Sawt Falasteen - Forbidden K-pop to centre stage: North Koreans set for music debut

Hyuk is one of two young North Koreans in a new K-pop band called 1Verse -- the first time that performers originally from the nuclear-armed North have been trained up for stardom in South Korea's global K-pop industry.

Before he was 10, Hyuk -- who like many K-pop idols now goes by one name -- was skipping school to work on the streets in his native North Hamgyong province and admits he "had to steal quite a bit just to survive".

"I had never really listened to K-pop music", he told AFP, explaining that "watching music videos felt like a luxury to me".

"My life was all about survival", he said, adding that he did everything from farm work to hauling shipments of cement to earn money to buy food for his family.

But when he was 13, his mother, who had escaped North Korea and made it to the South, urged him to join her.

He realised this could be his chance to escape starvation and hardship, but said he knew nothing about the other half of the Korean peninsula.

"To me, the world was just North Korea -- nothing beyond that," he told AFP.

His bandmate, Seok, also grew up in the North -- but in contrast to Hyuk's hardscrabble upbringing, he was raised in a relatively affluent family, living close to the border.

As a result, even though K-pop and other South Korean content like K-dramas are banned in the North with harsh penalties for violators, Seok said "it was possible to buy and sell songs illegally through smugglers".

Thanks to his older sister, Seok was listening to K-pop and even watching rare videos of South Korean artists from a young age, he told AFP.

"I remember wanting to imitate those cool expressions and styles -- things like hairstyles and outfits," Seok told AFP.

Eventually, when he was 19, Seok defected to the South. Six years later, he is a spitting image of a K-Pop idol.

- Star quality -

Hyuk and Seok were recruited for 1Verse, a new boy band and the first signed to smaller Seoul-based label Singing Beetle by the company's CEO Michelle Cho.

Cho was introduced to both of the young defectors through friends.

Hyuk was working at a factory when she met him, but when she heard raps he had written she told AFP that she "knew straight away that his was a natural talent".

Initially, he "professed a complete lack of confidence in his ability to rap", Cho said, but she offered him free lessons and then invited him to the studio, which got him hooked.

Eventually, "he decided to give music a chance", she said, and became the agency's first trainee.

In contrast, Seok "had that self-belief and confidence from the very beginning", she said, and lobbied hard to be taken on.

When Seok learned that he would be training alongside another North Korean defector, he said it "gave me the courage to believe that maybe I could do it".

- 'We're almost there' -

The other members of 1Verse include a Chinese-American, a Lao-Thai American and a Japanese dancer. The five men in their 20s barely speak each other's languages.

But Hyuk, who has been studying English, says it doesn't matter.

"We're also learning about each other's cultures, trying to bridge the gaps and get closer little by little," he said.

"Surprisingly, we communicate really well. Our languages aren't perfectly fluent, but we still understand each other. Sometimes, that feels almost unbelievable."

Aito, the Japanese trainee who is the main dancer in the group, said he was "fascinated" to meet his North Korean bandmates.

"In Japan, when I watched the news, I often saw a lot of international issues about defectors, so the overall image isn't very positive," he said.

But Aito told AFP his worries "all disappeared" when he met Hyuk and Seok. And now, the five performers are on the brink of their debut.

It's been a long road from North Korea to the cusp of K-pop stardom in the South for Hyuk and Seok -- but they say they are determined to make 1Verse a success.

"I really want to move someone with my voice. That feeling grows stronger every day," said Seok.

Hyuk said being part of a real band was a moving experience for him.

"It really hit me, like wow, we're almost there."

G.AbuOdeh--SF-PST