IVE’s Wonyoung and Yujin on facing public scrutiny: “It’s frightening and worrisome”

IVE members Wonyoung and Yujin have opened up about their experiences with receiving hate comments in a new interview.

Today (January 15), a new clip from Korean variety series Yoo Quiz On The Block was released, teasing its upcoming episode with guest stars Wonyoung and Yujin of IVE. In the preview, both singers share their personal experiences as two of K-pop’s biggest idols, which has resulted in immense scrutiny from the public.

“If I were an office worker, it would be as if I’m being assessed 24/7,” Yujin said in an interview segment for the show. “I’d want to read [comments] even at midnight or when I wake up in the morning. It was frightening and worrisome when I catch myself having unconscious thoughts about how the public is perceiving me.”

Wonyoung added to this sentiment, sharing that “there are a lot of things I end up hearing against my will” when it comes to malicious posts or comments about her. “I don’t even want to hear them, but people judge me from a few seconds of a video without knowing who I am as a person,” the singer said.

Despite the challenges that came with their fame as K-pop idols, Wonyoung also shared how she has since grown to overcome it. “There’s this saying, ‘there’s no pain without reward’. This too shall pass. That’s just how life is. I started thinking this way,” she added.

Elsewhere in the teaser, the pair also discussed the strict regulations they were subject to as trainees and how the extreme methods they’d used to bypass them, recalling instances where they’d try “lifting our hair or adjusting our posture” so the weighing scale would indicate a lower weight, admitting they were “methods with no scientific basis”.

IVE – completed by Gaeul, Rei, Liz and Leeseo – are gearing up for the release of their third mini-album ‘IVE Empathy’ on February 3. They dropped a new song titled ‘Rebel Heart’, a cut from the album, on January 13.