YG Entertainment and its artists always manage to stand out amid the highly competitive entertainment industry.
In the highly saturated Kpop industry, YG Entertainment has always been an anomaly with its own colors. YG artists, for example, have vibes that resemble no one else. However, the most peculiar thing about YG would be its special artist management procedures and regulations.
On “Radio Star”, WINNER’s Mino and Jinwoo once drew attention after sharing that driving was completely banned, and even buying cars was out of the question. According to BLACKPINK’s Rosé, this was to prevent artists from driving secretly without permission from the company, and if they wanted to get a driver’s license, they’d also need to discuss things through with the company.
2NE1’s Sandara Park, also known as Dara, actually drives her car quite a lot in personal vlogs. However, this is because Dara has been active in the industry for a long time, and can take responsibility for her own actions. Meanwhile, Jeon Somi is already purchasing an expensive car and driving it around at the age of 20, but this may be due to her being under YG’s subsidiary The Black Label, and not YG itself.
YG has become much stricter on its later generations. Alongside safety issues, YG wants to prevent its artists from running around freely and causing unexpected problems.
Also on “Radio Star”, iKON’s Bobby disclosed another super harsh regulation: his group were to report to YG even if they were doing mundane tasks like going to the convenience store. In addition, iKON was banned from greeting and getting close with BLACKPINK.
“We couldn’t even see BLACKPINK nowadays. The company doesn’t allow us to meet. When I was a trainee, I could only look at them, thought they were cute, and then moved on”, said Bobby in 2018. It was not until recently that BLACKPINK and iKON were allowed to interact, and fans could only hope that they would get to see “YG family” more often.
Different from iKON, WINNER and BIGBANG were allowed to see YG’s sole girlgroup much more often. Jennie and Mino, for instance, shared a lot of their moments together on SNS.
While it is pretty reasonable of YG to separate iKON and BLACKPINK and prevent possible dating scandals, it still seems pretty odd that the ban doesn’t apply to other YG male idols.
