Former “Girls Planet 999” Contestant Unveils The Real Living And Working Conditions Of Trainees

Tammy Wu, a former contestant on Mnet’s idol survival show Girls Planet 999, recently talked about her experience on the show in detail in a YouTube video with YouTuber Grazy Grace.

download - 2024-06-09T055742.911 — Tammy Wu | *Mnet*

In the video, Wu detailed the living and working conditions while she was a contestant on the show. She was the only participant based in the US and was flown out to Korea for the six-month duration of the filming. Upon arriving, she lived in a dorm with the other participants, and none of them were allowed to leave the accommodation, partly due to COVID-19 restrictions back then. They all had to give up their mobile phones during their stay.

Either May or June to like November, we had on break in between for like almost a month where we were able to leave the dorms but besides that we had our phones taken away and we were in the dorms.

— Tammy Wu

download - 2024-06-09T055518.302 — Girls Planet 999 dorm

The contestants were all given an iPad with just one song and one video stored in it, the song that they were supposed to perform. In order to keep themselves entertained, they often swapped the MP3 files on their devices with each other.

As for the working conditions, Wu recalled that the days on set would be excruciatingly long.

For the first stage, it was all so nerve-wracking but the filming was so long that by the time I got on the stage, I was kind of too tired to be nervous.

— Tammy Wu

According to Wu, the filming went on for over 30 hours without any break except for food. Unlike at the dorms, where contestants could have a variety of food to choose from, on set, they were given packed lunches. They had to keep being seated in their positions for those long hours, and Wu recalled some of them even falling off of their chairs out of exhaustion.