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(Written May 13, 2024)
It’s 6am, and our trainees are doing jumping jacks in front of the house. A soldier tells them that today they will do battle with themselves. Today is their “human’s limit.” He then yells a bunch of words at them. Cooperation! Unity! Sacrifice! Friendship! I wish he had thrown another random noun in there just to see if they were paying attention. Cooperation! Unity! Tuna fish! Sacrifice!
The trainees jog to the beach for what the show tells us is “Marine Training.” We learn that it’s -8 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). They change into their own camo uniforms. Suddenly, for the first time in this series, we’re getting confessionals. The trainees tell us how putting on the uniforms make this suddenly very real, and they’re nervous.
After a warm-up of jumping jacks, the soldier orders them to do something called banpodaegyo. The only thing I can find online is that it’s the name of a famous bridge in Seoul. The trainees aren’t sure about this either, telling us in confessionals they thought it had something to do with choreography.
Turns out it’s an exercise
where you get on all fours and hook your legs over the shoulders of the person
behind you on all fours, so you are all literally forming a bridge. They have to stay locked in that position to
keep the bridge up. If anyone falls, the
whole bridge collapses.
Next up is a mission in cruelty called Sand Training. The trainees move to the mud flats, which are covered by about two inches of water. They have to lie flat and roll around. It’s below freezing, the wind is blowing so hard that it’s battering the microphones and making it hard to hear, and now their uniforms are soaked. In the confessionals, which are hard to get used to seeing six episodes in, the trainees tell us they feel like they’re going to die.
The
trainees keep rolling in the mud. They’re
in agony. Finally, they get to stand,
mud dripping from their clothes. They’re
given oars, which they have to prop up on one end, and then they jump to the
position of the person next to them while keeping the oars upright. It’s way harder than it sounds. Watching this, I think it would be a fun
thing to do with a group of friends, indoors in dry clothes, around noon, after
we’ve slept in and started our day by not rolling around in freezing cold
mud.
They finally get the hang of it, and they do some other team exercises that all look like fun if they were being done anywhere else instead of in mud. When they finally complete these missions, the soldier lets them yell for five seconds to release their frustration. Surprisingly, that doesn’t seem to help, as one of them suddenly faints. They say it’s Kwon. Wait, is that JoKwon? Wasn’t he eliminated in the last episode? What is he doing here? I know he eventually gets to debut with 2am, but we never saw him get brought back. Did he sneak back in?
The group resuscitates Kwon, and then they all go back to the house to defrost. After they take hot showers and change clothes, it’s back to the beach for more Marine Training.
They put on life vests and are
given two rubber rafts. One trainee sits
in each raft as the others carry the rafts over their heads toward the water
line. The subtitles aren’t covering
everything that’s being said. Each time
someone makes a
mistake, and I don’t even know what the mistakes are, the trainees have to
kneel while still holding the boats over their heads and keep moving forward on
their knees. Then they crawl with the
boats on their backs.
When they finally make it to the ocean, they paddle out into the waves and out towards the horizon. If they can just make it to international waters, they can apply for asylum somewhere. But no, they paddle out to a marker and then raise their oars and triumphantly cheer. They’ve passed all the Marine Training missions.
Now something happens that’s going to take me on a bit of a tangent. We cut to the house a few hours later, once the trainees have defrosted again. Du-Joon (that’s how they’re spelling his name in this episode) is heading out. Turns out that fellow trainee Chan-Sung did not participate in the training today because he’s a student and had to spend the day taking the college entrance exam. Du-Joon is riding along in the car to pick him up.
Okay. I have the same question I did back in the No Mercy recaps. When do trainees have time to study for this? I Googled this exam. According to articles I found on the BBC Online and AsiaSociety.org, Korea’s college entrance exam, called Suneung, is one of the hardest exams in the world. It’s an eight-hour exam in multiple subjects. And the stakes are beyond high. How you do on this exam not only determines if you’ll get into the college you want, but it also affects what jobs you can get after school and even future relationships. This is literally an exam that determines your fate.
Korean
students start preparing for this exam as early as kindergarten. By the time they’re in high school, they are
doing nothing but studying for this exam up to ten hours per day. The professors who write the exam content do
so in a secret remote location in the mountains of Korea, with their cell
phones and all other forms of communication taken away so they can’t leak exam
questions.
Honestly, the amount of preparation Korean students go through and the impact it has on their lives is unbelievable. The entire country shuts down on the day of this exam. Airports actually cancel flights so the sound of planes won’t distract the students. Students who are running late can get police escorts.
We have students in the US suffering from anxiety over the SATs. The Suneung makes the SATs look like a BuzzFeed quiz. If I were a Korean student, I would probably have a complete nervous breakdown.
After reading about all this, I had even more questions. If these trainees are dedicating themselves to making it as a K-pop idol, why should they take this exam? Yes, I know the odds are against them ever getting to debut, and they should have a backup plan, but what kind of backup plan is it if they don’t have the ten hours a day to study?
Whatever the logic, Chan-Sung has missed the Marine Training so he could take this exam. Du-Joon meets him at the dock. When Chan-Sung asks what the other trainees did that day, Du-Joon can only point to the beach. It may take years of therapy before he can talk about it.
Chan-Sung is smart and brings
ice cream to the other trainees as an apology for missing the most intense day
of training yet. Of course, that’s not
going to make up for it. If I were the
other trainees, I’d make him sleep outside on the mud flats.
We move on to 6am the next day. A soldier comes in to wake up the boys. (The subtitles keep referring to them as the “hot blooded boys,” which makes me feel like I’m watching porn.) The trainees are so sore from the Marine Training, they weren’t able to get much sleep. They are groggy and sluggish during the morning run. Back at the house, they worry about what kind of training they will get today.
They gather in the main room
and sit on the floor. A soldier tells
them to close their eyes and meditate.
While they are doing this, we cut to outside, where two women are approaching. They are Jessica and her assistant, and they
are here to teach yoga.
Some people might say Chan-Sung timed his day off perfectly. However, as a generally anxious person who can’t sit still for two minutes, I disagree. I hate yoga and would rather be doing Marine Training in Antarctica.
Nothing Jessica says is translated, which is frustrating. However, I’m learning a lot from the trainees’ facial expressions. Both women are very attractive, and the guys are blushing and grinning like they’ve never seen a woman before.
I have seen this a LOT in these reality shows. With the exception of Wonho from No Mercy, these boys who are training to be K-pop sex symbols turn into quivering buffoons when they see a pretty girl. They spend so many years training in dorms with other guys that when they see an actual woman, they may as well be looking at a space alien. They have no idea what to do or where to look. All they can do is sheepishly say things that translate into English as basically “girl pretty heh heh.”
I would like to propose a new survival reality show, hosted by Wonho. It will be called Femme Factor. Male trainees will attempt missions that include:
- Looking at a pretty girl without drooling.
- Saying hello to a pretty girl without drooling.
- Having a basic conversation with a pretty girl without drooling. Bonus points for eye contact.
Yes, we will have the usual dance, vocal, and rap missions, but the coaches will all be attractive women. The trainees who complete these missions without melting into babbling puddles of cold sweat get to debut.
Anyway, back to our room of stammering boys. They get out their yoga mats, and to be fair, once the training begins, they are focused. They are way better at concentrating and holding poses than I could ever be. God, I hate yoga.
They make
it through the class, and I am impressed.
In the confessionals, they talk about how hard the yoga was and how hot
the teachers were. Wonho, I’m serious. Call me, and let’s pitch this show.
Jessica ends the class with a
guided meditation about finding peace and joy in the things you love to
do. That’s a really nice way to end this
episode. The guys look blissed out, or
maybe they’ve just fallen asleep. Either
way, let’s leave them with the few moments of peace they can get on this
show. See you next episode.
Episode 7: A challenge scarier than death …
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