YG Treasure Box, Episode 5: Things get kind of dark.

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(Written March 7, 2025)

Welcome back to this bewildering show.  Jeongwoo has been kicked out of Treasure 7.  It appears more carnage is on the way.  Let’s get to it.

Time to find out who the next challenger will be.  BlackPink appears again on the screen of the Ice Castle Stage and announces it will be … Choi Hyun Suk!  Our future Treasure Style King!  I guess the aegyo thing he did at the talent show really won BlackPink over.

Hyun Suk strolls out onto the stage, ready for battle.  (please don’t pick Haruto please don’t pick Haruto) He tells the announcer his specialty is rap and dance.  (please don’t pick Haruto)  He picks Junghwan.  DAMMIT.  I didn’t mean for him to battle another Treasure guy!  Ha Yoon Bin was RIGHT THERE (still looking as confused as ever, I might add).  I should have been more specific.

Junghwan’s reaction

 

So now Hyun Suk and Junghwan will have a dance battle.  The rest of the trainees backstage are betting on Hyun Suk over the underdog Junghwan.  I love both Treasure guys, but I’m pulling for Hyun Suk, the only guy I’ve ever seen wear a vintage cardigan over a skater/punk outfit and totally make it work.  He was born to be seen.

We get a brief flashback in which Hyun Suk introduces himself as a 3-year trainee.  We see clips of his audition for YG and his practice sessions over the years.  He gets assigned to Team A and earns the respect of his fellow trainees.  He then hits a series of poor reviews and bad feedback, including not making it onto the Treasure 7 Team.  After this flashback, it’s going to be a total bummer if he loses this battle.

Speaking of which, it’s showtime.  The song is “Lie” by BTS.

They’re both spellbinding.  It’s a passionate performance, and they’re both amazing.  I can’t choose a winner.  They finish to cheers and enthusiastic applause, but the general consensus among the trainees is that Hyun Suk performed better. 

The audience “votes” (don’t get me started on that again), and now it’s time for Junghwan to choose the gold or silver card.  He chooses the silver card, which once again turns out to be CEO Yang’s card.

Our CEO picks up the mic, and then he surprises me.  Before he gives his opinion, he wants to see the results of the audience vote.  The gold card flips to show that the audience voted for Hyun Suk.  So if the CEO’s vote is different, then Junghwan picked the right card.  This is no way to put a K-pop group together, but we’re only fifteen minutes into this episode, so I’ll refrain from launching into that rant again.

The announcer tells us the audience vote is “meaningless,” which I’m sure makes the employees feel great.  He asks CEO Yang for his vote, and the CEO chooses Junghwan.  The audience and the trainees backstage do not look happy.  I can’t argue with CEO Yang because I thought both trainees were great, but after seeing that flashback of Hyun Suk, only to see him lose again, I’m gutted.

Just as I’m hoping Hyun Suk is able to find some consolation in the fact that the audience was on his side, we see him breaking down in tears in a confessional afterwards.  “I want to do better, but I can’t,” he says, and I just want to give him all the hugs.  God, what these trainees go through.

Okay, now for the next heartbreak.  BlackPink appears on the screens again to choose the next challenger.   It’s future CIX member Kim Seung Hun.  Our Treasure 7 vocalists are extremely nervous, because he’s one of the best singers in the group.

Seung Hun takes the stage.  He challenges Junkyu.  I now have an entire kennel of dogs in this fight.  Come on, Junkyu!

The song will be “Beautiful” by Crush.  When we see Seung Hun in a practice room, looking at how Junkyu has arranged the song, and he sees that Junkyu has given himself 20 lines, while the challenger only gets 12 lines.  Atta boy, Junkyu!  If this show is gonna use gimmicks, then you fight back dirty!

But wait.  We go back to the battle stage, and Seung Hun is changing his mind.  What?  We just saw flashbacks of him rehearsing “Beautiful.”  This show has the worst use of flashbacks I have seen on any of the shows I’ve recapped.

Okay, so now Seung Hun chooses to battle Mashiho.  

We’re getting another flashb – NO.  NO MORE FLASHBACKS.  I am not getting invested in another flashback just to come back and find out that Seung Hun has changed his mind again and wants to challenge the announcer to a yodeling battle.  Let’s keep moving forward.

Here we go.  Seung Hun vs. Mashiho.  The song is “D” by Dean.  The stage looks incredible.  Let’s goooo!

I love this.  I love the song, the set design, the singing.  I love all of it.  They both deserve to win.  The stage crew deserves a raise and all the awards.  This performance is sheer K-pop heaven.  Put them both in Treasure.  I don’t care.  They both deserve it.

The audience is enchanted.  The trainees backstage can’t pick a clear winner.  Honestly, if I had to vote, I’d just flip a coin.

The voting ends, and Mashiho has to choose the silver or gold card.  Again, just flip a coin.  He chooses the gold card.  Given the odds, since CEO Yang has been the silver card the past two times, he could be the gold card now.  But Mashiho’s betting on that.  He wants to put his fate in the hands of the CEO.

He’s right.  The gold card is the CEO card.  CEO Yang cuts right to the chase.  He chooses Mashiho.  It’s another punch to the gut for Seung Hun.  The CEO says that Seung Hun overdid his performance.  But we see that the audience vote went for Seung Hun, so the CEO can go pound sand. 

I feel so sad when Seung Hun cries onstage and says he just wanted to be acknowledged by CEO Yang.

This is a gut punch.  I realize that all of the trainees have been saying the same thing all through this series – they just want one word of approval from CEO Yang.  It’s like a group of boys trying desperately to win approval from their father.  They don’t care what the audience thinks.  They just want to be acknowledged by the father figure who really seems to enjoy being in this position of power.  I feel incredibly sad, especially since a lot of these kids are living away from their actual parents.  Especially the trainees from other countries.

Why does the business of K-pop have to suck so much?

Seung Hun is still crying onstage.  The announcer puts his arm around him, but the only one Seung Hun wants reassurance from is the CEO, who is sitting RIGHT THERE in front of the stage.  The trainees backstage are fighting back tears because they know exactly how he feels.  But CEO Yang says nothing.  Not one single word, at least not on camera.  Still crying, Seung Hun turns around and leaves the stage.

When I started recapping this series, one of Treasure’s fans on Tumblr, aplateoflasagna, wrote in my comments section that the reason CEO Yang went to prison is because he was threatening a witness to prevent that person from going to the police with evidence that a member of iKON had done drugs.  So even when CEO Yang does do the fatherly thing of trying to protect one of his kids, he goes about it all wrong.

Okay.  I have to shake this off, or I won’t be able to finish this episode.

Two more battle left.  And the next challenger is … Yoshi!  

We’re moving forward pretty quickly now.  Yoshi chooses to battle Ha Yoon Bin the Perpetually Confused.  That oughta wake him up.  But now I’m the one who’s confused because we are RACING through this.  We get just a few seconds of a performance that looks and sounds fun, but then we cut to CEO Yang making his decision.  I only get to hear Yoshi rap for a couple of seconds.  Then we learn that Ha Yoon Bin wins the battle.  We’re done.  The whole segment took ten seconds.  My head is spinning.

Yoshi’s performance.  Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

 

Yoshi is now sobbing backstage while the other trainees try to comfort him, and he doesn’t even know yet that he’s pretty much been edited out of the show.  What the hell is happening?  Why didn’t we get to see this?

Now the fifth challenger is about to be announced.  But first, the show wants to jump to a flashback of three days before this competition.  What?  No.  It’s just one of the trainees rehearsing.  I don’t care.  I fast-forward through it.  This is really frustrating. 

The next challenger is Wang Jyun Hao, the Taiwanese trainee.  He chooses to battle Bang Yedam.  We’re doing to get to hear them do the Justin Bieber song “Love Yourself.”

We get another flashback, but I skip through it because I don’t care.  This is valuable time we could have spent watching Yoshi’s performance. 

We return to the battle.  Yedam vs. Jyun Hao.  We get yet another flashback.  Nothing important happens in it.  Back to the battle!

They both bring attitude to this, and for the most part, they both sound like native English speakers.  They pour their expression into the great lines like “My mama don’t like you, and she likes everyone.”  Man, this is a great song.

In fact, I think that’s the problem here.  Instead of focusing on the performances, all I can focus on is what a great song this is.  It’s so specific and personal, it’s easy to believe Bieber wrote it himself (which he didn’t).  I think Yedam made a mistake when he chose a song that has the potential to overshadow the singer. 

Everyone does the voting thing.  Yedam chooses the gold card.  It’s CEO Yang’s card.  It’s been the CEO’s card every single time.  The CEO chooses Yedam. 

Looking at this series so far, I feel like Yedam is the favorite son, and the father figure is pushing him through to the end.  Yedam definitely has the talent and deserves the success, but after everything I’ve seen this episode, I see parental favoritism at work here, and I know it must be affecting the other trainees.  Those of us with siblings know that our parents must have a favorite, and we pretty much know which one it is, but our parents are supposed to deny it.  CEO Yang isn’t denying anything, and he’s not denying it in front of all the other trainees.

With that, our battles are over.  The sixteen trainees backstage who didn’t get to challenge are frustrated.  They’ve lost another chance to be really seen.  They even envy the challengers who failed.  I wonder when Yoshi will find out that his challenge didn’t even get seen.

But apparently the challenges will continue.  The announcer tells us there’s still a chance to beat the two Treasure 7 members who weren’t challenged – Haruto and Junkyu.

Haruto and Junkyu, who thought they were getting off scot-free.

 

And the episode ends.

Honestly, I’m amazed anyone puts themselves through the K-pop trainee program, but it’s not like we Americans don’t have the same mentality.  We also chase fame and buy lottery tickets, even though the odds of success are slim to none.  It’s just that after seeing this episode, I can’t help thinking of the psychological damage –

No.  No no no.  Frosting time.

I seriously want to buy a can of frosting right now and eat it by scooping it right out of the can with my fingers.

What a strange, ugly business K-pop is.  See you for more of it next episode.

Episode 6:  Now things get kind of awful.

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