Former JYP Entertainment Trainee Reveals How The Company Kept Her Underweight

Former JYP Entertainment trainee Kimberly Chen recently revealed why the company wanted her to sign on at a young age. The main reason was so that they would be able to control her weight before she hit puberty and began to store fats naturally.

After she revealed that tidbit, an old interview from 2018 was revisited where Kimberly shockingly shared the drastic lengths that the company went to, in order to keep her weight at a minimum. Kimberly was to keep her weight at around 83.7 lbs (38kg). For a growing teen, the weight was impossible to maintain, without some medical help of course.

She shared that the company provided her with slimming pills, and instructed her to take 5 pills at a time. The recommended dosage was only one pill per consumption. This occurred when she was training under JYP Entertainment’s instructions in New York.

• Kimberly: “Korean beauty standards are a little different from regular people, they are stricter. Back then, as a requirement I had to be as slim down to around 83.7 lbs (38kg).  I was indeed very skinny back then but I was very unhealthy. I don’t recommend it.”
• Interviewer: “If you look at Korean female artists, they often say they only eat as much as a cupful for each meal (Nine Muses’ famous paper cup diet). Is it true?”
• Kimberly: “Yes, it’s true. they will. For us, previously, the company would give us slimming pills. The recommended dosage is one per meal. They would give us five a meal. It’s very over the top. At that time my heart would beat very fast, I wouldn’t be able to stand properly for half an hour, and I felt dizzy, because my metabolism was probably super fast.”

Thankfully for her mental and physical health, she left the company after 7 months and took the chance to further her career in Taiwan instead. Kimberly is now a successful singer and has released a couple of solo tracks.

It’s not easy to survive under Korean entertainment agencies’ harsh requirements!