A female K-Pop idol candidly revealed her experience of having celebrity disease during her time in a girl group.
On the 4th, a video titled “Obtained 11 Certificates… Why 4Minute’s Nam Jihyun Became a Barre Instructor” was released on YouTube channel.
The video featured Nam Jihyun, a former member of girl group 4Minute and actress, who has now taken on a new challenge as a barre instructor. Running her own barre academy, she said, “Since it’s a completely different industry, I started from the very bottom with no greed, just determined to begin.”
She continued, “After opening, I realized that people didn’t know what barre was, so I had to promote it. I handed out flyers around the neighborhood, and I would gently promote to moms I met near elementary schools without being burdensome. Sometimes people recognize me and say, ‘Aren’t you from 4Minute?’ or ‘You look familiar, where have I seen you before?’”
Nam Jihyun opened up, “After 16 years as an idol, protected and cared for, starting a completely new challenge brought a lot of feelings like ‘Did I really fail at this too?’ It was frustrating for myself. There are many things I think, ‘If only I had known this during my idol days, I would have done better.’”
She also revealed that her experience in 4Minute still greatly helps her today. She said, “I learned at a very young age that there’s no such thing as free rewards—you must put in effort to earn something. That foundation is there, and I think my threshold for effort is higher than others. Being in an environment where you compare yourself to others, with success measured by rankings, I learned how to objectively evaluate myself.”
However, she honestly confessed that early in her debut, she got celebrity disease. Nam Jihyun recalled, “Right after debut, our first song ‘Hot Issue’ did so well that we took first place on music programs. For a moment, I deceived myself into thinking everything I did would succeed, and that I was successful because I was talented.”
She added, “I’m grateful to the members because they once told me, ‘The staff said you have celebrity disease.’ I had been expressing my negative feelings only from my own perspective, but they told me about it, and I’m thankful. That helped me fix it immediately.”
She went on, “I’m naturally straightforward, but I think having an attitude of ‘I’m thankful to be given this work’ would have been better for me. I was immature back then, sort of unconsciously deluded, thinking ‘I guess I’m good at everything.’ Fortunately, the members talked to me about it. I almost became a monster,” she said, laughing.