Here’s How K-Pop Album Photocards Are Made & Assembled —Behind The Scenes With Red Velvet’s Wendy

Photocards are one of the biggest wonders of the K-Pop world. Fans are willing to trade and sell rare finds for hundreds of dollars knowing they likely cost just pennies to make. But while most fans have considered the price of producing photocards, few know about the process of making them. To find out, let’s go behind the scenes with Red Velvet‘s Wendy as she personally puts together her solo debut album, Like Water.

In a special hands-on experience most idols never try, Wendy took fans behind the scenes of her album production in a new YouTube video. First stop: the production facility’s Prepress Room, also known as the Offset Room.

| Red Velvet/YouTube

Traditionally, the most important part of any album package is the CD itself. Nowadays, however, K-Pop fans care far more about the fun additions inside. The Prepress Room is where all these goodies come to life.

| Red Velvet/YouTube

In the case of Wendy’s album, Like Water, this is where her posters, postcards, bookmarks, and photobooks were printed—and, of course, her gorgeous photocards.

| Red Velvet/YouTube

One of the workers at the printing press gave Wendy a tour of the machinery, which uses just four ink colors to create the vivid album extras fans fall in love with. According to the worker, album additions can be printed in any size, and the machinery prints up to a staggering 15,000 pages every hour.

| Red Velvet/YouTube

Wendy revealed she brought two special selfies with her to create the limited edition photocards in her album, but it’s likely that the members’ selfies are usually sent over to the printing press digitally by the agency.

| Red Velvet/YouTube

Once everything is set up, printing photocards is easy as the push of a button.

| Red Velvet/YouTube

Perhaps surprisingly to many fans, photocards leave the printing press in the form of a flat sheet with lines cut around each card. Workers are then responsible for pressing the individual cards out by hand, which explains the minuscule tears you see in the corners of most photocards.

| Red Velvet/YouTube

Once everything is printed, it’s time to assemble all the album packaging. Ever hardworking, Wendy put together the packaging for her special edition albums by hand to demonstrate how it works. Her tasks including pressing out all the photocards…