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Is there a new Singaporean K-pop oppa in the making?
Yesterday, local actor Yang Yan took to his socials to share that he’s participating in new reality competition Starlight Boys, which is organised by Chinese streamer iQiyi International.
The show features 69 guys from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Canada and the US competing to debut as a member of a K-pop group.
Yang Yan, 23, is signed to Dasmond Koh’s NoonTalk Media and was nominated for Best Rising Star at this year’s Star Awards. He also had a role in Mediacorp murder-mystery Stranger in the Dark.
When 8days.sg reached out to Dasmond, he tells us that this opportunity for Yang Yan arose when their business partner, Insight Entertainment, asked if they had any talents they wanted to enter for the competition.
Insight had plans to send Thai actor Pentor Jeerapat, who is represented by NoonTalk in Singapore and Malaysia, and NoonTalk chose Yang Yan and a few other guys to go for the auditions.
“But [Pentor and Yang Yan] were the two that were picked lah,” Dasmond says.
He also shares that they had to go through a few rounds of auditions before the boys were selected and that Yang Yan moved to Korea about a month ago for the show.
It’s no secret that idol-training is tough so we couldn’t help but wonder if Yang Yan has been adapting well to his new trainee life in Korea.
While Dasmond says he is unable to share much about Yang Yan’s training progress and conditions, he does reveal that the phones of the trainees get confiscated the moment they enter the boot camp.
He guesses that they spend the bulk of their time on training and nothing else, adding that Yang Yan is someone who “likes to torture himself” and would enjoy his time there.
So why Starlight Boys and not Star Search 2024?
“This audition came long before Star Search was announced. We didn’t know there was going to be a Star Search this year,” Dasmond says.
On top of that, Dasmond believes that Star Search is a competition that’s mainly looking for fresh faces, which makes Yang Yan less of a good fit given how he had quite a substantial role in Stranger In The Dark.
“I don’t consider him as a newbie,” adds Dasmond.
Here comes the million dollar question, what does he think of Yang Yan’s chances in Starlight Boys?
Well, the bossman emphasises that he can’t make a call as he hasn’t seen the rest of the contestants yet.
Guess we’ll just have to wait for the competition to premiere at the end of October to judge for ourselves.