TXT’s Taehyun opens up about harsh trainee days at BTS’s label

The K-pop industry can be extremely competitive; newbies are often treated harshly when they're still in their trainee years, trying their best to get their foot in the door. Even TXT leader Soobin recollected how intense those trainee years were in a now-viral clip from a Weverse livestream. He revealed that both he and his bandmate Taehyun were subjected to physical punishments while learning choreography that shocked fans.

TXT leader Soobin and bandmate Taehyun were hit in their early days if they failed to perform dances well

Soobin recalled an incident where he was asked to learn a choreography as fast as he could along with Taehyun, but they couldn't perform well to it because they were still relatively new to dancing and were quite young.

"This was when me and Taehyun had just been dancing for a week or two we were both extremely young kids, 8th and 10th graders who couldn’t even stretch our arms out properly…the seventeen hyungs do really hard choreographies, right? And they suddenly asked us to dance to this song and it’s not even like the teacher taught us the choreography, they told us to learn it ourselves by watching the video so me and Taehyun watched the video at 0.5x to learn the choreography and it seemed reallllly tough, so it was a given that we wouldn’t be able to dance well to it.”

"We…Me and Taehyun got hit a little less…we were really bad but there were a few people who were worse than us," he said.

 Soobin added, “(Sighs) Taehyun ended up saying it but we did get hit back then…we got hit while we learnt it…”

“They had physical punishments back then but if they physically punish someone now, they’d get in huge trouble,” Soobin said to assure fans that things no longer remained the same.

TXT's fans, called MOAs, were not happy with the treatment that was belted out to them.

"Still here thinking about how ridiculous it is to ask new trainees with little to no dance experience to learn an advanced choreo by themselves and when they obviously don’t do that well, you smack them around enough for them to be scared. Mind you this is on top of them getting bullied by some other trainees, dieting, hours long vocal practices, moldy mushroom filled vocal rooms, getting shocked by electric wiring, and living together with 1 single fan, rationing food, and attending high school," said one user under the video that was reshared on X.

"As early as 2015-2016, videos of BTS managers hitting members, verbal abuse, & members flinching. ARMY outcry made co. issue an apology, claimed the manager fired. Abuse was inflicted, it is known," said another.

TXT is a South Korean boy group formed by Big Hit Entertainment. The group consists of five members, namely, Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun and HueningKai.

For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.