Ok, so some background for people who don’t know.
There is a KPop label named Pledis.
Their first group was After School in 2009. After School was pretty great, but the members had a very wide age range. They tried to do a thing where old members would “graduate” and new members would come in.
The best part of After School was a sub-unit named Orange Caramel consisting of three members. They will always be my favs.
Anyway, in 2014 After School hadn’t released anything in awhile, but Orange Caramel was active and successful. Then suddenly in 2015, they just never came back. they were on the rise, and then they just stopped. After School also never came back. Members just kept graduating, based on how you count there are only 3 or 4 left, but the group is done. It’s just not officially done. They have never announced the disbandment of After School or Orange Caramel, even though there is 0% chance they come back.
They also made two boy groups. NU’EST, which was mostly a flop and SEVENTEEN, which is pretty successful.
Then Produce 101 happened. In the first season Pledis sent some female trainees to the show. Two of them managed to win and get into IOI.
On the second season of Produce, some NU-EST members went to the show and a few (but not all) managed to win. This caused somewhat of a resurgence in popularity for NU’EST and probably saved them.
Meanwhile IOI was done. And the members returned to Pledis and formed the core of the group Pristin. They released two songs that were not bad. They had a sub-unit Pristin V that released one song in 2018. Then we never heard from them again.
On the third season of Produce Kaeun from After School, who has just been sitting around doing nothing, went on the show. She did very well, but did not get enough votes in the end. There was talk of Pledis making a group for her with some other people, but that has not happened. Keep in mind Kaeun trained for many years, joined After School at basically the end of its existence, only released one or two songs, and then that was it.
The news is that today, Pristin, officially disbanded. This is good and merciful, but also a disgrace. There are members of Pristin that spent 11 of their 18 years of life training to be idols. They debuted, had one year of activities, and then done.
Nobody knows what is actually going on at Pledis, but it’s obviously a mismanaged shit show that has don’t nothing but ruin lives of female idols and disappoint fans all around the world. I’m surprised they even still exist, but I guess SEVENTEEN keeps them afloat? Part of that is because SEVENTEEN is a self managing group. They make a lot (most?) of their own music and choreography. They have a large number of members who are very talented.
All fans just want Pledis to die.
