it’s CHU “BONNIE” BOYOUNG (추보영), who is the LEAD VOCALIST of ESTELLA. i’ve heard whispers that the 25 (10/14/1999) year old is pretty ARTFUL but lowkey MELODRAMATIC. also, doesn’t she remind you of CHO MIYEON?
kprofile > expanded profile
SUMMARY
bonnie’s love for music starts with a box of old cds her older brother doesn’t want anymore. it’s filled to the brim with foreign artists and first gen idols of all kinds, but what really sticks out is basement jaxx’s remedy. the cover is one her mother would have immediately snatched out of her hands had she seen it, but it’s unique, cool-looking in a way that makes her feel like a big kid, like her much older brother away at college and seeing far worse across the sea. at this point, she’s maybe eight, her scope of music limited almost entirely to what her parents play around the house and the stuff she hears on the radio, but it only takes thirty seconds of a house record for something to click.
from then on, the album gets played so often that she nearly burns through the disc, the pink hello kitty cd player in her room warm with use by the time her mother comes into her room to tell her to go the hell to bed. when that gets old, it’s tommy february6, britney spears, aqua, aaliyah, ICP, the breadth of sound goes everywhere from house to pop to country to metal and eventually bonnie wants more. so, she starts finding more and eventually, when she’s old enough to whine her way into a keyboard in the corner of her bedroom, making more. it’s like breathing. the rest of the house is quiet, but never in bonnie’s room, never anywhere bonnie is concerned. she starts recording covers, posting clips of herself singing and dancing on social media. to that end, she never seems to stop.
when she’s thirteen, they uproot and move to seoul as her dad moves up in his tech job, and it keeps her company through the adjustment period. she makes friends that way, through the universal language of music, and finds that being surrounded by people who love it just as much as she does, does her spirit good. as it goes, her love for “making” goes beyond music and she finds a talent in design, inspired to make elaborate pieces by idols as she’s introduced to them by the new friends she makes.
eventually, music lives on the the backburner, a silly hobby that she dabbles in when the urge hits; fandom, to some degree, feels like a more solid path to follow. it’s less vulnerable, in some ways, than letting just anyone into her inner world through the sounds she puts together. she starts posting fanart online, pictures of herself in elaborate cosplay. it’s validating. lucrative, even, when she starts streaming on afreecatv. her karaoke cosplay corner isn’t anything to scoff at, even if people are more than a little judgemental about the clothes, or alleged lack thereof, she wears.
ironically, it’s then that she gets scouted by a recruiter from infinite entertainment. it’s hard to say what exactly earns her the email, but she’s sure her kirara cosplay helped at least a little bit.
scandal/viral moment: goes viral for the way she eats in a clip from a debut variety show; opinions on split on whether it was reflection of bonnie being naturally cute and demure or if she was eating like "pick me" - the general consensus winds up being that it was a classic case of "oh, pretty girl, let's hate on her"
viral moment: fancam for "eleven" goes viral among kpop fans and locals for both her visuals and her talent as a performer, especially as a rookie.
scandal: bonnie is under scrutiny for seemingly attempting to "upstage" her members during various appearances throughout the year, with clipped, out-of-context examples. bonnie responds to a hate comment weverse with: "isn't it just that you're naturally paying attention to me? is it a crime to be pretty? ㅋ i'll look forward to more of your attention in the future. <3" a manager went in and deleted the post, but bonnie later posed with a screenshot of the tweet a fan threw on stage at a tour stop.
2024
named as the brand muse and model for innisfree and AMUSE
named as the brand model for rolarola and suecomma bonnie
it's JANG HANBIN (장한빈), who is the KEYBOARDIST of TIDAL. i've heard whispers that the 26 (07/27/1998) year old is pretty PLAYFUL but lowkey LICENTIOUS. also, doesn't he remind you of KIM MINGYU?
((pages under construction))
SUMMARY
frankly speaking, growing up, hanbin is a bit of a delinquent. he never gets into any retroactively career-ending trouble, to be fair, but around every school he goes to for the better part of his childhood, teachers and students alike all know him by name.
and it's not that he's bad, not really. just. bored.
let his parents and counselors tell it and he's an academically gifted kid who was just terribly understimulated. so, they get him into sports. well, sports to start, and then he's in the school band picking up and mastering instruments like a modern savant, and then he's getting voted in as a treasurer for student counsel, and then he skips a grade. and, still, with his plate filled to the brim, jang hanbin finds a way. when he's caught sneaking into the house one night at fifteen, smelling of alcohol and looking entirely too debauched for his age, his parents, hands tied, send him off to boarding school in seoul, a fair trek from their home in busan and further-still from his bad influence friends.
but, well, hanbin is creative. and friendly. so it's only a matter of time before seoul feels like his home away from home. and, as luck would have it, hanbin's precociousness winds up being what kick starts his career. he's skipping school with a couple of friends when he stumbles upon an open audition at golden media entertainment. one of his friends, ever the comedian, jokes about hanbin having exactly the visuals of a k-pop idol and after a round of rock-paper-scissors, dares him to go in and audition, just to see. and, well.
when he calls back home to his parents with the results of this spontaneous endeavor, his father's immediate answer is "fuck no," but with some coaxing from his mother, it turns into a conditional "yes". the "stay out of trouble" goes unspoken, but is heavily implied. fortunately, the nature of training is brutal by design and for once, hanbin finds that he actually doesn't have the time to fuck around. mostly, anyway. where there's a will, there's a way, of course. though, most of his "fucking around" becomes a lot more literal with a new pool of equally pent-up and willing participants. he's sixteen when he signs his contract and seventeen when tidal debuts.
it takes a while for them to build traction, but when they do, it feels like riding the most devious high. he's a variety show darling, a model for more brands than he can really count, and a fucking rockstar. technically, anyway.
it gets a lot easier to chase that bored feeling away.
it's LEE TAEYEON (이태연), who is the MAIN DANCER of INDIGO. i've heard whispers that the 25 (02/28/1999) year old is pretty PREPOSSESSING but lowkey UNYIELDING. also, doesn't he remind you of JUNG WOOYOUNG?
kprofile > expanded profile
SUMMARY
he starts out as a little kid with a real talent for the arts; a tiny piano prodigy that would pull a funny face in the pictures of every recital, and grows into a cheeky boy who used to run around the neighborhood as a tween challenging kids from other boroughs to “rap battles”. he wound up going to school at sopa after being recommended to do so by a music teacher at his middle school that saw great potential in him. fortunately, his parents are inhumanely well-off so he was able to not only apply, but get in without much trouble. as a first year, he fell in love with dancing and took a hard left from practical music to practical dance. over the course of his schooling, he learned a number of dance styles and seemed to excel at all of them, but he found his passion in one genre in particular.
outside of school, he’d found performance-based mentorship from a choreographer with a leg up in the industry. this mentor specialized in waacking and tutting which, up until the very moment taeyeon went under her tutelage, was something that he’d never known the breadth of. sitting in on a combination waacking/tutting class solidified what he’d already known from his first encounter: this was it. from there on, taeyeon honed his skills becoming well-versed in the art and the culture, so much so that by the time he entered his penultimate year of high school, he was working as an assistant choreographer in his mentor’s studio, collaboratively and sometimes independently, choreographing and performing dances for showcases and competitions.
he was fully content to follow this pathway to the very end, happy with how far he’d come, well-decorated and with a growing reputation in the dance scene as young as he was, but music still called his name. so loudly that he found himself auditioning for infinite entertainment on a random saturday, seventeen and with absolutely nothing to lose. admittedly, his resume gives him a bit of an edge when it comes down to it, being as he was vocally unrefined and colorless as a rapper, but he comes in with a solid enough foundation, an impossible to ignore talent in dance, boundless charisma and the visuals to back it up. he’s also young and eager which is practically a neon sign hanging over his head in kpop terms.
he joins the debut lineup shortly after signing and debuts with indigo only 8 months later at eighteen years old as the main dancer, lead vocalist, sub rapper, and face of the group.
burn, baby, burn - taeyeon is feeling the long-term side effects of burn out following overlapping promotions with his solo debut and the beginning of the new infinite tour. he's doing a lot of drinking and moping, and making a lot of poor decisions. it doesn't help that he's a little bit in love with his bandmate who seems to have a million other options, if the new dispatch expose is anything to go off of. it isn't, not really, but taeyeon thinks he's allowed to be a little sad about it.
CAREER TIMELINE
2016
multiple episode run as a special host on weekly idol
call me baby fancam stage mix goes viral
2017
cast member on law of the jungle in new caledonia
became music bank MC
2018
lyrical and compositional credits on wings album (intro: boy meets evil, lie, MAMA, cypher 4, 21st century girl)
cast as “ato” in the miracle we met
2019
viral blood, sweat & tears fancam
2020
first male muse of bobbi brown cosmetics
joined the cast of “master in the house”
won the rookie award at the 2020 sbs entertainment award ("master in the house")
writing credits on every album that indigo released that year (love maze, airplane, pt 2, outro: tear (love yourself: tear), sign, 24/7 (don’t mess up my tempo), oasis (love shot repackage), let me in (20 cube) (border: day one), fever (single)
worked with samsung, polham and chaumet
2021
infinite merge!
official brand ambassador and model for versace
prominent commercial endorsements: the north face, gongcha, banila co
cast as “yeon si-eun” in weak hero class 1
became host of radio show “lee taeyeon’s best friend”
selected for studio choom AOTM (x)
2022
infinite tour start
face of brand and global ambassador of seoul fashion week spring 2022
muse for yves saint laurent beauty
writing credits on obsession album (ya ya ya, trouble, butterfly effect)
2023
scandal: (tw attempted outing) in may of this year, a thread drops on twitter from an anonymous source attempting to out taeyeon, filled with “evidence” of his sexuality, including creep shots of him with various men and coming in and out of bars that cater to the lgbtq community, using his history in waacking and tutting as fodder for their claims of his “abject femininity”. as it were, there’s an attempt made to prove that he’s in a secret relationship with a man, exacerbating rumors that have surrounded him for years. the initial strategy is to ignore it, which is to say, he’s told by infinite higher ups to ignore it while they handle it legally. and, for a while, he does. but when more and more posts start popping up on different platforms, and the tone of indigo’s fanbase shifts into something nasty, it stops sitting right with taeyeon and he takes it upon himself to post on instagram condemning the original poster for treating being gay like it’s something dirty or immoral, explaining that he’s not secretly dating anyone and that even if he were gay, it wouldn’t be anyone’s business or any reason to look at him any differently as an artist. he finishes his statement off by commending and recommending numerous out queer artists to his fans and reiterating that his interest is in cultivating a community of kind, open-hearted individuals, not bigots.
his post is received mostly positively, but is controversial enough that things take a pretty abrupt halt. the solo debut that he’d been working on for the better part of the last two years gets vaulted and his socials go dark. it’s as good as being put in time out in idol terms, and with 2023 being indigo’s least active year in their entire lifespan, he’s essentially left to rot and reflect. he doesn’t feel bad about it, continues to work with and endorse brands that have shown him love, and makes it a point to double down during promotions, publicly donating to various organizations. his role is notably lessened for the singular comeback they do have, but for the first time in a long time, he feels a sense of agency over himself and he realizes that living authentically where he is in his career is a real possibility, one that he has every intention of taking.
infinite tour end
2024
featured on kaiso's "3D"
debuted solo with the mini album "가까이 (close)" with pre-release single "can't" and title track "close"
it's IM AEJUNG (임애정), who is the MAIN DANCER of BRAVEHEART. i've heard whispers that the 25 (09/22/1999) year old is pretty EARNEST but lowkey WITHDRAWN. also, doesn't she remind you of HUH YUNJIN?
kprofile > expanded profile
SUMMARY
aejung was born on jeju island as the result of a situationship gone sour. while, objectively, her father more or less remained in the picture through gifts sent in the mail and phone calls on every birthday, it was entirely up to aejung's mother to keep things afloat. her mother worked as a seamstress in a local boutique as a part-time gig alongside her primary job as an office worker and the two lived in a small little house in a rocky little cove near one of the island's beaches.
because aejung's mother was often so busy trying to keep the bills paid and afford many of the luxuries that she'd grown up around with less effort, aejung was somewhat of a latchkey kid and much of her time was spent playing around in her mother's collection of old CDs and watching tv. if aejung had to pinpoint where she is now back to a singular moment, it would more than likely, unironically, be when she first saw an episode of hannah montana. from that moment forward, aejung was determined to be a popstar.
to her mother's credit, it hadn't started out as her avidly pushing aejung forward into every opportunity. in fact, aejung's mother had initially only given her the green light to humor her, but upon the realization that, even as young as she'd been, aejung had something - a legitimate effort was made to get her out there. it wasn't as easy to tap into entertainment off of the mainland, but the internet was a ready resource that aejung's mother was more than willing to use and, following a year or two of aejung mostly just singing to neighbors and classmates, doing cute little britney spears covers in mom-made outfits during town festivals and in shopping centers, aejung's mother opened up a channel for her on a video sharing website. and the rest was really history.
after being scouted, aejung moved to seoul and stayed with her uncle while her mother stayed in jeju to continue working. training was an experience that refined all of aejung's assets and reaffirmed her passion, even if it took her a while to warm up to the inherently social environment. she does a few odd jobs predebut as an effort by her company to get her face out there, which is fun, though, admittedly, the coming inevitability of an actual debut made her nervous.
when braveheart debuts, aejung is sixteen going on seventeen and the first few months feel like she's a guest in her own body, thrown around and working beyond her limits every day with fervour of a rookie. she starts big and over time learns why so many senior idols lament the lessons they'd had to learn in real time. years on, when she's finally an adult, she learns another lesson about the cruelty of men, sexualized beyond her own control following the publicized fantasies of a rapper in a song. the situation is handled, life goes on, but things are never quite the same.
now, braveheart enter their ninth year in the industry and aejung is finally at a point where she feels like she can take control of her life and her dream and live it in the way she'd always wanted to. the problem? she's not entirely sure what that looks like anymore. or where to start.
persona, who the hell am i? - as braveheart approach their ninth year as an active girl group, and aejung herself enters her ninth year in the industry, she's been looking back on her career and realizing how much of her story has been written on her behalf. she laments the bittersweet feeling her dream slightly to the left of where she'd pictured it and ventures to find a way to fully express herself as an artist while still fulfilling her role as a member of a team. whatever that looks like.
CAREER TIMELINE
PREDEBUT
posted various dance and vocal covers from the age of 9 to about 13; she was scouted by vibe productions after a recruiter came across her channel
appeared in epik high's music video for "spoiler + happy ending" as a heartbroken girl
modeled in advertisements for smart uniform and nikon
2016
debuted with braveheart!
featured on park kyung's "inferiority complex" (may)
minor scandal: started getting bashed by netizens for being "too confident" and having an "ego" when she responded to a question given to her by a radio host about what she felt her weakness was by saying "well, nothing." she was half-joking, but people addicted to picking female rookies apart had a field day. this was a fairly regular occurrence for braveheart's rookie era until seventeen-year-old aejung "got the hint" and was effectively "humbled" into making fewer statements along those lines.
2017
started as an MC on inkigayo
cameo in the webdrama "part time idol" (as herself)
co-hosted the inkigayo super concert in daejeon
2018
finished her MC contract with inkigayo
appointed as an endorsement model of kiss me cosmetics
played the role of "do hana" in a-teen
2019
played the role of "yoon jae-in" in he is psychometric
played the role of "do hana" in a-teen 2 (web drama)
sang on the ost for a-teen 2, "lean on me"
won the rising star award at the 2019 brand of the year awards; star of the year award at the korea drama awards for her role in he is psychometric
became a brand model for clothing brand lucky chouette
2020
opened a youtube channel for dance covers and began posting monthly performance videos with self-made choreography for a brief period of time
went semi-viral online for participating in the wap challenge on tiktok (x)
scandal: a rapper features explicit lyrics about aejung in a new release igniting speculation and harassment from netizens; vibe productions releases a statement denying any relationship between aejung and the rapper
2021
infinite merge!
scandal end: rapper releases an apology at the tail-end of the scandal, pulling the song from streaming services following threats of a lawsuit.
2022
infinite tour start
played the role of young park yeon-jin in the glory, pt 1
released her first solo single "touch" (march) - she was actually kind of nervous about the concept and styling, especially so soon after the lyric scandal had happened, but it wound up being really well received, particularly by international fans. she didn't promote it on music shows due to the tour, but did a special stage at an end of the year show.
2023
played the role of young park yeon-jin in the glory, pt 2
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
jacobvanloon
2087
dailybridgerton
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