Minami's Road to RESCENE: An Audition Show and a Deadline

In April 2026 the South Korean news agency News1 published a two-part interview with Minami of the group RESCENE. It ran in a series called ‘물 건너온 아이돌’ — idols who came from across the water — which profiles foreign members who moved to Korea in order to debut; 안태현 reported it. The timing matters: it came before ‘Pretty Girl’ and before the character she had been playing on camera turned into a phrase people repeated. What the two instalments contain is not a viral moment but a route — a fourteen-year-old arriving in 2021, a promise to her parents with a date attached, an audition programme she was eliminated from the same year, a flight home, a return and a debut at 19.

A promise made at 14

Minami told News1 she came to Korea in 2021, at the age of 14. Before she left she gave her parents a limit: ‘만으로 18살까지 데뷔를 못하면 포기하고 돌아오겠다’ — that if she had not debuted by the age of 18, she would give up and come home.

What drew her was a specific era of Korean pop. ‘I really liked third-generation idols, like BTS sunbaenim and TWICE sunbaenim,’ she said. Sunbaenim is the Korean honorific for someone senior in your field; ‘third generation’ is the industry’s shorthand for the wave of groups that debuted in the mid-2010s and carried K-pop to a global audience. She is the only foreign member of the five-member group RESCENE.

What a trainee period actually is

A reader outside Korea usually meets a K-pop group at its debut. The years before that are the trainee period: an agency signs a young performer, houses and schools them and runs daily lessons in vocals, dance and — for a member who has moved from abroad — Korean. There is no fixed length and no guarantee at the end of it. A trainee can spend years in the system and never be placed in a group.

For a member arriving from another country, that period carries an extra job. Minami told News1 she picked up Korean through conversation with friends during her trainee years rather than through formal study. That is the part of a foreign member’s route that rarely shows up in a debut announcement: before the choreography and the camera work, there is a language to be able to rehearse in.

My Teenage Girl, and the flight home

In the same year she arrived, 2021, Minami took part in MBC’s audition programme ‘방과후 설렘’, broadcast internationally as My Teenage Girl. Programmes of this kind — a broadcaster gathers trainees from many agencies, puts them through rounds of performances and eliminations, then forms a group from those left standing — have been one of the standard doors into a Korean debut for more than a decade. They are also a public one: elimination happens on air.

Minami was eliminated from the programme and returned to Japan. She then came back to Korea. Those two sentences are the middle of the story, and they are the part the catchphrase does not contain.

Debut day: 26 March 2024

Minami debuted with RESCENE on 26 March 2024, at 19 — a year past the age she had named to her parents. The group’s official YouTube channel published the ‘UhUh’ music video the same day. When the YouTube Data API was read on 27 August 2026, that upload had 15,554,593 views.

In March 2026 RESCENE marked their second debut anniversary. The News1 interview appeared the following month.

Her own account of the gyaru concept

Part two of the News1 interview is Minami’s version of how the concept that made her widely recognised began. She and her groupmate Woni were looking for something entertaining to make for Woni’s personal channel, she said, when the head of their agency asked whether she could do gyaru — a Japanese street-fashion and makeup style. Her answer was one line: ‘원이 언니랑 개인 채널에서 재밌는 거를 할 수 있는 게 없을까 하다가 대표님이 “갸루를 할 수 있겠냐”고 해서 “할 수 있죠”라고 했어요.’

She also described second thoughts as it grew: ‘It ended up being done so seriously that I wondered whether this was right, but the response around me was clear, so I think it’s fine.’ News1’s headline records that she had not expected the concept to work and thanked people for the attention: ‘갸루 콘셉트, 잘 될 줄 몰라…관심 감사해.’ She named viewer comments she found funny, among them ‘갸루 귀신이 빠져나간다’ and ‘갑자기 너무 한국인인데’.

The on-camera timeline of that character — from the 6 March 2026 upload to the summer — is a separate story, told in Minami’s Gyaru Character: How a Three-Month Plan Played Out.

After the interview: ‘Pretty Girl’ and the catchphrase

Star News dated the change in RESCENE’s fortunes to 6 March 2026, when a video titled ‘갸루 출신 일본인에게 일본어 배우기’ — learning Japanese from a Japanese person with a gyaru background — was posted on Woni’s personal YouTube channel rather than RESCENE’s official one. In the 20 March episode, Woni said Minami would be scolded by residents of Geoje, a city on South Korea’s southern coast, if she turned up there in gyaru makeup; Minami answered ‘거제, 야호~!’. Star News described that line as a leading catchphrase of 2026.

In July 2026, again to Star News, Minami addressed the reading that she was retiring the character. Many people had taken her words that way, she said, and that was an overstatement: she liked being recognised through the character, but wanted to show her real self as well, and could play it again if the chance came. Star News summarised her position as wanting to show her appeal as a singer first, through ‘Pretty Girl’.

Key takeaways

• News1’s series ‘물 건너온 아이돌’ profiles foreign members who moved to Korea to debut; its two-part Minami instalment ran on 26 April 2026, reported by 안태현.
• Minami came to Korea in 2021 at 14, telling her parents she would give up and go home if she had not debuted by 18.
• She took part in MBC’s audition programme ‘방과후 설렘’ (My Teenage Girl) that same year, was eliminated, returned to Japan and came back.
• She debuted with RESCENE on 26 March 2024 at 19; the group’s ‘UhUh’ music video went up on its official channel that day and had 15,554,593 views when read on 27 August 2026.
• She is the only foreign member of the five-member group and learned Korean through conversation with friends rather than formal study.
• By her own account to News1, the gyaru concept started with a question from the agency head and a one-line answer, and she did not expect it to work.
• Star News reported in July 2026 that she called talk of a ‘gyaru retirement’ an overstatement and wanted to show her appeal as a singer through ‘Pretty Girl’.