Former fromis_9 member Roh Ji-sun has offered a rare and deeply personal account of her 15 years in the entertainment industry, days after revealing that she once had to rely on a credit card loan to cover basic living expenses after ending her activities with the K-pop girl group.
On Oct. 11, Roh shared a thumbnail from her appearance on Min Sae-rom’s YouTube channel on her personal social media account, along with a lengthy message reflecting on the years she spent as an idol.
“I tried to fit the 15 years from age 14 to 29 into just over 20 minutes,” Roh said. “It wasn’t enough time to tell every story, but there were also things I couldn’t tell.”
“There were moments when I was an adult and moments when I wasn’t. There were people I was grateful for and things that were difficult to understand,” she said.
Roh also reflected on how years in the idol industry changed her relationship with beauty and appearance, tied to the intense visual expectations placed on K-pop stars.
“I like pretty things. I like dressing myself up and choosing what to wear, and I like seeing and creating beautiful things. I always will,” she said. “But I learned that wanting to look beautiful because I like it and having to exist in a way that looks good to someone else are different things. It took me quite a long time to understand that difference.”
Roh said she has also begun reconsidering things she once accepted as natural and is still searching for her own answers.
“This will probably be the first and last time I talk at such length about the years that have passed,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to convince anyone or settle accounts with the past. But as my story grew longer, I wanted to leave it behind at least once in my own voice.”
Her post followed the release of an episode of Min Sae-rom’s Open Studio earlier that day, in which Roh spoke candidly about the financial difficulties she faced after wrapping up her fromis_9 activities.
Roh said she did not want to continue relying on her parents or older brother, so she looked into taking out a loan. But with no job or income at the time, she found herself unable to qualify for one.
She eventually turned to a credit card loan to pay for immediate living expenses, borrowing 3 million won ($2,100) without having the luxury of comparing interest rates.
“I thought I could live on it for three or four months,” she said.
Roh said it ultimately took her about a year to repay the entire amount.
The disclosure offered an unusually stark glimpse into the financial uncertainty that can follow an idol career.
Roh also addressed one of the most controversial chapters of her career: the vote-rigging scandal surrounding “Idol School,” the 2017 Mnet audition program that created fromis_9.
Roh finished first on the show and said she had believed that the result was achieved through her own efforts. But when allegations of manipulation later emerged, she said the controversy left her deeply confused and even shook her confidence in whether she deserved the position she occupied.
She said speaking publicly about her own feelings was difficult because there were contestants who had suffered direct harm from the manipulation. Roh worried that putting her own confusion first could inflict further pain on them.
“The people who did something wrong are separate, but whatever I say, the name of a contestant who was harmed and my name end up appearing together in articles,” Roh said, explaining why she had largely refrained from discussing the controversy.
She said she feared that explaining her position could once again draw unwanted attention to those who had already been hurt by the scandal.
Roh concluded her activities with fromis_9 after her exclusive contract with Pledis Entertainment ended in late 2024.
This article from Xportsnews was adapted by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.
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