99’S FIRST NEW GIRL GROUP SINCE HEAVEN, GLIMMER, HOLDS DEBUT SHOWCASE FOR ‘WAG ZAK’
1. [ + 402 , - 97 ] If Suhee and Hyejin are debuting, that’s great, but... where’s Myungeun and Minyoung? Aren’t they the two best vocalists? ㅠㅠㅠ
2. [ + 351 , - 72 ] Why didn’t they debut their best, most known trainee though?? What’s that choice???
3. [ + 227 , - 53 ] They’re so fresh and cute and the song is really sweet, it makes me want to skip after school classes and go to the beach with my friends ..... maybe i wanted to do that already though... ^^
4. [ + 116 - 29 ] The song is okay, but wow aren’t they so freaking pretty though??
5. [ + 66 , - 16 ] I usually expect more from 99, isn’t this just a generic idol group song? At least they’re pretty.... but you can’t help but to compare them to Heaven and... well...
HEAVEN’S LITTLE SISTER GROUP GLIMMER DEBUTS WITH ‘WAG ZAK’
1. [ + 512 , - 107 ] It’s not what I was expecting from 99 Entertainment? It feels more like a summer release from Midas.. I’m surprised! But, I like it!
2. [ + 447 , - 89 ] Isn’t it really refreshing though? The girls can sing pretty well...!
3. [ + 296 , - 63 ] Don’t promote with Heaven’s name please ~ ^^ I guess this is why they’ve been working hard on Heaven and progressing their image. It’s a pretty good song though, it’s wholesome and cute !! This angel will look kindly at them ~~
4. [ + 133 - 24 ] Honestly isn’t it the most boring of the summer songs though? I don’t remember any of it at all after listening ㅋㅋ
5. [ + 76 , - 19 ] It’s cute and nice to listen to, but without the video it’s a little boring. The video is pleasant and sweet though! Everyone go watch it, really !
The rest of the Glimmer members are honestly great, but wow isn’t Jaekyung really a hidden gem? ㅠㅠㅠㅠ I wonder why she didn’t participate in the show??
Anyway, I think I became a fan now ㅋㅋ So everyone please support her and Glimmer’s fresh debut!! ~ ♡
POST RESPONSE | [ + 110 ] [ - 12 ]
1. [ ㅇㅇ ] Wow... it really shows that she trained for so long, aren’t her vocals so good??
2. [ 천사같은 목소리 ] Thank you for recognizing our pretty angel Kim Jaekyung OP ㅠㅠㅠ Ah it feels so good to see posts about her since the other members that were in Pro.J kept getting most of the attention, but her voice really draws you in ㅠㅠ Fighting, Jaekyung !!
3. [ ㅇㅇ ] She must have the patience of a saint ㅋㅋㅋㅋ Almost 10 years... my little sister is 10 years old and it feels like so long ago when she was born wow... I bet she’s so happy to debut~
a trainee for almost ten years, jaekyung has mastered the art of patience. there isn’t a single person she can name who has been kept in the shadows as long as her, and watching her friends debut and move onto the bigger, better things that she’s spent literally half of her life striving for have subdued her antsyness over the years into a decade of empty promises. everyone tells her she’s a hidden gem, a diamond in the rough that will shine the brightest if she waits just a little bit longer. she tells herself if she doesn’t debut by twenty-one, she’s leaving. her motto: good things come to those who wait.
99 wants her to be her group’s glue — what holds everyone together if things start to fall apart. jaekyung’s teenage years are rooted in this company, its values and morals, everything that is supposed to stand for 99′s success. she’s not just a main vocalist because she’s a good singer: she’s worked for it, harder than anybody could fathom, and 99 makes sure to promote that about her. having been part of the company for so long, she’s become somewhat of an unofficial spokesperson for their company and her consistent positive attitude on camera. coming from a very heavy image focused group, jaekyung is versatile in her ability to easily adapt to cuter as well as more mature, refined and polished concepts.
off camera, jaekyung is a motherly figure to her groupmates. having accumulated so much training experience with the company, jaekyung is nurturing and gentle, empathetic to others’ problems. she’s been a victim of the system counting on both hands and only wishes other people had the support system that she didn’t. her heart is too big to hold grudges, and the industry is far too cruel and unforgiving for another cold heart.
BIOGRAPHY
2010. she’s thirteen when she gets scouted in seoul, family visiting her older sister at university after having come all the way from jeju. jaekyung comes from a family of brilliance but terrible luck, having two daughters almost a decade apart and being unable to afford to move off the island. the man who takes interest in jaekyung promises her parents that her daughter could really make something of herself if she stays, gives his entertainment company, 99, a chance. at first it’s a burden for her sister to take on, but staying in her apartment and taking care of jaekyung, helping her adjust to seoul life — might just be the better option for her over staying in jeju.
that same year, jaekyung watches in amazement from a television in the lounge of 99′s building with a group of other trainees and coaches as heaven makes their first ever debut stage. she remembers how incredible it was to see her unnies look so confident and poised on stage, and swears from that day forward she’ll train just as hard to get to that stage, too.
2013. “you’ve come such a long way in three years,” her vocal coach praises her after a class together, and it’s so out of the blue and necessary for struggling sixteen year year old jaekyung to hear that it brings her to tears. she hasn’t been back to jeju, and there’s still no clear sign about any chances of debuting soon. her trainers don’t normally give her many compliments, preferring a tough-love approach even despite being so young and her four years under her belt. but even so, just hearing that she’s improved, is better than before — it’s the only motivation she needs to keep pushing forward. by now, poizn has debuted, which only raises jaekyung’s’ hopes about hopefully debuting with 99′s next potential girl group.
2013. when she finds out the next group is a boy group, twice in a row, her heart breaks. she cheers on all the trainees she’d trained alongside in the same room she’d sat in for heaven and poizn’s’ debut stages, but every time, that weight in her chest grows heavier until she can relieve it at night, crying herself to sleep — is there something she’s been doing wrong?
early 2016. there’s still no talk of any sort of debut within the company. her coaches urge her to hold tight even through her tumultuous final year of teenhood. by now she’s given six years of her life to this company, put her heart and soul into all of her work becoming a vocalist — but for what? and at what cost? she’s nineteen now, officially a legal adult that can make her own decisions and choices. jaekyung spends many nights reveling inside her own head, wondering if the promises made to her thirteen year old self are even fathomable almost a decade later. three groups have been established within the company in the time she’s been apart of it, and looking forward, there’s no tell tale sign about her own future.
if she gave up now — after all of this — it could mean an average life, a life at college and a regular part time job at some irrelevant coffee shop. she would spend four years in a classroom only to graduate and wind up doing who knows what for as long as she could until she would probably find a husband, settle down and have a family. thinking this far ahead stresses her out, especially the conventionalism of everything that awaited her in the outside world. after being apart of 99 for so long, jaekyung hadn’t even realized how much it’d become a vital part of herself and her dependency toward her goal of making it as a singer. she never admitted to being a natural, but her years of training certainly transformed her into a talented performer with a voice unparallel to the voice she’d walked in on her first day with. if she jumped ship now, it would eat away at her for the rest of her life.
so she makes a deal with herself: she’ll stay until she’s twenty-one, marking almost ten years. if there’s no news by then, she’s done. she can’t keep this up forever.
summer 2017. the text comes on an early scalding monday august morning after a long night of drinking. there’s a mild pounding in the back of her head that tells her to go back to bed because it’s only 5:52 in the morning and she doesn’t need to be in until eight. she recalls having a dream after falling back to sleep, but doesn’t remember it when she wakes up, though recalls it being pretty enticing.
she doesn’t realize this will mark her last day as a trainee. no out of the ordinary subway ride to the company building, though the air feels stiff — the same kind before a storm.
not long after she settles in, an executive politely pulls her from one of her sessions with a vocal coach to escort her to a large office upstairs, where she’s given the news she’s been waiting to hear all along.
her first instinct to the news is to cry. she sobs, loudly and hysterically in front of everyone around her, parallel to the loss of something dear to her. it’s all happy tears, but she cries because of the sacrifice and life of her teenage years she’d given up in exchange for this very moment. she hadn’t been home in all these years, and now she could finally give her parents that call they’d been expecting from her for so long. jeju felt like such a foreign place to her now that her accent was nearly non-existent when she spoke on the phone.
“ma,” her voice croaks immediately when she hears her mother pick up on the other side of the line. she had wanted to try to keep her composure for as long as she could, but it’s so much, too much that it brings her mother to tears over the receiver just as quickly. honey! she’s finally made it! her mother calls to her father in her island dialect, and soon she’s laughing, crying at the same time.
the almost decade long years of adolesence, puberty, struggle and hardships feel like a blink of an eye in the past, like she’d just been signed yesterday. thirteen years old felt out of reach, but still in sight. it was all worth it in the end.
