When Aussie teen Christian Yu – now known as artist DPR Ian – first signed up to become a K-pop idol back in the 2000s, he had no idea what he was getting himself into.
New to Korea and its entertainment industry, the 19-year-old fresh from the shores of Wollongong had no idea that “trainees” – as pre-debut idols are known – had to go through intense training and restrictions under the orders of their agencies to be considered acceptable for the stage.Â
“Everyone was kind of led to think that there’s only one way of doing this, [which was] extensive hours of just pure non-stop training [and] hardly any sleep,” he told 9honey of the period of his life where he was preparing to become a member of K-pop group, C-Clown.
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“You’re just not allowed to eat anything. You have to count your macros, your calories, but not to the point where it makes someone healthy. You have to be almost paper thin to come out like ‘normal’ on camera… because how you’re presented on the camera makes you twice as big from what we see.”
But there was another layer of restriction added that he could not anticipate at all – that of the toll his mental health would take undergoing this process.Â
“I think being an idol is definitely not for anybody. It’s not for the faint of heart, for sure, and it’s not for the ones that are more sensitive,” he claims.
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“Because you’re in the spotlight, you’re having your privacy taken away. There are things that you have no control and power over, and if you’re forced to break your limit time and time again, despite what you have going on mentally, your mental disorders don’t become priority.”
“So it becomes a facet of what you have, but it doesn’t become a thing to be focused on. You almost forget about it amongst the midst of everything that’s happening around you,” he claims, adding that this was his own personal experience.
As he focused on training to become Rome, the leader of C-Clown, treating the bipolar disorder he had been diagnosed with as a teen had fallen by the wayside.
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“When I was doing this whole idol thing, I forgot for a moment [that] I had bipolar,” he recalled.
“I had certain reactions because of my bipolar, but it just never occurred to me because of how much chaos was breaking out around me. Â
“You don’t have time to process it because you’re constantly stimulated – almost every 10 to 20 seconds.
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“The problem is, once you stop and let’s say your five minutes of fame is up… and everything finally seeps in and you start breathing again. That’s when it hits you like a truck.”
He claims he has seen it “time and time again – you see many artists, many idols, come out of their groups and then they have this moment where everything becomes so overwhelming for them that they just don’t know how to express it. It comes out in so many negative forms.”
Speaking as someone who has gone through the experience first-hand, Ian claims, “plopping [trainees] into an environment that doesn’t support [mental health]… being in an environment that ultimately cannot [tend to mental health] properly… It would always be more of a possibility that whoever’s in that state would come out a lot worse,” he claims.
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But unlike many in the industry who keep these issues an open secret, the now-34-year-old found himself unable to do so, especially when he began producing music and art on his own terms as DPR Ian.
The star is now known for speaking openly about his mental health struggles through his art, particularly touching on his dissociative identity disorder through the medium of his characters MITO and Mr Insanity.
“I’ve never really wanted to apologise for being myself,” he said, but at the same time, “I never, ever wanted to be someone that could advocate for [mental health] – because I’m not someone that has battled it and has successfully come out. I’m still battling it.
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“I’m just someone that’s just the same as who you are… I have the same life problems. I’m just as human as you are. And this is just my story.Â
“I don’t have the answers. I really don’t have all the answers to how you might be feeling, how you might not be feeling,” he tells fans.
“I’m just trying to show you what I’m fighting. And if I can show you that I’m beating this time and time [again], I think that’s at least giving good insight.”
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He says the main driver for being so vocal about his mental health is because “I want to be more honest about how I am.Â
“This is the promise I’ve always made; as long as your art is honest, that’s all that matters. I’ve never wanted my art to be in any other shape or form.”
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