
“If you try to do sports half-heartedly, it’s even more dangerous.”
With a national-level judo athlete right next to us, of all things, he ended up participating in the judo category. It was nothing short of a tragedy.
“It’s such a relief that we have someone who is experienced in judo in our group.”
“I’ll assassinate the past Nagi Zen for choosing judo as an elective.”
Woo Kangwon was banned from most categories in the name of fairness.
I couldn’t help but wonder why we were even called if that was the case, but since he would be dragged into the commentary from the middle and ended up doing 100 servings of coaching
1
, it seemed like he was somewhat content.
‘Zen is also improving by leaps and bounds…….’
2
“Zen is from the origin country
3
, so he should be able to do it. And since he’s tall, he should be able to win the gold medal, right?”
“Save me, save me, save. Kill me, kill.”
Ah, but that didn’t mean there was an agreement with Zen.
“Yu-chan is sitting. The ant and the cricket
4
. Feeling the bitterness of life.”
While Zen was being mercilessly thrown around by Woo Kangwon, Do Yuda and Lee Danbi were enjoying a comfortable environment, playing the game while munching on squid.
“I broke the chest
5
. There’s a super low HP in the back.”
“No way, Danbi is crazy! He’s doing it like a pro hacker
6
!”
It was because they were competing in e-sports category.
They were also participating in categories like soccer, but since it was difficult for idols to coordinate their schedules for group practice, they seemed to focus on e-sports first.
They kept saying they broke something, but I have no idea what they meant.
Was it their head?
‘If it’s just about breaking heads, I can do it too.’
I secretly had that thought in mind, but since there was a rule requiring duo participation, Lee Hwayoung and I, who had no interest in gaming at all, were excluded first.
Oh, Lee Hwayoung participated in the equestrian category, which was first introduced this year. Since he’d been horseback riding as a hobby since childhood, the level of the Idol Sports Championship was probably a joke to him. I couldn’t help but think he’d probably just dominate the whole thing on his own.
‘That being said, Lee Hwayoung isn’t the type to go easy on others either.’
But if he’s going to compete, of course, he should bring back a gold medal. Whether or not the other groups felt despair at the overwhelming difference in skill was none of my business. Kill them all.
Baek Kiryang tended to avoid sports that could result in hand injuries, and since he didn’t have any particular strengths in sports, he ended up participating in the relatively safe options of running and table tennis.
And finally, I…….
“Make sure the arrow is level with your shoulder.”
I decided to work hard at archery.
“……Seungbeom is too skinny to do any physical activities.”
Due to Woo Kangwon’s strong opposition, I was first excluded from categories that were physically demanding, and was finally placed in archery. After checking the numbers on the scale I was standing on, he lifted me up and looked at me with a face that seemed to deny reality, then he decided that I was too weak for anything else.
Lee Hwayoung, who knew what my original body looked like, had a subtle expression on his face, but what could be done? Even if he acted that way, it wouldn’t bring back the body that used to effortlessly lift JackJack with one arm.
“You should always be mindful of keeping your legs shoulder-width apart.”
I was currently receiving basic training at the archery range.
‘I never imagined I would be treated like this in my life.’
I couldn’t help but agree with Woo Kangwon’s sentiment.
Does it make sense that someone who’s 179 centimeters tall weighs just a little over 60 kilograms?
‘Seungbeom-ah, you need to gain some weight.’
This child was too skinny. Those crazy people only fed Han Jaewoon and left him to fend for himself. Even smashing their heads wouldn’t be enough to relieve my anger. The only reason his body currently looked somewhat like human was because I forced it to exercise. When I first saw this child’s body, I genuinely thought there must be something seriously wrong with him.
‘My original body would build muscle quickly with just a little exercise, but Han Seungbeom doesn’t even gain weight, let alone muscle.….’
It really seemed like the ‘
muscle spoon
7
‘ that the Prism’s members talked about actually existed.
It wasn’t something I wanted to hear from those big guys.
For reference, Prism had never appeared on programs like this due to a number of factors: our overall size and weight class were far too different from other idols that it would have disrupted the balance, our intimidating appearances combined with a lack of social skills made the atmosphere uncomfortable, we had never done variety shows before and didn’t need to, and our busy overseas schedules provided more than enough justification to opt out.
That was the reason why I was currently learning the basics of archery, something that every other idol had tried at least once.
“Oh, Seungbeom-ssi, you’re really good at this? Let’s take a short break and then continue.”
“Yes.”
…It was peaceful. The practice went well.
But even so, I could feel my mind constantly jumbling.
‘I need to strike first before Lim Seunghoon reacts.’
I needed to organize the information I had gathered from the recent whirlwind of events and use it as a basis for my next course of action.
‘What the hell was Lim Seunghoon thinking, sticking by Kang Hyukwoo’s side? He must have known the risks it would entail.’
Kang Hyukwoo was not the type to be loyal. He would throw people under the bus whenever they no longer met his standards, and while he might offer them decent rewards at first, he would blackmail them later, keeping them completely under his control.
It was clear that this guy knew exactly what had happened to the Prism members at Kang Hyukwoo’s hands, yet without any thought, he crawled under him on his own accord.
‘…Without any thought?’
As I sank into the depths and thought about it, I stopped breathing at the question that came to my mind.
And then I began to develop my thoughts step by step.
‘Did Lim Seunghoon really voluntarily and recklessly fall under Kang Hyukwoo’s control without any preparation? Knowing full well what kind of person Kang Hyukwoo is?’
The answer to that question was, of course,
no
.
But that didn’t mean that the hypothesis I wanted to believe when I first encountered Lim Seunghoon—that he was following Kang Hyukwoo’s orders because he had been blackmailed—held any weight. As I had acknowledged during our conversation, Lim Seunghoon didn’t have many weaknesses.
His only weakness was the fact that he betrayed Seo Yutae and the members of Prism.
However, for Kang Hyukwoo, the accomplice, to use that as a basis for blackmail would be no different from digging his own grave.
‘I’m the only one who can effectively exploit Lim Seunghoon’s weakness. If that’s the case, it’s highly likely that Lim Seunghoon is voluntarily falling under Kang Hyukwoo’s control…..’
Kang Hyukwoo was too much of a risk to follow for the mere purpose of getting enough money to buy a few luxury items. So, putting it all together, I came to this conclusion.
‘He’s greedy, but he’s also a coward, so he must have prepared some sort of insurance. He must have sneaked away evidence that he could use to fight back when Kang Hyukwoo started threatening his life.’
Lim Seunghoon, as Kang Hyukwoo’s trusted subordinate, probably witnessed most of the evil deeds Kang Hyukwoo was committing with his own eyes. There was a high probability that he was also heavily involved in destroying or altering various crucial pieces of evidence.
And that meant that Lim Seunghoon could be holding a weapon that could be used against Kang Hyukwoo.
‘His timid appearance might have been an act. Keeping Kang Hyukwoo’s weakness is merely a last resort, and if it’s discovered, who knows what might happen. Or perhaps, he’s just being cautious of the members of Prism.’
If what I was guessing was true, the table would be turned completely upside down if I got my hands on the information Lim Seunghoon had.
‘For that to happen, it would be more efficient to cooperate with someone near Lim Seunghoon…….’
When I reached that conclusion, Taeui’s face naturally came to mind.
“…….”
‘No, let’s stop.’
Taeui was indeed a kind-hearted fool.
He was a rare kind-hearted guy, someone who was born with a heart full of affection for others.
But above all, humans were the easiest to change. A little crisis and temptation could alter a person’s character so easily, and I feared that Taeui could become like Lim Seunghoon.
I felt that my trust in others was completely destroyed by what had happened with Lim Seunghoon.
The possibility that the people I cared about could betray me at any moment had become a reality.
‘If Taeui finds out about Jo Inchan and leaks it to the media, the situation will spiral in the worst direction.’
Among those who were competent and could make close contact with RH Entertainment, there was no one I felt comfortable sharing everything with and cooperating with.
As I let out a heavy sigh, my phone on the table rang merrily.
Tiling!
[PRISM’s Lee Chise-sunbaenim: Seungbeomie is going to work in his hyung’s studio starting today~ If you don’t reply, I’ll come to your agency to find you ♥]
…Haaa.
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Translator’s Corner:
The sentence here literally means something like “doing the work of coaching 100 people” or “doing 100 people’s worth of coaching”. But it’s not like he actually coached 100 people. It’s just that he went all out in coaching that it seems enough effort to coach 100 people … so you can imagine how Zen must have felt lol. ↩︎
The phrase used is
일취월장
, adopted from
日將月就
. A phrase that refers to
s
omething growing as days and months pass
. In literal explanation, it means “
to achieve something every day and to advance every month
“. It’s used to describe
rapid progress or improvement
.
This expression came from the old poetry book in China called (詩經) Classic of Poetry
, containing 305 poems over 500 years period, in the
周頌 (Eulogies of Zhou,
this is the second part of the book where they talked about the Zhou dynasty who ruled China at that time
)
. In the Poem 288,
敬之
(means “
Reverence
“), the second king of the Zhou Dynasty, King Cheng of the Zhou warned himself to revere High Heaven and encouraged himself to learn about good virtues from the earlier kings.
The second stanza of this poem
, talked about the King offering sacrifices to the gods, went like this:
I am [but as] a little child,
Without intelligence to be reverently [attentive to my duties];
But by daily progress and monthly advance,
I will learn to hold fast the gleams [of knowledge], till I arrive at bright intelligence.
Assist me to bear the burden [of my position],
And show me how to display a virtuous conduct
. ↩︎
Judo is a sport that originated from Japan. ↩︎
Honestly I’m not 100% sure what does Zen mean with 개미와 키리기리스 (Ant and cricket), since you know … he always spoke in strange way. But I remember back when MC was describing Nam Yihwon, he was using Aesop’s fables, so I kinda guess this must be the same, because there’s also an Aesop’s fable about “The Ant and The Cricket”.
During the wintertime, an ant was living off the grain that he had stored up for himself during the summer. The cricket came to the ant and asked him to share some of his grain.
The ant said to the cricket, ‘And what were you doing all summer long, since you weren’t gathering grain to eat?’
The cricket replied, ‘Because I was busy singing I didn’t have time for the harvest.’
The ant laughed at the cricket’s reply, and hid his heaps of grain deeper in the ground. ‘Since you sang like a fool in the summer,’ said the ant, ‘you better be prepared to dance the winter away!’
The full fable is really beautiful actually, go read it.
So, in this context Zen is the ant (hard-working, plan for the future) and Yuda is the cricket (lazy, careless who spends his time doing foolish thing). Since, you know, Zen is working hard under Kangwon, meanwhile Yuda is playing games. ↩︎
Chest here is
갑빠
(in slang way, so MC definitely didn’t know what did they mean). In gaming, it refers to the
protective gear/vest worn on the upper body
. It generally refers to plate armor made of steel. ↩︎
The term Yuda used to call Danbi here is
개잘핵
. It’s from the word ‘
개잘
하다’ (
개
is literally mean “dog”, but in Korea, it’s kinda slang that means “very” / “hella”, in this context it means very well) and ‘핵’ (hack). This term is used to call
a player who do not use hack/cheat at all, but whose skills are so great that they look like they’re using cheat
. ↩︎
You know how born-to-wealth people are called “gold spoon”, “silver spoon”. The idea “muscle spoon” is the same, except that instead of gold or silver, they’re born with muscle. So, it used to describe people who are naturally gifted with the ability to build muscle easily.
Here it refers to Seo Yutae’s body. ↩︎
I’m bored of dying (Day 4)
… omg the footnotes. well, at least that means my brain is working properly. i got distracted for hours because of the chinese poems. i went reading several academic journals for it because it intrigued me …
And yeah, here’s the mandatory ripoff of ISAC … in real life, it is
Idol Star Athletics Championships
(아이돌스타 선수권대회), a program of one of the big three of Korea’s public network, MBC. It started in 2010 and still alive until now … the mandatory program that aired during Chuseok. The sports usually varied from year to year, but the main event is usually the relay, rhythmic gymnastics (this kinda get boring after Cheng Xiao not active as kpop idols anymore though), and archery (the must-have visual show off, basically they always sent the visual member of a group to this category).
As MC already said it before, while the public and casual fans may like it because when else would you see a lot of celebrities gathering in one place and compete with each other, the fans (mostly Korean, the intl doesn’t really concern themselves with this kind of thing tbh. they’re just happy to get “Crumbs”) doesn’t really like it. I mean, the filming took a whole day (17 hours for idols, almost 10 hours for fans I think), so the fans need to say there for a day too. The idols would give lunch boxes tributes for their fans, so it’s nice, but honestly … you will busy worrying about injury. Everytime this event happened in the past, there was always someone got injured. Seolhyun AOA dropped out from the drama she was supposed to appear because of this reason. And worse, the injury that Nam Woohyun of INFINITE got from this event (the cartilage in his injured left shoulder was torn and completely gone) even making him unable to attend the regular military service, so he was assigned to a social service worker position. You can imagine how bad it was. And during the track fields category, idols falling while running is almost like mandatory occurance.
And if that’s not enough, there were even cases where the fandoms attending are fighting. Like, physically. If you wondered if what MC mentioned about staff abuse of power is true, yeah it is. The one that got caught was the case where a staff member was pulling out LOONA Chuu’s hair. Also, during recent year, the 2nd gen idols were all talking about how it’s usual for love to bloom during ISAC, so imagine how the fans must have felt …
It used to be a huge event during the 2nd gen. With first-tier group like Super Junior, Bigbang, SHINee, SISTAR, MissA, etc all appearing, it was a very interesting program. Especially since the 2nd gen idols were all … very competitive. During the early days of 3rd gen, with groups like BTOB, BTS, GOT7 were still not entering their senior year, it was also highly competitive. But since the trend shifted, where Gen Z dgaf about TV programs, it became a flop program. Big company like SM and YG completely refused to send their new idols anymore. So, only mid-tier or even the nugu groups are attending, so it’s not really causing buzz.
If you’re asking why there’s still idols who went there … well, not everyone is from big company. MBC is a major major entertainment broadcast station, they have two music shows (Music Core and Show Champion). Big agencies would dgaf if they got blocked by appearing from music shows, but from small agency and unknown group, getting just 3-4 minutes to appear in there will be a huge chance for them. That’s why it actually a legendary for I.O.I (the OG survival show group), because back then, they’re blocked by both SBS and MBC, but they’re still hugely popular. Mid-popular senior groups can still decline using the excuse of health/schedule, but for rookies? Not a chance. Only rookies from big entertainment agency like aespa, RIIZE, Enhypen, BABYMONSTER, TREASURE, NewJeans (basically SM, YG, HYBE) can escape safely. Idk why JYP still went there, but JYP is famous for making good relationships with all stations, I think.
But that’s the idea. Your life as a kpop idol will be in jeopardy if you dare to refuse a major’s broadcasting station, and the station became used to this kind of bullying. Even some SM idols, like Minho from SHINee, received this kind of bullying to appear there too. The thing is, it’s not only your group that will get blocked. The whole company will. Like, for example, the whatever feud SM used to have Mnet. It didn’t only affect one group, but the whole SNSD – EXO – Red Velvet got affected. For big agencies, they can just “so what? our artists won’t be appearing on your show, that’s your loss”. But small agencies? Even mid-agencies can’t do this. Mnet literally bullied BTOB, a senior popular group, to appear on Kingdom.
Last time I watched ISAC was 2019 … when the big three groups were still attending (I need to support RV). But honestly, RV literally went there just to sleep. They just did archery and bowling, and either playing with NCT or Twice or Mamamoo members, or sleeping. Funniest thing is Joy actually a very competitive person, but she literally put zero effort in ISAC. That’s the gist, now, even when popular idols appear, they’re not taking the risks. Just attending is enough because public just wants to see their face anyway.
Huh, now that I think about it, I guess that’s why rookie groups from SM can afford not to attend anymore, without straining the company relationship with MBC. Rookie groups always bullied to join the hard categories, since they’re still young and have the “rookie spirit”. SM never sent a whole group anymore, but now they’re like sending 1-2 members from senior group to either be the announcer/giving commentary or just attend 1 easy sport like bowling, I guess that’s the exchange for allowing their new idols to opt out. Since you know, just having a big popular name on the lineup is enough to draw people’s interest, even though they barely doing anything.
Meanwhile with YG … idk that company always has that “IDGAF” mentality and picking fights with everyone. And Hybe specifically had long-standing feud with MBC since 2019 that all their idols just ignore ISAC, but the feud ended in late 2023, so I guess we should see if any Hybe idols would appear in this year ISAC (if there’s any) (as i said, the program has become a flop, only intl fans waiting for it because they don’t know enough about the reality of the program) (or they know but just don’t care, as long as they can see interactions between idols lol)
Oh that’s so long. Sorry for my usual rant, I really can’t stop talking once I started akjhksdhnkdn