Is it still hard to make a career as a solo artist in Korea?

yes. nugu is still a thing and will continue to be a thing in kpop. soloists have it the worst.

yup

Its very hard to start as a solo

Yeah it is unless they come from shows popular with the GP.

Idk for sure how solo works in korea, but the fact we are only getting ggs hits this year and Lim Young Woong is the only no-idol that sells like a idol says something. At least before some soloists charted high like Heize.

It's hard to make it as any type of artist period, but I'm pretty sure solo singers do quite well in Korea just outside of the kpop genre, it's krnb, indie, trot, and ballad that solos really suceed

Soloist stan here, personally from my experience I totally think it's still true. I follow a lot of artists in the indie genre and K r&b it seems new artists are popping up every day, it's really rare to find someone who sticks with it and doesn't just abandon their page to do something else.

There's a lot of soloist's I enjoy from shows like Produce 101, that are now either acting, modelling or in a group. Or the group's they were in disbanded in 2020 because of how hard it is.

The one's who are solo aren't really that well known (then again they aren't usually focused on foreign markets either so it could be the case)

I think it’s mostly just hard to initially debut as an idol soloist. Taemin & others who were a part of a group at first, especially one as popular as shinee, already have a fan base & solid popularity. They just need to maintain it at least, & unless they majorly mess up or produce incredibly horrible music that shouldn’t be too hard either. But coming out the gates as a soloist is super hard

You can basically count the artists that have had any relevancy for more than a year or two and are still active and popular today on one hand (artists that didnt start out in a group).

There are plenty that do release and get by, but they cant really do any bigger concerts, cfs etc to pull in the big money.