The Masked Singer: Dami Im reveals difference between Australian and Korean versions

If there’s one thing you can guarantee Dami Im will excel at, it’s a singing competition.

The vocal powerhouse won The X Factor in 2013, came second at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2016, and took out the crown in this year’s season of The Masked Singer.

Her stint on the quirky reality show comes eight years after she competed on the South Korean program The King of Mask Singer, which she tells Yahoo Lifestyle was “completely different” to the Australian franchise.

“I did the Korean one while I was visiting my family and my label asked me, ‘Do you want to do it while you're here?’ and I was like, ‘Sure!’,” she shares.

“We literally filmed for a day, whereas the Australian one went for about a month.”

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The Invincible hitmaker went on to say that one of the biggest differences between the two shows was the costumes, as she wore an elaborate Snow Fox costume in Australia and a simple blue dress and Statue of Liberty mask in South Korea.

“Also singing in Korean and singing in English was a big difference,” she adds.

“For the Korean one I was also given a handheld mic and I was actually singing into that, whereas for [the Australian] one everything was under the mask and it was a lot more about the costume. The staging and the costume is a huge thing here, whereas in Korea it was more about the singing.”

'Extremely heavy'

Speaking about her impressive Snow Fox costume, Dami says she found it “so difficult” to move around on stage and perform.

“I don't know about other people's masks but mine was extremely heavy,” she remarks. “When I first put it on I really couldn't even walk, I thought I was going to faint. So I asked them to take off a little bit of weight and it was still there.

“And I couldn't see much, to be honest, so I had no idea if I was in the right place on stage at any given time. I tried my best, but when I was watching on telly I was like, 'Okay, I'm not supposed to be there’. But at the time I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I'm killing it’.”

Dami also shares that it felt like “fate” that she won The Masked Singer on the same stage where she won The X Factor exactly 10 years earlier.

“It just felt really weird and like déjà vu or something,” she details. “I was just thinking like, wow, I’ve come so far and I'm still here doing this after a decade.

“I honestly thought my career would last two years, maybe three years. That was my kind of expectation after winning a talent show because that's not uncommon. So to be here 10 years on, I’m just so grateful.”

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