TWICE

TWICE is presented as an example of the institutional discipline behind K-pop idol production: its members’ path to debut illustrates how trainees are expected to spend years refining performance, language, and public-facing skills before an entertainment company decides they are ready. The group therefore helps clarify why K-pop idols are shaped not only as vocalists or dancers but as comprehensive entertainers whose technical polish and adaptability are deliberately cultivated.

Training Before Debut

When an ordinary idol reaches debut, the artist may already have spent years in training and undergone regular evaluations of progress. Jihyo of TWICE is cited as a particularly clear example: she entered JYP Entertainment at eight years old and trained for ten years. Her experience represents the uncertain bargain at the heart of the trainee system. Young performers invest substantial portions of their lives in the hope of debuting, but signing with a company to prepare for that possibility offers no guarantee that debut will ever occur.

The training is broad rather than narrowly musical. Prospective idols are expected to execute demanding choreography while singing and rapping competently, and they may study Korean, English, Japanese, or Chinese with language teachers. Their companies maintain teams devoted to their overall development, turning the trainee period into a prolonged process of technical, linguistic, and personal preparation. Those still attending school have fewer hours available for practice and may worry that they are falling behind, while others rehearse alone in dance rooms before the next evaluation.

The Idol as a Complete Performer

TWICE also belongs to a system that treats variety-show ability as part of professional preparation. New idols, often called rookies, practice eclectic talents designed to make them memorable in unscripted entertainment, including impressions of cartoon characters or celebrities and imitations of everyday sounds. Variety programs combine interviews, games, and comedy scenes, giving idols an opportunity to display personality as well as musical ability.

This emphasis distinguishes the Korean idol model from the more domestically focused Japanese idol tradition described in the book, whose performance culture places particular weight on fan-oriented charisma. K-idols are expected to emerge as polished entertainers: singers, dancers, or rappers whose public presence has been shaped through institutional training. TWICE’s example thus belongs to a broader production structure in which companies cultivate not only performance technique but also the flexible personality required to survive across music shows, interviews, games, and other forms of mediated exposure.

Industry Structure and Competition

The system that produced groups such as TWICE developed within a highly competitive entertainment field dominated for years by SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment, collectively known as the Big Three. These companies possessed financial resources, large talent networks, and established relationships with brands, sponsors, media outlets, and broadcasters. Such connections could secure television appearances and advertising even for new groups, giving artists from the major agencies an institutional advantage over newcomers from smaller companies.

JYP Entertainment’s role in this hierarchy is especially relevant to TWICE because the company is identified as one of the three dominant agencies during BTS’s debut period. The contrast with Big Hit Entertainment, founded by Bang Si-hyuk in 2005 after his work as a composer at JYP Entertainment, reveals how exceptional a smaller company’s breakthrough could be. Big Hit entered a field in which established agencies had already accumulated money, talent, and industry access, whereas its own resources were limited and its early business faced financial difficulty. TWICE therefore serves as an implicit reference point for the established infrastructure against which less powerful agencies and their artists had to compete.

A Modular Production System

The book presents K-pop’s industrial organization as unusually methodical, rigid, and controlled. Idols are developed through a process that executives describe as modularized: a formula combining efficiency, vertical integration, and rapid growth. Lee Soo-man of SM Entertainment is associated with a “cultural technology” approach that sought to formulate cultural production logically, extending from musical structures to visual presentation. Within this environment, training and marketing are not separate afterthoughts; both are components of an integrated system designed to create performers who can function across markets and media.

TWICE’s cited training history makes the human cost and duration of that system visible. A ten-year preparation period can produce exceptional polish, but it also means that the possibility of success is deferred across childhood and adolescence, with no assured outcome. The group’s place in the narrative consequently demonstrates both the effectiveness of K-pop’s institutional model and the pressure embedded in it: debut is not the beginning of preparation but the public result of years of evaluation, discipline, and uncertainty.