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C.com slash Padilla because sometimes existing is exhausting.

My name's Anthony Padilla and today I'll be spending a day with ex-K-pop idols.

Learn the truth about becoming an idol and what it takes to leave it all behind.

By the end of this video, we'll find out if the industry's strict regiments are as torturous

as rumors suggest, how forbidden romantic relationships really are and what a painstaking lawsuit to break a multi-year contract really looks like.

Was K-pop stardom nothing but a dream come true?

Or was the rigid and restrictive lifestyle they were forced to maintain

to isolating and bleak for them to ever enjoy the success that they achieved.

Hello, Becca.

Hi Anthony.

Jang Min.

Hello.

Christine.

Hi, how are you doing?

I feel like there are two sides of what people imagine a

K-pop idol lifestyle to be like. On one hand, there's

kind of this perception that it's a dream come true and nothing else. There's no

negative to it at all. And then on the other side this torturously stringent environment where you have

almost no autonomy over yourself, your image, no almost no free will. Where do you think your experience landed on that spectrum?

I think I would fall in the middle but a little bit more towards not having freedom and just

...