The Girl and the NDAs

2

January 13th, 2019.

That was when I saw a online post on a Reddit forum of all places, asking for a female between the ages of 18-25 to participate in an in-person job opportunity where you would be working closely with artists in the KPOP industry as an...assistant of sorts.

When I saw this post, I immediately flagged it and reported it. Didn't think twice about it, only knew that I didn't want other people to be scammed about such an enticing opportunity.

2019 was a year after KPOP started to take the world by storm, with BTS spearheading it as their Love Yourself era began to quickly envelop the world.

It also happened to be the finale of my senior year in high school.

Because of this "Hallyu Wave", posts similar to the one on Reddit started popping up on various websites and social media platforms as a way to scam naïve fans into thinking they could in fact see their beloved idols face-to-face. I saw stories of fans, both young and old, lose hundreds of dollars trying to buy merch or book hotel-stays through these sketchy sites. All for the chance to see their artists.

How ridiculous...never gonna happen.

Three days after I reported the post, I saw another one on Instagram. However, this one was different because it wasn't just posted randomly by some unknown IG user..

It was posted on Cube Entertainment's account.

Thousands upon thousands of messages and likes flooded the post:

'There's no way this is true!!'

'What the f- does this mean I could see (G)-IDLE in person?!?!'

'*screaming, crying* no fucking WAY- y'all shitting me right now-'

I clicked on the post, reading through the message and noticing a link attached to the profile of the account. Out of curiosity, I clicked on it and it loaded itself onto my Dell monitor.

I squinted slightly to read the small font of the form, seeing that it had several versions: Korean, English, Italian, Japanese, etc etc.

I clicked on English and a clearer form showed up, explaining what the role entails and what they were expecting.

Need to be ready to provide service for the artists at all times.

Pay rate will be $50 an hour.

You'll be expected to be dressed appropriately and to speak in a professional manner.

This position will be contractual, only lasting for a year at most.

"What would they need extra assistants for...they have whole staffs for each artist," I wondered out loud. Still, the opportunity was intriguing to me.

The pay is pretty nice too.

"Ishu! Did you do the laundry?!" My mother had called out from downstairs. "Shit..." I mumbled, cringing at the thought of having to drag my dirty clothes from my room to the washing machine on the ground floor. I begrudgingly got up, but before I moved away, I took ahold of my mouse and scrolled to the bottom of the page.

The big red letters APPLY on a small, rectangular pink background stood out on the otherwise white screen.

So, without giving it another thought, I clicked on it before heading into my room.