My name is Ari and I am 17 this year. I am American-Korean. I trained in SM for about 2.5 years and recently just came back to the States 2 months ago for personal reasons. Since I’ve been in SM for more than 2 years, I’ve noticed a lot of things and made a lot of observations. Choose to believe or not, I don’t care; I’m just saying all these because I’ve been seeing a lot rumors that are NOT true about the SM artists. Firstly, I’ll talk a bit about my experience. There were like 5 buildings of SM from what I know & remember.. (there could be more/less, I’m not quite sure because I spent most my time in the trainee building) There was one for trainees and one for SM artists only. (which was exclusive and trainees couldn’t get in there without special permission & for showcases) Training was very harsh, and since I was only 14 when I first entered the building, I still had school & had to train at the same time. I trained for singing, dancing, language ( Japanese and Chinese. I already knew English and Korean) and instruments. (I learnt piano and guitar) There were also rapping/acting and other classes but I was never really trained that. My focus was on my dancing. SM trainees are very very competitive, and ages ranged from about 10 - 19 ? (Average age from what I remember was about 15) Apart from our daily singing/dancing/language lessons we had to take, we were not forced to train ourselves. What I mean is, after your normal lessons provided by the SM instructors, you could basically just leave and go back to your dorms/home. If you wanted to train until 5 am in the morning, you can. If you want to slack of, you can. SM wasn’t really strict on making us train because all your hard work, or no work showed in the monthly evaluations. (to be honest, I really hated the monthly evaluations. It was horrible) Although most trainees were really really hard working. During 2 years, I’ve seen friends come and go, that’s why I never really had a steady friendship during training.
The first SM idol I met was BoA at the showcase. She was incredibly sweet and she gave the trainees a lot of helpful advice. Everyone seemed to really respect her! I also knew EXO before they debuted. I wasn’t close to them, (I was only close to like 2 people. I focused on training and didn’t have time to make a lot of friends) Rumors about EXO being not close is absolutely not true! They are definitely more close now then when they were trainees, but even before debut, they did get along really well. I’m not sure who was close to who before debut, but during wolf era (I was still training then), they all had a really good bond. Yixing and Luhan seem to get along really well, Kris is a bit quiet but he gives off this really “cool” vibe about him. Chen is close with everyone and Sehun is a bit awkward at times but he seems to get along with everyone also. Yixing is a SWEETHEART and he is really really nice to everyone. Chanyeol being the happy virus is not fake or “just a show for the fans” He really does joke around a lot and he’s always smiling. He definitely is the happy virus, however, I think Baekhyun suits that title more? Baekhyun joked around a lot with the other members and he seemed really close to Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo is a bit quiet and more on the “manly” side. He isn’t really into aegyo. As for xiumin (it’s so weird calling him xiumin because pre debut, everyone called him minseok obviously lol) , SM was planning to place him in EXO-K, but then got transferred to EXO-M (what I heard from my manager) He doesn’t seem to /want/ to be in EXO-M and it looked like he was more comfortable with the Korean members, but he is very close to Luhan. The members that I know a bit better are Suho, Kai and Sehun. They worked incredibly hard especially Suho (can’t believe he actually trained for 7 years.. I almost died training for 2 years lol) Kai was an amazing dancer and he was pretty popular with the other trainees. He was like SM’s “golden boy” and I remember, during the MAMA era, he was put first in everything. When I first entered SM in 2010, I was thinking like.. why.. how did he survive for 2 years with this tough competition and so much talented people? But then I saw his dancing.. and his face and I was like.. wow. He had so much passion and confidence when he danced and I think that’s why he got through 2 years.. even though his vocals were lacking a lot. (he has improved A LOT) The korean members and chinese members at first weren’t close and were quite awkward because the chinese gang hung out and trained together, and koreans did the same. All the members seem really close to each other during wolf era though. F(x) came into our monthly evaluations once and I got to meet all the members. Luna was soo sweet and Amber is a really fun person! She made sure the trainees that couldn’t speak Korean well (there were quite a few international trainees actually) didn’t feel left out and gave them lots of advice. She was close to a lot of trainees (including EXO) and it seemed like she was closer to trainees & other SM artists like suju than her own group members.. Krystal didn’t talk much and was a bit awkward with the trainees but she definitely was not bitchy like a lot of people have been saying. Victoria was sweet as well but she didn’t really talk a lot. Sulli wasn’t present at the evaluation so I didn’t get to meet her personally. As for Super Junior, I only got to meet Shindong. He was really kind and gave us a lot of advice too. SNSD never came into our monthly evaluations but I did get to meet Taeyeon once. She was.. really short but she was beautiful! Didn’t get to talk to her much, only exchanged some hi’s and byes lol. I only got to meet 1 member of Shinee and that was Taemin. He actually helped my group with our choreography and he was really nice! He was also really close to Kai and I remember they got along soo well! I didn’t get to meet TVXQ.. I never saw them around much.
The rumors about SM being a bad company is not true. Yes, SM is demanding and tough, but the company does treat its artists and trainees well. Some trainees have really nice dorms, and Lee Soo Man sometimes let the trainees go on holidays like to the beaches and go watch our sunbae’s concerts. During the 2 years, I went to SNSD’s concert and SM town with the other trainees. Once, we even got a tour of the Sm artists building! It was really big and we even got to go in that famous SM clouds practice room. (It’s a lot bigger than what you see in the practice videos, there are couches and like a lounge area in that room. 2 sides of the walls are mirrors. The room is seriously huge for a training room.. ) All the SM artists do seem to be reasonably close to each other. F(x) and SNSD are close, Super Junior is close with TVXQ and SNSD. EXO is close to Amber and Suju, and TVXQ (kinda) They seem a bit awkward with SNSD though. Also, SM is planning a new girl group. I’m friends with one of the girls. There are 4 girls were being considered, but I don’t know anymore than that because I left. However, it might still be a while until they actually debut.
I’ve actually read some accounts of “trainees” in SM and I’ve got to say, a lot of them are false. People claim themselves to be “sm trainees” and spreading rumors, please stop.