Entertainment companies in the ROK hold open auditions and use their scout network to recruit teenagers from all around the world. For example, Han Geng, a former member of Super Junior, joined the K-pop group through an open audition held in China, and Nichkhun, a Thai American, was recruited in Los Angeles. Apart from learning how to sing and dance as professionals, the trainees also receive coaching in acting and foreign languages, such as Japanese, Chinese and English, to meet the demand of the global market.

Normally, it takes three to five years for a teenager to hit the stage, but only one in every 10 trainees succeeds in becoming part of a group made up of other chosen trainees. Even established groups have a "shelf life" of about five years on average because newer, younger groups emerge to replace them or group members choose to go their different ways. The sharp competition forces K-pop bands to remain at their professional best or risk demise.

In comparison, many Chinese singers emerge from talent shows and attain stardom even before undergoing systematic, let alone comprehensive, training to meet the demands of the audience and the market. At best, their training lasts for a season. Worse, the short-term profit-driven entertainment agencies, with which the budding stars sign contracts, spend little or nothing on their professional training.

Chinese entertainment companies that want to widen their market have to find ways to extend the longevity of their singers, for which they could learn a thing or two from their neighbors to the east and use their experience to generate a Chinese musical "phenomenon".

The author is a writer with China Daily.

E-mail: xiaolixin@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 10/11/2013 page9)