1Verse: How a North Korean went from begging to K-pop

Yu Hyuk, who was just nine years old when he began to begging on the streets of North Hamgyong, one of North Korea’s poorest counties, located along the northern borders with China and Russia, began at age nine.

Besides begging, he ran activities for men and sold cultivated vegetables. He occasionally snatches food out of sheer hunger; again, he took a lunchbox from an underground station that was left unattended. A piece of spoiled grain was tucked in.

He claims that some North Koreans only lived in this way because it was “part of common life,” adding that his own life was so preoccupied with success that it left little space for desires.

But desire he did. Later on this year, the 25-year-old did debut in the US as a member of a K-pop child group.

1Verse ( pronounced “universe” ) is made up of five members: Hyuk, Seok who is also from North Korea, Aito from Japan, and Asian Americans Kenny and Nathan- all prefer to go by their first names. They will become the first K-pop child circle to feature North Korean defectors on their debut album.

After his relatives split when he was four, Hyuk was born in a beachside town in Kyongsong region. He was raised by his father and mother.

Eventually, his mother eluded the North and reached out to him in an attempt to get him to meet her. He turned down because he was near to his father and did not want to leave him.

Hyuk claims that his home was” no very poor” at first, but his parents separated as the situation immediately deteriorated. Because his father was unable to work and his mother was very old, Hyuk was left to his own tools to succeed.

Ultimately, his father persuaded him to join his family, and in 2013 Hyuk escaped from North Korea.

It took decades for him to appear in the South, after going through some places. He has chosen not to disclose the route’s details because he fears that another potential defectors will be put in danger.

He spent just a year living with his family in the South before moving to a sailing class with his mother’s financial aid. Nevertheless, he struggled to cope with South Korea’s fiercely competitive training program, as Hyuk had scarcely finished primary class before his departure.

He claims that reading was the one thing that he found pleasure in.

He began with brief writings that made references to his previous experiences in North Korea. ” I don’t openly discuss what I’d been through, but I also wanted to make a record of it”.

Hyuk initially feared that his account don’t be understood by others, but friends and teachers in his school’s music team encouraged him and later discovered his passion for music.

Growing up, song was a pleasure, allow alone K-pop, which he had hardly ever heard of. He then uses his feelings of loneliness and missing his father to write music, calling himself” the loneliest of the outcasts,” as he says in Ordinary Person, a song song he wrote for the band’s future recording.

Hyuk is a 20-year-old high school graduate. Finally, he worked part-time at eateries and companies to help himself.

His success changed when he appeared in an academic TV program in 2018 instead. Audio manufacturer Michelle Cho, who was formerly from SM Entertainment, the company that produced some of K-pop’s biggest functions, caught his attention with his unique history and rapping skills. She offered him a place in her firm, Singing Beetle.

According to Hyuk,” I didn’t believe Michelle for about a time because I believed she was cheating on me.”

But he eventually realized that Ms. Cho was “investing way too much time and income” for anything other than real.

Kim Seok, 24, even defected and arrived in the South in 2019, despite the fact that his background was markedly different from Seok’s.

Seok, who was raised in a comparatively better-off family, had access to K-pop and K-drama through seized USBs and SD accounts and lived close to the Chinese border.

We are unable to uncover much more about his career in the North and how he moved to the South for safety reasons.

Ms. Cho called both guys “blank painting,” adding that she had never come across anyone quite like them.

Hyuk and Seok were total novice, unlike Aito and Kenny, who had already been absorbed in music and dance from an early age.

” They had definitely no knowledge of music culture”, she said.

But their capacity to “endure real problems” astonished Ms Cho. They persevered through hours of grueling party exercise with such tenacity that she worried they were “overdoing it.”

Aside from music and dance lessons, their education even covered politeness and engaging in discussions, to make them for internet conversations.

” I don’t believe they were used to questioning items or expressing their mind”, says Ms Cho. ” At second, when a coach asked the reasoning behind their feelings, the only answer was,’ Because you said so past moment'”.

But after more than three decades, Hyuk has made amazing progress, she says.

” Today, Hyuk questions several things. For instance, if I ask him to do something, he’ll email’ Why? Why is it required?’ Often, I regret what I’ve done”, says Ms Cho laughing.

What do the other two guys ‘ friends think, though?

” I was a little concerned at first because North Korea has a hostile marriage with Japan. I thought North Koreans would become terrible, but that turned out not to be true”, says Aito, who at 20 is the youngest of the four.

Kenny, who spent the majority of his life in the US, adds that it took him some time to get used to the little ethnic variations.

” Korean culture is very]communal ] in that you eat together… that was a culture shock]to me ]”, he said. ” I usually don’t like eating with people, I prefer Netflix in my ears. But their happiness comes from being collective”.

Late last year, the group added a second part, Nathan, an American of mingled Laotian and Thai history to the party.

They intend to make their US debut later this year, which the label hopes will entice more United fans.

Only a few, generally those managed by main labels, of the thousands of K-pop bands make their debuts each year, and few of them become well-known.

So it’s still very early to say whether 1Verse will continue to have a positive impact on people. However, Hyuk has great hopes for his friend North Koreans to eventually hear his songs.

This may prove less of a pipe dream than it sounds, even though Hyuk even has his concerns because human rights activists frequently send flyers and Devices containing K-culture material via balloons and jugs toward the North.

He refers to his country as” the upper edge” in discussions and resists mentioning North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to prevent being perceived as a vocal critic of North Korea.

Kim has recently increased his crackdown on the K-popinflux. Consumption and distribution of such content has become a crime since 2020 and is now a death sentence.

A rare video obtained by News Korean last year, believed to be filmed in 2022, shows two teenage boys publicly sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for watching and distributing K-dramas.

One academic says it would cause a” stir” in North Korea should 1Verse’s music become a hit.

” If a North Korean defector openly embraced their identity and went on to become a world-class activist, I think that would cause a stir in the North”, said Ha Seung-hee, an academic specialising in music and media at Dongguk University’s Institute of North Korean Studies.

But his main motivation, Hyuk says, is to prove that defectors can be a success.

” Many defectors perceive an unbridgeable gap between themselves and K-pop idols. It is hardly a career option for us”, said Hyuk.

” So if I succeed, other defectors might be encouraged]to] have even bigger dreams. That’s why I am trying my hardest”.