Super Junior's Hangeng Reveals Why Being a Trainee Paid Better Than Their First Year of Fame

The story of any K-pop group's early days is rarely glamorous — but few have captured that reality as vividly as former Super Junior member Hangeng (also known as Hankyung), who recently opened up in a Hong Kong interview about the financial realities of debuting in one of history's most iconic boy bands. The picture he paints is one of genuine hardship, unexpected brotherhood, and the kind of shared sacrifice that bonds people in ways that outlast fame.

Super Junior debuted in 2005 under SM Entertainment with the track "Twins (Knock Out)," eventually growing into one of K-pop's defining groups of the second generation. Hangeng was one of the group's thirteen members and its only Chinese national — a detail that made his trainee experience unique in its own right. But what he shared in this interview cuts to something more universal: the experience of working incredibly hard for almost nothing, and finding that the people around you are in exactly the same situation.

Less Than a Trainee: The Financial Reality of Debut Year

"In the first year of promotions, we didn't have much money," Hangeng told his interviewer, with the quiet matter-of-factness of someone who has had years to process the memory. What made the disclosure surprising was the comparison he drew: during his trainee period, SM Entertainment provided him with a monthly allowance of around 4,000 yuan — roughly $560 USD. It was enough that Hangeng, who came from China and was living in SM's dormitories, could send small amounts back to both of his parents every month and still get by on what remained.

"When I was training, I also sent money to my family. A little to my dad, a little to my mom. I was left with a bit for myself, and it was enough — the company provided food and I lived in a dorm, so I didn't need much," he explained. The host, clearly expecting him to say that debut earnings were an improvement, was caught off guard when Hangeng gently corrected the assumption. Asked whether debut pay was at least more than trainee pay, he answered simply: "Less."

The reason was mathematical, and in hindsight obvious: Super Junior was a thirteen-member group. Every won earned from album sales, performance fees, and appearances had to be divided thirteen ways. For each individual member, the slice was small — sometimes vanishingly so. At the same time, the group's debut period came with significant expenses: travel, costumes, promotional events, and the various costs of maintaining a large ensemble of performers all added up, often before the earnings did.

Brotherhood Built in Scarcity

What Hangeng's account reveals is not just financial hardship, but the way that hardship became a binding agent for the group. When everyone has very little, the question of how to distribute what exists becomes intimate and personal. Super Junior members, Hangeng suggested, handled this with a kind of collective generosity — a sense that what belonged to one member in a moment of surplus could flow toward another who was running short.

This dynamic is not unusual in the context of early K-pop idol culture. Groups living in shared dormitories, eating together, practicing together, and pooling financial resources created bonds that were closer in many ways to family than to professional partnership. For Super Junior — a group that has now been active for over two decades, that has survived departures and hiatuses and personal upheavals, and that continues to release music and perform for devoted fans worldwide — the early years of solidarity helped lay the groundwork for a longevity that few groups achieve.

Hangeng himself departed Super Junior in 2009, pursuing a successful solo career in China. His eventual separation from the group was accompanied by legal proceedings regarding contract terms, a complicated chapter that is part of the longer Super Junior story. But his comments about the early days carry no bitterness — only the warmth of a man looking back at a period of genuine difficulty and recognizing it, without sentimentality, as formative.

Why This Story Still Resonates

For fans who came to K-pop through its current phase — a global industry with billion-dollar valuations, artists who headline stadium tours, and groups whose members become international celebrities before they turn twenty — the picture Hangeng paints can feel almost unimaginable. But it is a picture that connects the K-pop of today to the industry that built it: one where dedication, shared sacrifice, and survival under difficult conditions were simply the terms of entry.

Stories like Hangeng's matter for a few reasons. They humanize the artists that fan culture sometimes treats as perfect and untouchable. They offer context for why the bonds within K-pop groups — especially those forged in the early years — tend to be so durable. And they serve as a reminder that the global phenomenon fans celebrate today was built by real people who, in the beginning, were simply young and hopeful and making very little money, trying to figure out how to take care of each other while they waited for the world to notice them.

It noticed. It took a while. But the thirteen young men who showed up to debut together in 2005 — and who distributed their small earnings with the quiet generosity of people who had nothing to lose by sharing — built something that outlasted the hardest years by decades. In K-pop, as in most things, the stories that endure are the ones rooted in something real. This one is.