Broadway Training, Gangnam Style – The New York Times

Not every audience member will have the same experience or encounter the same characters. So here’s a chance to meet six “KPOP” performers. And true to the art form, some are experienced, others are novices, and not all of them are Korean.

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Jason Tam

PORTRAYS Epic, a performer in the five-member boy band F8 (pronounced “fate”). Half-Korean, half-American, he was brought in “to make the band viable in America,” said Mr. Tam, causing tensions with his bandmates, who are all Korean.

INSPIRED BY Justin Timberlake and Exo, a boy band that performs in Korean and Mandarin.

KOREAN? No. Mr. Tam is Chinese, Hawaiian and Caucasian. He learned the Korean songs in the show by recording himself on his iPhone and “listening and adjusting accordingly.”

PREPARATION A weeklong cast boot camp, eight-hour days that included body conditioning, “swag” exercises and learning four songs a day. “There’s a lot of drilling, more than in regular musical theater,” said Mr. Tam, who has been on Broadway in “A Chorus Line,” among other shows. “They make it look so easy, but it takes so much blood, sweat and tears that you don’t see.”

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Jinwoo Jung

PORTRAYS Oracle, a member of F8 who objects to the group’s attempts to be more “Americanized.”

INSPIRED BY The chance to pursue a lifelong dream. “K-pop was something I always yearned for and I was never brave enough to reach out to,” he said, citing the rigorous training. He became an actor instead.

KOREAN? Yes; Mr. Jung was born in South Korea and moved to the United States five years ago.

PREPARATION Watches videos of live performances by Big Bang, a K-pop boy band, before he goes on: “I always want to have their attitude.”

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Deborah Kim

PORTRAYS XO, a member of the six-member girl group Special K. “She’s the rapper, like a bad bitch,” Ms. Kim said.

INSPIRED BY For her “KPOP” audition, Ms. Kim performed a Korean rap from the song “Fan” by the male hip-hop trio Epik High. “I really liked that I was cast as the rapper, because that’s something I’m interested in.”

KOREAN? Yes; Ms. Kim was born in New Jersey and speaks Korean. “What helped me learn Korean was watching Korean dramas,” Ms. Kim said. “And driving by Flushing and trying to read the signs really fast.”

APPEAL OF THE SHOW It has made her realize that “being something-hyphen-American is its own identity and culture — very beautiful and also very real.”

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Sun Hye Park

PORTRAYS Callie, a member of Special K who is told that she needs to lose her accent in order to be more marketable to Americans.

INSPIRED BY Girls’ Generation, the eight-member girl group.

KOREAN? Yes; Ms. Park was born in South Korea and moved to the United States five years ago.

PREPARATION This is the first time Ms. Park has performed in a musical. “I’m not really a singer and I’m not really a dancer,” she said. “Every day, every night, when I’m back home, I always rehearse in front of the mirror.” It’s been illuminating: “I never thought about K-pop stars as really performers. Because they are always being pretty and sexy, like dolls. But singing and dancing and being pretty and everything — it’s so hard!”

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Ashley Park

PORTRAYS MwE, a solo artist who at 26 is considered too old to be a pop star.

INSPIRED BY Beyoncé (“I feel totally barbaric using Beyoncé in the same sentence as compared to myself!”) and BoA, a solo artist who sings both K-pop and J-pop (Japanese pop).

KOREAN? Yes, though born in California. “I’ve never been to Korea,” she said.

APPEAL OF THE SHOW After appearing on Broadway in “Sunday in the Park With George” and “The King and I,” she’s thrilled to be part of a show with a large Asian cast where race is incidental: “It’s very subversive in that you’re seeing all these human interactions and drama, and you forget everyone that you’re seeing is Asian.”

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Ebony Williams

PORTRAYS Jenn, a choreographer for Special K.

KOREAN? No. The only non-Asian cast member, Ms. Williams also does double duty as the dance captain for “KPOP.”

APPEAL OF THE SHOW Ms. Williams was a dancer on Beyoncé’s Formation world tour. “As an African-American woman, the struggles are so similar,” she said. “A lot of the things that they’re doing in order to be perfect — changing their faces and having surgeries and things like that — it’s so relevant here in America. There’s such a similarity in cultures, even though there’s so many differences at the same time.”

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