“I Think I’m Gonna Die” — The Scary Reason K-Pop Groups Often Get Into Car Accidents

Unfortunately, several K-Pop idols and groups have been the victim of car accidents. LE SSERAFIM, WJSN (Cosmic Girls), and fromis_9 are only a tiny percentage of the groups that have been injured—along with their staff members—in the past couple of years.

While the details of what caused their car accidents haven’t been made public, a former trainee exposed the common cause of such accidents.

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A former trainee of twelve years, Gina Maeng, has formed friendships with many K-Pop singers and remembered being called by “two different idols” at two in the morning for the same reason.

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The female and male idol were in the same situation. They were driving to their next schedule and shared the same terrifying concern for their safety. Gina revealed, “Both of them said, ‘We’re driving at light speed, and I think I’m gonna die in a car crash cause we’re driving so fast.’”

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Since they were rookie idols at the time, they couldn’t speak up. And even if they did, there was no guarantee the manager would listen to them and slow the car down. There’s a specific reason why managers drive dangerously fast.

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Groups have such tight schedules that managers drive extremely fast to reach their destination in time—even at idols’ expense. There’s even a term for managers constantly driving above the speed limit.

Apparently, you have to get from this place to that place, different cities. And you’re in a rush because you’re booked for two different stages that are back to back. And there’s no way you can make it from Busan to Seoul in two hours.

But managers can do that. K-Pop managers can make that happen. And we have a saying in Korea which is called ‘Manager Driving,’ which refers to acrobatic driving: speeding, speeding, speeding.

— Gina Maeng

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Managers are more focused on money than safety. Gina said, “They don’t care how many tickets they get because getting this idol to the next destination and doing that show is gonna make a lot more money than all the tickets combined. They just speed through, and sometimes it leads to crashes.”

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Despite the decrease in car accidents among idols, it still happens often enough. It should be taken seriously—especially since idols like Ladies’ Code‘s EunB and RiSe lost their lives from their manager’s “reckless” speeding.