PERSONAL LIFE
Sunmi was born as Sun Mi, in 1992, in the provincial town of Iksan, North Jeolla province. She was raised by a single father with two younger brothers. She revealed that she decided to become a K-pop singer at the age of nine after her father became bedridden with an illness. Sunmi has said she thought this was the only way to make quick money before reaching adulthood.
After attending auditions as a primary school student, she was taken on by entertainment company JYP Entertainment at the age of 11.
Sunmi has opened up about why she made the choice to become a celebrity when she was young.
She appeared as a guest on the 20180205 episode of tvN’s new talk show “Talkmon.” When it was her time to tell a story, Sunmi said, “To be honest, this is something that I’ve tried not to talk about. The reason that I decided to become a celebrity was my father.”
She continued, “It was when I was in elementary school, I think in the fourth grade. I lived with my father and my two younger brothers. But my father was a bit sick. He then continued to get more and more sick, and he had to stay at home and wear a respirator. His condition then became worse and he was hospitalized.”
“Our family’s situation was too difficult,” she said. “I was the head of the household, our father couldn’t even move around. I worried about what I could do to solve our problems. I considered everything.”
Sunmi explained that her teachers had been kind to her, and suggested that she become a teacher too. However, she knew that it would take her another ten to fifteen years of studying before she could become a teacher, and she needed to be able to earn money for her family in the meantime.
“I knew that wouldn’t work, so I thought to myself, ‘I have to become a celebrity,'” she explained. “I thought of it as the path that would allow me to make money quickly.”
Her younger brothers, who were 10 and 12 years old in Korean age, attended to their sick father while Sunmi focused on training so she could debut.
Her father passed away only three months before her debut.
Sunmi also shared that when she had gone home for her father’s funeral, she had seen a letter written to her by her father. “At the end of the letter he’d written, ‘Please be my daughter in the next life too,'” she said.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO MUSIC
Sunmi is very involved in her music.
In Wonder Girls, she learned how to play the bass for their 2015 comeback. She is credited as a co-writer and co-producer for the tracks Rewind, Back, and Faded Love, on their album, Reboot. She is also credited as a co-writer and co-producer for Why So Lonely and To the Beautiful You.
She is credited as a co-writer for Gashina, Heroine, and Curve.
She is credited as a co-composer for the rest of her songs on her EP Warning and all her subsequent singles.
She is the only credited songwriter for all of the songs on her EP Warning, and all of her subsequent singles.
In July 2019, Sunmi took to her Instagram to call out some of the negative comments left under a Korean report announcing that she'd comeback with a self-composed song. One of the comments she focused in on stated that most idols don't actually contribute to self-composed songs and that the other credited writers and composers are doing most of the work.
Sunmi replied via Instagram caption saying that while you need help from many people to create something, the person in the lead has to know what story they're telling, how to express it and execute it, otherwise the other people involved will be confused.
She also said: "I don't put on the appearance of working on music just to put my name on the album credits. I think hard about each part of the process of making lyrics, melody and arrangement, and the album... It's your personal prejudice that most idols including me are like that and I hope it's not believed as true".
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