Choi Yoojung Opens Up About Stage Fright After I.O.I Debut

Singer Choi Yoojung has opened up about the stage fright she suffered after her time on a K-pop audition show and her years with I.O.I, the project group that launched her career.

On July 13, the YouTube channel "John or Park" posted a video titled "After I.O.I, Choi Yoo-jung's Journey to Rebuilding Self-Esteem." In it, Choi looked back on her 2016 debut, which came when she was a high school junior. "I had achieved what I wanted, but I wasn't completely happy, so I felt guilty and lost," she said.

Choi thought debuting would be the finish line. Instead, she had to start over, and she said accepting that reality was not easy. The pressure grew into severe stage fright.

"Right before going on stage, I would lower my head to put in my in-ears, and I couldn't lift my head back up," she said. "It felt like if I looked up, I'd be standing in an open field, and a lion far away would come running to eat me. I would cry and struggle to breathe."

The root cause, she said, was a sharp drop in her self-esteem. To work through it, Choi trained herself to view her own life from a third person's perspective. She said she came to understand that her high standards and drive existed because she loved herself, and she learned to separate self-love from self-esteem.

Choi later took on musical theater. Recalling a moment alone on stage under a single spotlight, she said the darkness around her felt beautiful, almost like a universe or a black hole. "That's when I realized, I really do love the stage," she said.