aespa’s Winter Reveals SM Was Originally More Interested In Casting Her Brother When She Auditioned

aespa’s Winter has shared the story of how she wound up joining SM Entertainment!

On the latest episode of the web variety show “Salon Drip 2,” Winter appeared as a guest to promote aespa’s new single “Dirty Work.”

During the show, Winter spoke about her time as a trainee, saying, “I signed a contract [with SM Entertainment] in 2017 and [trained] for about three and a half years. I auditioned for SM about three times.” 

She then revealed with a laugh, “When I first went to audition for SM, the SM employee who oversaw my audition looked at my brother and took my brother instead of me. So I thought to myself, ‘Wait, wasn’t he just here because of me? Was it this easy [for him to get in]?’ So my brother also auditioned, but I sang better than him. My brother wasn’t bad either, but I was a little better.”

“Actually, I didn’t get in back then either,” she continued. “I was scouted at a dance festival, and then I went to Seoul for a proper audition, but I didn’t get in. After that, I auditioned at SM’s global audition in Busan, but I got rejected again. So I thought to myself, ‘Ah, I guess it’s not going to work out with SM,’ and I auditioned for a number of different companies.”

“All of the companies [I auditioned for] asked to see me again,” Winter went on, “and I was still in contact with the [SM employee] who scouted me, so I told them, ‘I think I’m going to wind up at a different company.’ Then they asked me to come in and audition just one last time. I was like, ‘So they turned me down, but now that I told them I’m going somewhere else, they want to stop me?’ But because I wanted to go to SM, I auditioned one last time, and that’s when I got in.”

Watch the full episode of “Salon Drip 2” with English subtitles below!

You can also watch aespa’s variety show “aespa’s Synk Road” with subtitles on Viki here:

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