While right now you need to put children and teenagers through years of rigorous training and expose them to immense stress and pressure so most of them break
Uh... I don't think that's a necessary part of the process to making k-pop, or any kind of music. Industry people may think it's critical to making themselves shit-loads of money, but it's not important for the creation music or even selling the music.
Where do you think Pratchett got the idea?! They got to him first and paid him off so we'd think it was ridiculous!
No joke, it wasn't a flat earth thing, but I had a coworker years ago who was big into conspiracy theories and he claimed that movies like Men in Black were made to make everyone think that kind of thing only happened in fiction so we'd laugh at people who think it's real.
When I tried to point out to him that there was no evidence for the things he claimed were real, he said the lack of evidence was proof, because it meant they were hiding the evidence.