- Kim Ji-hun is a modern-day Pete Best — the man who was fired from The Beatles before they got famous.
- At 18, Kim lived and trained with six members of the K-pop group that would one day become
BTS .
The summer of 2011 burns bright in Kim Ji-hun's mind for many reasons.
Temperatures in Seoul that July went up to a sweltering 93 degrees. Suitcase in tow, a fresh-faced Kim found himself smack in the middle of the South Korean capital, carrying the hopes and dreams of a teenager who'd been dancing since the age of three. He had been encouraged to move to Seoul after a chance encounter and successful audition with a talent scout who spotted him while searching for local kids in his suburban hometown.
Still reeling from the dizzying sights of Seoul, he moved into a nondescript dormitory building on the south side of the city. It was a third-floor unit with blue walls and two tiny rooms. He still remembers the way there and how it looked and smelled — his first home away from home.
He was given the top bunk on the right side of a communal bedroom, sleeping above a dancer his age from Gwangju. Two other boys, a gangly 18-year-old and a reserved, soft-spoken 19-year-old — both budding rappers who lived and breathed hip-hop — inhabited the other set of bunk beds. Eventually, he met three other young teens who huddled up, sleeping together on the hard floor. And that was how they lived for a year, a bunch of kids from out of town, trying to make it together in the big city.
Eighteen-year-old Kim didn't know it then, but four years from that summer night, the members of BTS, newly-anointed K-pop princes, would release a song called "Moving On," about this same apartment with blue walls in Nonhyeon-dong.
In a twist of fate beyond his imagination — the other six boys who slept in that room would go on to break multiple album sales records, sell out stadiums from Seoul to Los Angeles, and earn several Grammy awards. They would also speak at the UN as South Korea's special envoys, with diplomatic passports to boot.
Perhaps most incredibly, they've become a driving force of Korea's economy, adding an estimated $5 billion to the South Korean economy every year and breaking annual revenue records for their company, Hybe, which raked in just over a billion bucks in 2021.
Close to 11 years after that summer, Kim, now 28, looks back with fondness and a slight twinge of regret, on the days when he came so close to fame and was just one step away from mega-stardom.
Growing up with BTS
Before South Korean septet BTS became the smash-hit singers they're known as today, they were just a group of kids practicing in a basement in Seoul. Among them was Kim, a dancer hoping to make it into the band's final line-up.
Kim came from Wonju, a city in Gangwon province, South Korea. Having started dancing at the age of three, he became a prime candidate for K-pop recruiters who ventured out of the capital's confines and scoured provincial areas looking for diamonds in the rough.
He passed his trainee audition on his first try and signed on to what was then called BigHit
So began an intensive process where he spent most of his waking hours in the practice room, learning how to rap, sing, and dance with a dozen other trainees.
Some of the other boys got to go to piano classes. But Kim was sent to dance and vocal sessions that could sometimes last as long as 12 hours a day and run into the wee hours of the morning.
"I'd wake up, go to class, and then we'd be in practice. But I never once wanted to quit, give up, or go home. I was genuinely happy, no matter how hard it got, because I loved to dance, and I enjoyed the training," he added. "Of course, it was tough and painful. But we loved it."
He still recalls those days with great fondness, describing how there was, despite their long hours practicing, time to do things that teenagers did, like going out to grab some fried chicken together or chatting about their hopes for the future.
"RM and J-Hope were the same age that I was, so we were really close. As for Suga, he's a quintessential Gyeongsangdo-man," Kim said, referring to the Korean stereotype of a tough man of few words from the southern Gyeongsang region of South Korea. "He never spoke much, but he showed his care through actions."
And then there were the pranksters — V, Jungkook, and Jimin.
"Jungkook and V were always so mischievous," Kim said. "And Jimin was very kind and particularly hardworking."
Jin — the oldest member of BTS, Kim said, had a home in Seoul and only moved into the dormitory closer to BTS' debut in June 2013, after Kim moved out.
The K-pop trainee process is a grueling one, with some female trainees complaining about extreme diets and weekly public weigh-ins where everyone is required to be under 47kg (103 pounds), regardless of their height or age. But when asked about the diets, Kim says they never had to starve.
"Thankfully, the diets weren't that big a deal for the BTS trainees. We were dancing all the time and burning calories, so staying thin was not an issue," Kim said.
The BTS that could have been
"Initially, BTS was meant to be a big group with quite a few members, almost like 2PM and 2AM," Kim said, referring to two boy groups that were famous in the early 2010s and were initially marketed as an 11-member supergroup called One Day. "There was meant to be a ballad group of five, which V (Kim Taehyung) and I were in. The others (RM, Suga, JHope, and Jungkook) were in the hip hop group."
But slowly, BigHit began whittling down the number of trainees in a seemingly random manner, from 30 to 20, and eventually seven people — who debuted as the final lineup of BTS in June 2013. After more than a year of eating, sleeping, and training with the other BTS members, Kim was cut.
"(Getting fired) happened pretty suddenly for me. One day, I got a call to come to the company. There, a company representative just told me — alright, Ji-hun, we won't be walking on the same path with you anymore," he said.
He was given one week to move out of the dormitory and back to Wonju.
"I was just not at that level yet, skill-wise," Kim told Insider. "I wasn't good enough."
He still remembers the day he was informed of his firing.
"RM and J-Hope were shocked. They didn't know it was going to happen and kept asking why I had to leave. V and Jungkook cried, and Jimin sat there silently," he said. "And Suga, in particular, he was very angry. I remember him being in a rage, saying: 'There are many people who are a lot worse than you. Why you?'"
Kim: "I still remember them as the teenagers I met back then."
Kim has spent the last ten years living life as a "regular" person. He has worked part-time jobs, served in the military, and graduated from college with a psychology degree, while watching his friends ascend to the top echelons of fame.
He currently lives in his family home in Wonju, working as a public servant in a local government office while dabbling in YouTube content creation. He hasn't spoken to the members of BTS since the last time he saw them three months before their 2013 debut — at one last dinner over fried chicken, back at their old dormitory in Nonhyeon-dong.
"I asked them if they were really going to debut under the name 'Bangtan Sonyeondan,' (BTS's Korean name) since they'd considered other English names in the style of BLOCKB or other bands," Kim said. "I remember asking if there was seriously no better alternative since the name was kinda weird. But now, there isn't a person in South Korea who doesn't know who Bangtan Sonyeondan is."
It still throws Kim for a loop to see BTS billboards all over the city.
"It's a little weird to see their faces wherever I go and hear their songs everywhere," Kim said. "But though they're famous celebrities, I still remember them as the teenagers I met back then."
He wishes them all the best but says that even if given the opportunity, he'd like to wait "three more years" before meeting them again.
"I haven't achieved the success I want to achieve yet," he told Insider. "I'd like to make it further in life before seeing them once more."
And despite it all, Kim has few regrets — joking that he regrets not buying bitcoin more than getting cut from the group.
"Do I regret becoming a BigHit trainee? Not at all," he said. "If I could, I would do it all again."