DPR Ian is known by many names.
At one point he was Rome, the leader of burgeoning K-pop idol group C-Clown. When the group disbanded after three short years, he shed that image and went by his real name of Christian Yubefore taking control of his own artistry and christening himself DPR Ian after founding the South Korean music collective Dream Perfect Regime.
But in the beginning he was simply Barom Yu, a Korean-Australian kid growing up in the Sydney suburb of Lidcombe before his family moved to Wollongong, where he would begin a journey he would never have expected of himself.
Watch the video above.
READ MORE: Spotify Wrapped confirms what we all suspected
READ MORE: Secret ingredient that makes this the best Bloody Mary ever
During his tenure at the local performing arts high school (which he did not attend by choice, he says), he inadvertently found his love for heavy metal and later, during his Year 12 exams, dance.
After high school, he decided to explore his roots by going to his home country of South Korea, which had become quite the scene for dancing in the late 2000s.
But once there, he found himself struggling to cope, constantly getting scammed. His mother had given him three months to make something of himself or else he was returning to Australia – but he was desperate to “prove to myself that I could do something in Korea,” he tells 9honey.
READ MORE: Dissecting the ‘cesspool that is social media’ with Flex Mami
In his fourth month there, he was discovered on the streets by a talent scout – and despite having his reservations that this was another scam, the encounter sent him falling into the elusive world of K-pop.
“One thing about Korea – it teaches you to grow up faster than usual,” he muses, now more than a decade on from the experience.
As a trainee at one of the most well-established entertainment agencies in Korea, Rome – as he was then known – would be required to spend hours of his day undergoing tutelage, all in the name of achieving his dreams.
READ MORE: Ingredients hidden in this delicious dish might shock you
“Everyone was kind of led to think that there’s only one way of doing this, (which was) extensive hours of just pure non-stop training (and) hardly any sleep,” he says.
“You’re just not allowed to eat anything. You have to count your macros, your calories, but not to the point where it makes someone healthy. You have to be almost paper thin to come out like ‘normal’ on camera… because how you’re presented on the camera makes you twice as big from what we see.”
He says he believes this lack of agency can also affect mental health.
For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here,
The 10 ‘greatest pop stars’ of the 21st century revealed
“There are things that you have no control and power over, and if you’re forced to break your limit time and time again, despite what you have going on mentally, your (health doesn’t) become priority,” he claims.
In his own experience, he says he found the bipolar disorder he was diagnosed with as a teen was exacerbated, but at the time he was clueless as to why.
“It just never occurred to me because of how much chaos was breaking out around me. So you don’t really have time to digest it… you’re constantly stimulated – almost every 10 to 20 seconds – and you just have no time to process it,” he claims.
READ MORE: Millions across the world know this Aussie singer, but many here haven’t heard of her.
“The problem is, once you stop and your five minutes of fame is up… once everything finally seeps in and you start breathing again, that’s when it hits you a truck,” he claims.
“So there’s a lot of things that I think, being an idol especially, (that) required you to do to the extremities. It was just so radical.”
The singer claims that when he was undergoing training, it was when “slave contracts” were at their “epitome” in the K-pop world.
READ MORE: The 5 things everyone must consider before signing up to a phone plan
This term usually describes contracts between Korean entertainers and their agencies that stipulate clauses around a trainee’s diet, love life, behavior, and more, usually for long periods of time.
According to the former idol, a K-pop idol is “literally a product” of “many people in a room – creative directors, board of directors, PR teams, AR teams, and everyone coming together and formulating a certain concept of brand – and you are the face of it.”
“So at the end, you really don’t have too much of a say,” he claims. “You’re definitely walking into something that you will have absolutely no power or control over … because the company will always have more power over you.”
READ MORE: How a bag of frozen peas could save your dog’s life
Looking back at his own experience he shares, “It felt like a dream. I didn’t feel real, but I knew it happened. And obviously it had to happen for the whole process to work out.”
As he closed the chapter on C-Clown in 2015, another was opening up in the form of Dream Perfect Regime, a collective of multi-talented artists – and friends – who came together to tell their own stories in their own ways.
Christian Yu, as he had then preferred to be called, was one of the founding members of the Seoul-based enterprise and headed up the front as a creative director in charge of visuals, being lauded for his masterful cinematography in visualisers and music videos filled with hidden meaning – first for the DPR team, then for big names in the industry, such as Taeyang from renowned boy band Big Bang and CL of girl group 2NE1.
READ MORE: Thousands gathered to see their favorite act – but the stage remained empty
After a few years behind the camera, in 2020 he decided to move back in front – and this time as DPR Ian, he promised that he would do things differently.
“When I was in the idol industry…it wasn’t like I had a say of what I want to do…I was a product,” he shares, with his previous experiences directly correlating to his mission with DPR.
“When I was an idol, I always kind of vowed to myself; if I leave this industry, I’m going to make something that is based completely on giving the artist the spotlight, giving the artist a say, and giving the artist the credit that they deserve.”
READ MORE: Artificial Christmas trees that will deliver to your door
Coming up on ten years since the formation of DPR, Ian has evidently found more success being himself than he ever did as an idol, having performed across the world at events like Coachella, Head In The Clouds, Lollapalooza, and more.
Now 34 years old, the star has crafted his own universe with his music, which reflects the highs and lows of his bipolar disorder – which he was diagnosed with as a teen – with different characters like Mr Insanity and MITO in his self-directed music videos.
“I’ve never really wanted to apologize for being myself,” he says of his art, but he also “never, ever wanted to be someone that could advocate for it, because I’m not someone that has battled it and has successfully Come out. I’m still battling it.”
READ MORE: The taste Priya grew up with at home is now found all over the world
“My insight is I’m just someone that’s the same as who you are – I have the same life problems. I’m just as human as you are. And this is just my story,” he says.
Now he is bringing his story to the stage, with his teammates DPR Cream and DPR Arctic being brought Down Under for their Dream Reborn World Tour, with the trio kicking off their Australian leg at Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on December 6.
“I wanted it to have its own agenda,” Ian says of the concert. “So just like our visuals have its own image, just like our music, I wanted our show performance aspect to have its own branding.”
READ MORE: ‘Makes people go crazy’: A single word saw millions turn on this Aussie mum
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.
“I eventually want to break DPR into that type of asset, where it’s not like just a rock, hip hop show, whatever,” he says.
“It’s really an experience that people can walk into completely blindfolded, take the blindfolds off, and just be like, ‘Wow, I don’t know what to expect, but I know it’s going to be good’.”
Learn more about DPR – The Dream Reborn World Tour 2024 at Live Nation’s website,
Support is available from the Butterfly National Helpline on 1800 33 4673. You can also chat online or email
If you or someone you know needs immediate or mental health-related support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or via lifeline.org.auIn an emergency, call 000.
