Kyuhyun recently opened up about feeling a bit insecure when it comes to his academic background. On May 6, he showed up on YouTube channel Teo’s ‘Salon Drip 2’ and got real about why he joined The Devil’s Plan Season 2.
He shared, “While watching brain survival programs, I’ve seen that rankings aren’t solely determined by academic background; there are so many great schools like Seoul National University and KAIST.” He went on to say that he had an inferiority complex because of his background, even though he’s super proud of where he went to school.
When Jang Doyeon asked him, “Was your reason for agreeing to appear (on ‘The Devil’s Plan’) because you had faith in yourself?” he explained that it wasn’t just confidence but also the belief that it wouldn’t be a game purely about academics.
Kyuhyun replied to Jang Doyeon’s comment, “Isn’t Kyung Hee University good too?” by saying, “It’s a huge pride for me. But honestly, I have an inferiority complex about my academic background. My father ran a tutoring center, and for six years during my school days, I kept hearing, ‘If you don’t get into a good university, our tutoring center will fail.’ There was a bit of pressure from that, so I carried the expectations of the entire tutoring center on my shoulders.”
He admitted, “That’s why I also have respect for people with good academic backgrounds. But when competing against them, I thought it wouldn’t be a survival based solely on academics, and I judged that I could cover it with my quick wit.”
Meanwhile, Netflix’s The Devil’s Plan: Death Room—which Kyuhyun stars in—is a psychological survival reality show. Players from all kinds of professions live together for 7 days to figure out who’s the smartest of them all.
Season 1 already had viewers hooked with its intense mind games and clever strategies to crown the ultimate brain. So far, four episodes of the second season are out. Episodes 5 to 9 are dropping on the 13th, and episodes 10 to 12 are hitting on the 20th. Expect some seriously fierce brain battles and lots of psychological twists coming up.
