These Trainees In K-pop Competition Have Been Photoshopped Until They Look Nothing Like Themselves

Even before its debut episode, it seems Korean reality show Starlight Boys is getting its share of negative press.

Over the past week, the show has taken to introducing all 69 boyband hopefuls on social media though it seems the response has been mixed.

Many netizens have called the show “a big scam.” and pointed out that since videos of the boys have been posted, a number of them look nothing like their pictures.

Photoshop fails include Chinese trainees, Sun Ying Hao and Chen Xuan You, along with their Canadian counterpart, Michael Wu, as well as Korean native Gun Woo.

One comment pointed out that the pictures seem to have been so heavily edited that they looked like anime characters.

“Will the judges be able to recognise them on stage?” wrote a netizen while another asked, “Did any of the judges call the wrong name out?”

We can only imagine many a casting agent will have furrowed eyebrows when they meet any of them in the future.

Of course, we had to quickly check if Singapore’s only representative Yang Yan was the unfortunate target of being over-photoshopped.

Thankfully, the 23-year-old still looked somewhat like himself.

Scroll to the end to see what we mean.

Photos: Starlightboys/IG