SEVENTEEN’s Mingyu says he wouldn’t want to relive trainee life: “All the bad memories are from that time”

nme.com:

SEVENTEEN member Mingyu has opened up about his time as a K-pop trainee and why he wouldn’t want to relive that period of his life.SEVENTEEN’s Mingyu and his bandmate Joshua recently made an appearance on South Korean singer Jung Jae-hyung’s YouTube show channel, where they reflected on their nearly decade-long career and their time as trainees before debuting in the boyband.The K-pop idol revealed that he “[doesn’t] ever want to go back to that time of my life”, explaining that “all the bad memories of my life are from that time”, per SBS Star.

He added: “It was so hard. I couldn’t sleep, you know. I would practice until four in the morning, then take the subway to school and sleep there.”“I would head back to the studio for more practice during lunchtime.

Often, I’d nod off on the subway ride there, then spend the entire day practicing. At night, it was back to the dorm, and straight off to school again,” he recalled. “That was my routine every single day.”Mingyu said that he pushed on as a trainee for years as he thought that he “couldn’t just throw away all the time [that he’d] put in”.

However, looking back, the SEVENTEEN singer says that he “feel[s] sorry for [himself]”, although he also said that he “can’t deny that [he] was lucky”.“If you think about it, the casting director who discovered me happened to be right there at the school gate when I was leaving school,” he said. “If I had been late that day […] or if I had gone out the back gate, I wouldn’t have crossed paths with them.