How K-Pop Survival Shows Pick Their Debut Lineups

K-pop agencies sign young performers as "trainees" and coach them before they debut in a group. A survival show puts dozens of trainees, and sometimes idols who have already debuted, on TV at once. Over a run of weekly episodes they perform in missions, get ranked and are cut in elimination rounds, until a finale names the debut group.

The model that made the format famous was Mnet's Produce 101 (프로듀스 101) in 2016. It started with 101 female trainees from 46 entertainment companies, and viewers chose the 11 members of the new group, I.O.I (아이오아이), along with its concept, debut song and name.¹ The franchise is noted for having no panel of judges: the audience makes the decisions.¹⁸

On Produce 101, viewers voted online and the studio audience voted live. In the first two voting periods each viewer could pick 11 trainees a day; in the last period, only one.¹ Season 2 narrowed votes the same way, from 11 trainees per vote to two and then one, and allowed only people with a South Korean mobile number voting through a CJ One or TMON account, to prevent voting fraud.²

Some votes cost money. Produce X 101's on-site text votes cost ₩100 each, and after its 2019 finale 272 viewers sued Mnet for electoral fraud.¹⁷ Idol School (아이돌 학교) also charged ₩100 per phone vote and donated the money to CJ Donors Camp. Its viewers even voted before the show on the size of the group, choosing nine from options of five to thirteen.⁶

Shows announce a ranking at the end of episodes, and the lowest-ranked trainees are cut at set elimination rounds. Votes are not the only input: winning a team mission adds bonus points. Produce 101 gave an extra 1,000 points to the girls on winning teams in episode 4.¹ In Season 2's episode 9, each member of the winning group got 20,000 extra points, except its most-voted member, who got 100,000 instead.²

The final vote usually decides the lineup on its own. Produce X 101 added a twist: the top 10 in the final vote debuted, and the eleventh seat, the "X", went to the trainee with the most votes over the whole season.⁴ Boys Planet (보이즈 플래닛) counted 9,398,916 final votes from 184 countries: 8,177,501 cast from April 13 to 19, 2023 and 1,221,415 cast live during the finale, when each vote counted double.¹⁰

Some shows keep the last word for the people who will run the group. On Sixteen (식스틴, 2015), made by JYP Entertainment and Mnet, J.Y. Park (Park Jin-young, 박진영) judged the missions and eliminated trainees himself. In the finale he announced that TWICE (트와이스) would have nine members, not seven: Tzuyu was added through online voting, and Momo, who had been eliminated earlier, was added by the agency's A&R team and trainers.⁵

I-Land (아이랜드), made by Mnet with HYBE and CJ ENM's joint venture Belift Lab, filled six of ENHYPEN's (엔하이픈) seven places by global vote and the seventh, Sunoo, by the producers' choice.⁷ Its sequel I-Land 2: N/a planned five voted members plus one producers' pick, and after the six were announced the producers added a seventh, forming izna.¹³

JTBC and Belift Lab's R U Next? (알유넥스트?) chose ILLIT's (아일릿) six members "through a combination of votes and label consideration". Wonhee (Lee Won-hee, 이원희) and Youngseo, first and second in the final live vote, went in on votes; Minju, Iroha, Yunah and Moka, third, fifth, seventh and eighth in that vote, were label picks. Youngseo later left before debut, and ILLIT debuted as five on March 25, 2024.¹¹

SBS's Universe Ticket (유니버스 티켓) mixed fan votes with "Unicorn Tickets", bonus points awarded by the judges. Its final ranking lists first-placed Elisia under "PRISM Ticketing" rather than a vote count.¹² Its boy-group sequel, Universe League (유니버스 리그), split players into three teams: all seven members of the team with the most final votes debuted, plus the most-voted player from each of the other two, making AHOF a nine-member group instead of the planned eight.¹⁵

Produce 48's online vote was already open internationally in 2018.³ Later shows built voting around global apps and weighted the result by region. Girls Planet 999 (걸스플래닛999: 소녀대전) took votes on NCSoft's Universe platform, counted 50% from South Korea and 50% from the rest of the world, and debuted the nine highest-placed contestants as Kep1er (케플러) regardless of nationality. Votes cast live during its finale counted double.⁸

Boys Planet moved voting to the Mnet Plus app and had the accounting firm Samil PwC audit the process "from aggregation to the results".¹⁰ I-Land 2 also split points 50/50 between Korean and international votes, and tripled every vote cast during its live finale.¹³

The Produce rankings ended up in court. After the viewers' lawsuit, police investigated, and on December 3, 2019 producing director Ahn Joon-young, chief producer Kim Yong-bum and a third producer were indicted for obstruction of business and fraud, alongside five entertainment-agency staff charged with bribery. Ahn had admitted to police that he manipulated rankings in all four seasons, and at the first hearing the defendants admitted the charges.¹⁷

On May 29, 2020, Seoul District Court found all eight defendants guilty. Ahn was sentenced to two years in prison and fined ₩37 million, and Kim to 20 months.¹⁷ At the appeal on November 18, 2020, the Seoul High Court disclosed which trainees had been ranked out by the manipulation. In Produce X 101, three trainees who should have finished sixth to eighth were left out of X1 (엑스원).⁴ In Produce 101 Season 2, one trainee's ranking had been altered to keep him out of Wanna One.²

After the arrests, Mnet said its current and future shows would use an "observer system", with ordinary people and third parties overseeing the votes. X1 disbanded on January 6, 2020 after the members' agencies could not agree on its future, while IZ*ONE continued until it disbanded on April 29, 2021, when its contract expired.³¹⁷

Most survival-show winners form a "project group": a team with a fixed end date, after which members go back to their own agencies. I.O.I was set up to promote for one year, Wanna One (워너원) for two years ending December 31, 2018, and IZ*ONE (아이즈원) for two and a half years.¹²³ X1 was announced for five years, two and a half of them exclusive.⁴ UNIS (유니스) was formed on a contract of two years and six months, and CLOSE YOUR EYES (클로즈 유어 아이즈) is set to be active for three years after its debut.¹²¹⁹

Newer groups often run longer. CLASSY (클라씨) signed a seven-year exclusive contract, and izna (이즈나) became WakeOne's first non-temporary girl group on a standard contract.⁹¹³ Kep1er's members could renew: in May 2024 all but two did.⁸ ZEROBASEONE (제로베이스원) continued as a five-member group after four members' contracts expired on March 15, 2026.¹⁰