By Susan Egbert

Blackpink debuted in Aug. 2016 and took over the Korean market in a matter of days. This girl group is composed of Jennie, Lisa, Jisoo and Rose from YG entertainment (one of the biggest companies in the K-pop industry). Blackpink has been able to accomplish a lot despite being “rookies”. Blackpink achieved their first win on music shows only 14 days after their debut and became the first K-pop group to perform at Coachella Music Festival.  

This documentary does not start from their debut, rather highlight the girl’s backgrounds and how their training brought them to be such a powerful group. After the brief introduction, the documentary starts on each of the group and how they got into YG entertainment. Jennie is a Korean that was mostly raised abroad—mostly New Zealand—and knew that she wanted to become a singer after realizing her disinvestment in university.  

Jennie is fluent in both English and Korean and has been training at YG the longest out of the group (6 years). Lisa is from Thailand and grew up taking dance lessons and actively participating in dance competitions. She was auditioning at YG after someone asked her what she felt about becoming a singer. Lisa is especially fluent in Thai, English, and Korean—after she came to Korea and took classes—and was the second longest trainee in the group. 

Jisoo is the eldest in the group and is the only true Korean in the group. Jisoo initially auditioned for YG to do acting but they saw a better potential for her to become a singer. Although Jisoo does not know how to speak English that well, she is learning from the other girls. Lastly, Rose was born in New Zealand but moved to Australia at eight-years-old and considers herself as an Australian.  Rose’s story is unique, her father was the one to push her to go to auditions. She attended the YG auditions in Australia and got in with only 4 years of training.

The girls then talked about their training life. Training to be in a K-pop group is not easy in Korea as trainees have to deal with about 14 hour per day training. Training days differed depending on the positions that trainees will suit best in the group. For example, if someone is more inclined in dancing, those skills will be “perfected” while they are also taking classes to at least know how to sing/rap. In addition to this, the trainees are competing with each other to ensure that they can stay in the company. After they talked about their journey during their training days, the documentary then follows the story that we know today. They highlighted how they got into the American market and got to perform at Coachella.

What I really liked about this documentary is how Blackpink and their producers do not hold the same thought of K-pop as what America has brought K-pop to be. I did not know myself that the girls are actually pursuing to become more of an “artist” image. This helps them separate themselves from other K-pop groups who are producing songs on a more frequent basis. These girls have broken standards and will be continuing doing so through their careers.

You can follow Susan on Twitter @sbegbert94.