Model Yeo Yeon-hee recently revealed that she didn’t give her all during her appearance on ‘Korea’s Next Top Model’ Season 3 about 14 years ago because she had just started dating her first boyfriend.
On May 13, a video titled “I’m doing that hard survival show twice” was uploaded to her YouTube channel ‘여연희ing’, where she answered various questions.
Yeo Yeon-hee is currently appearing on the tvN variety show ‘Kill It: Style Creator War’, which premiered on May 12. The production team mentioned that many ‘Korea’s Next Top Model’ (Dosu-ko) clips have been resurfacing with ‘Kill It’ hashtags, to which she jokingly replied, “I haven’t searched for them yet. These people really don’t miss a chance!”
Having appeared on On Style’s ‘Korea’s Next Top Model’ Season 3 in 2012 at the age of 21, Yeo Yeon-hee recalled, “I was very young. Since we were in a dorm without phones, TV, or music to ensure we focused entirely on the missions, I became very sensitive to small things. Filming was incredibly tough.”
She explained the grueling schedule, saying, “The filming hours were so long. I’d get back at 3 or 4 AM, sleep for two hours, and head out again. There were no breaks or holidays. Since I made it to the finals, I lived in the dorm for about 2 to 3 months. I even had to go to the convenience store with staff, though I’m still not sure why.”
Then came the big reveal: “I’ve never mentioned this on any broadcast before. There was a three-month break before filming the finals. I had been ‘solo since birth,’ but during those three months, I got my first boyfriend. I fell head over heels in love. I’ve really never told anyone this before,” she emphasized.
She further shared, “At the time, my boyfriend actually cried in front of me, saying, ‘What if you win first place and have to go to the US?’ In my young heart, I thought, ‘I shouldn’t do too well at this.’ I’m saying this for the first time. Even though the show edited the missions to make me look good, the truth is I didn’t work hard. The PD even scolded me during filming, saying things like, ‘You’re so distracted by a guy that you’re not working hard.’ I was just so young and so deeply in love.”
Yeo Yeon-hee added, “Looking back, I regret it so much. On the show, it was framed as if I suddenly lost energy because of my height, but it wasn’t that my height changed. Even if I had worked hard, the result might have been the same, but the truth is that’s how I felt.”
