On my way to stardom

4. Completely failing

I'm taken to a room full of mirrors, which I supposed is used normally as a dance room. But there's a lot of people sitting at different tables that are set up temporarily. Are they all waiting for me?

'You come here,' a lady tells me. I can't even tell if it's because they have broken English, or they're just rude in general, a 'please' wouldn't hurt, right?

I'm taken to a scale so they can take my height and weight. Then my measurements. As the lady is scribbling down my records, Mr Park keeps shaking his head. Is anything wrong with me?

Then I'm escorted over to a middle-aged guy, who's wearing a SnapBack and some sporty clothes. This time, I'm greeted with an 'annyheonghaseyo', which I learned from the internet means hello.

' Follow me,' he says, and then starts dancing. I have no idea what I'm meant to be doing. Should I imitate his dance moves? Some Kpop song is now starting to play, the beat of snare drums is really strong in the intro.

Holy shit, it's so much harder than I think. His dance moves are swift and smooth, while I can barely coordinate my arms and legs. The only lyrics that I understood from the song is 'we are bulletproof!' But the rest of the lyrics is still a myth to me. How does he make his whole body tremble in such a cool way? Gosh, I've got so much to learn.

After the song, I find myself already sweating, the choreography is so tight! There's a new dance move every second, and somehow the whole thing just seems to be so connected. Wow, it's actually pretty cool.

The high from dancing is killed when I look at the choreographer, who is also scribbling on a form, he's so unfazed, without any facial expression. However, I already know what the results are from Mr Park's disapproving face. Oh well, moving on to the next station!

This one is a Korean language test, which I have completely failed again. The words are literally just made up of circles, there's no way I can learn it!

Then I've got a dermatologist staring at my face and taking pictures of every single one of my pores. I have never felt that exposed in my whole life, even though I am fully clothed. I don't have any breakouts right now, why is there still so many things for her to write down on my report? Jeez.

Finally! After I don't know how many hours, I'm finally at the last station. Oh, and it's singing, great.

The girl responsible for this station hands me a list of songs, to which I have no idea what they are. The titles are all in Korean, so I have no idea which artist the songs are from. Then there's the bloody song list, none of the songs that I've heard of. There's butterfly, run, N.O. and so on. 'Sorry, do I get to listen to these songs first?' I ask the girl, I think she's at most a few years older than me.

But she doesn't look like she understands English, 'choose 4.' She raises four fingers.

'Listen?' I point at my ears, hoping that the sign language is useful. She widens her eyes and asks, 'you don't know?' She's now pointing at the track list.

I shake my head, so she says,' ok, choose first.'

Oh well, if I were to fail, I'm gonna make it the best failure ever. I have chosen the most ridiculous song titles on the list, which are 'We are bulletproof, pt 2', 'danger', 'boyz with fun', and 'attack on bangtan.' What the fuck does bangtan even mean? And, what do you mean by you're bulletproof? Plus, can they even spell the word 'boys?'

I'm given a headset plugged into an iPad. It says that the first song is 'We are bulletproof, pt 2.' Oh wait, that's a BTS song, of course.

Oh! That's the song the choreographer just danced to! Am I being tested on my knowledge on BTS this whole time?