Face Claim: Kim Seyong

Taehoon is not terribly tall (though also not terribly short), at only 172 cm/5' 7.5". He's gracefully willowy but he's also maintained his 6-pack that he developed from years of dance training followed by doing his military service before Yuseong's debut. He is relatively tan and the company tends to keep his hair relatively tidy and dark-mid brown. He has a dimple on his left cheek.

Taehoon tends to take on the role of the one who maintains balance in a group when people are arguing. He's generally fairly calm, so he's good at keeping himself from making arguments worse.

People don't look at Yuseong and think that Taehoon is the mischievous one. He in fact has a fairly serious (not necessarily inaccurate) image. However, he's the one who pulls the truly ingenious pranks in the group, and they always sneak up on all the other members (and everyone else around him).

In a group made of fairly loud people, Taehoon is generally the quiet one. He can hold his own, but he generally appears to have a certain sense of poise. (Secretly, half the time this is him just zoning out, but he's good at keeping track of what's going on in the background.)

Taehoon's life has been made up of a series of halfhearted or seemingly accidental decisions that eventually got him to the right place. He's learned over the years that sometimes he should just do what he wants to and not try to find the middle ground, but that trying to find the middle ground has a history of sometimes making his life more difficult. He's in many ways the mature one of Yuseong, despite being in the middle of the age range. He credits this in many cases from being from the least well off background and having done his military service so young. He does think that it may also be partially just personality though. He really hates disappointing people, so he will go out of his way to try to help people, and he really believes in people being the best person they could possibly be (and somehow, a lot of the people around him seem to rise to that).

MOTHER
Name: Min Yeonghee
Birth Year: 1974
Occupation: Preschool Teacher
Feelings Toward: Deep caring, complete lack of understanding. Taehoon and his mother think about the world extremely differently, and pretty much whenever they try to have a serious conversation, they end up confusing each other. As Taehoon has gotten older, especially after he did his military service, she has gotten better about just kind of accepting and supporting his decisions, but their conversations are kind of superficial because of it.

FATHER
Name: Yeo Seungsoo
Birth Year: 1968
Occupation: Korea National Park Service
Feelings Toward: Mutual respect. Taehoon's father also has next to nothing in common with him, but from when Taehoon was very young, Seungsoo accepted that. He figured that he would at least try to encourage Taehoon to do the things that he excelled at. For a long time, he seemed to hold out hope that Taehoon would go into a respected field, but as long as Taehoon is following his heart, his father isn't too worried about being able to make sure that he's provided for. He's still a little bit confused by the whole idol thing, but it makes Taehoon happy.

YOUNGER SISTER
Name: Yeo Taeyeong
Birth Year: (end of) 1994
Occupation: Middle School Teacher
Feelings Toward: Deep affection. They are just over 10 months apart in age, and they've always been close. She laughs at him for her students being his fans, but it's in a friendly way. She's one of the only people in his life who's has always supported him (even when she teases him).

MATERNAL UNCLE
Name: Min Yeongjin
Birth Year: 1974 (his mother's twin)
Occupation: Buddhist Monk
Feelings Toward: Deep fondness. When he was very little, he always thought of going to temple as going to see his uncle, and it's part of the reason why no matter what temples seem like a happy and safe space to him.

PATERNAL UNCLE
Name: Yeo Seungwoo
Birth Year: 1963
Occupation: High School Teacher
Feelings Toward: Mixed. His uncle was his math teacher in high school, and he was the one who suggested the idea of Taehoon enlisting right after high school if he didn't know what to do with himself. They've never been the closest, but he does respect his uncle quite a lot.

MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER
Name: Sun Ahji
Birth Year: 1955
Occupation: was a stay at home mom and housewife, helped raise her grandchildren
Feelings Toward: Fondness. His grandmother was one of the ones who looked after him and his younger sister the most when they were little since both of their parents worked. He misses her cooking.

MATERNAL GRANDFATHER
Name: Min Bohui
Birth Year: 1949
Occupation: Retired School Teacher
Feelings Toward: Fondness. He learned Chinese from his grandfather, whose mother had immigrated from Shandong during the early 20th century as a very young child. He was always the most disappointed in himself for not being good at school for his granfather's sake.

PATERNAL GRADMOTHER
Name: Ong Elizza Yeonghee
Birth Year: 1945
Occupation: housewife, was a stay-at-home mom
Feelings Toward: Distant but OK relationship. He learned a few words of Tagalog and Spanish from her as a kid (just enough to show off now, though his Spanish has gotten better since). Her mom came from the Philippines.

PATERNAL GRANDFATHER
Name: Yeo Hyunjung
Birth Year: 1937
Occupation: Retired School Teacher
Feelings Toward: Sort of dislikes. While Taehoon feels bad for disappointing his maternal grandfather by being not so good at school, his paternal grandfather always tried to make him feel guilty about it, and also scorned the idea of him caring about dance so much.

BANDMATE / BOYFRIEND
Name: Joshua Kim Jaeseo
Birth Year: January 17, 1993
Occupation: Dreams Ent Idol, Yuseong's leader
Feelings Toward: He's glad that Joshua is the leader because otherwise he'd probably be stuck doing it. They were very close when Taehoon first joined the group, but ended up not quite the closest for a while as Taehoon integrated into the group more and became best friends with Shihyun. These days, they're back to being super close, and Taehoon realized that he had a crush (it only took several years to happen). They've not been dating very long (since just after Yuseong's first win), and Taehoon feels comfortable and safe with Josh, but also very cautious because of their public image.

BANDMATE
Name: Lee Shihyun
Birth Year: Oct. 31,1993
Occupation: Dreams Ent Idol, Yuseong's main vocal
Feelings Toward: Fond exasperation, but a little bit more distance than there used to be. Taehoon views it as his group duty to wrangle Shihyun and also to pester him. They're very close in age, and come from extremely different backgrounds. A lot of their fans ship them though the percentage has been dropping recently (to which Taehoon would say, why would you ship me with this idiot), which is partially because Taehoon used to like to bug Shihyun by flirting with him because even though in theory both of them knew it was for show, it got a reaction every single time. They've been a bit more distant recently because there was a whole thing with Shihyun where that led to Taehoon figuring out his own sexuality but also made things weird between them because Shihyun wasn't willing to commit to his own actions or actually talk about things.

BANDMATE
Name: Fan Qiwang (Kiwoong)
Birth Year: Feb. 10, 1997
Occupation: Dreams Ent Idol, Yuseong's main rapper
Feelings Toward: Very fond. During the strange first month and a half of Taehoon being a trainee before he debuted, he managed to get on Qiwang's good size by speaking a little bit (of very childish) Chinese. While the basically always speak in Korean, Taehoon will make sure to look out for Qiwang when he's really tired and struggles with Korean.

BANDMATE
Name: Kim Kangwan
Birth Year: Oct. 24, 1999
Occupation: Dreams Ent Idol, Yuseong's maknae/main vocal, Songwriter/Producer
Feelings Toward: Intensely protective, especially after everything that happened (and Kangwan coming out to the group). He had a bit of a strange interaction with Kangwan at first because the younger boy had so much more idol world experience than he did, but there was a big enough age gap that he was definitely older brother of the dynamic. (He still sometimes goes to Kangwan for singing help though.)

Taehoon was born and grew up in Taean-gun, Chungnam, where his mother was a preschool teacher and his father worked for the Korean National Park Service. His younger sister was born just over 10 months after him. His family was fairly poor, but they were never so poor that food or housing was something that he felt worry over. He grew up in a sort of unusually mixed family, with his maternal grandfather's mom having come from Shandong, China and his paternal grandmother's mom having come from the Philippines. He learned some Mandarin, Tagalog, and Spanish as a child because of this; however, the only one he could be considered as speaking (though rather childishly) is Mandarin.



His family was fairly religiously Buddhist, and before he was born, his mother's twin brother had joined the Buddhist temple in their hometown as a monk. He thought of going to temple as visiting his uncle for his early childhood, and even now, he still attends temple when he can (though that's harder with his busy idol schedule).



Taehoon started doing martial arts at the temple when he was a very young child, and then joined more competitive Tae Kwon Do classes when he hit elementary school. He loved forms and the grace of the movement, but he hated sparring. Though he did eventually earn his black belt, by the time he was about midway through elementary school, his Tae Kwon Do teach had suggested that he try dance, and he found the one thing that he truly loved to do. He took classes in just about every dance class that the one dance studio in his small town near the edge of a national forest had to offer. By the time he hit high school, he was taking buses to the bigger towns further north in the county to get to more dance classes.



Taehoon was not a terribly successful student. This was somewhat disappointing in a family that was mostly made up of school teachers, but his younger sister made up for it in spades. The only class that Taehoon was even remotely good at in high school was his Chinese class, which he took as an elective, and he sort of felt like that shouldn't count, since he had a head start. However, he did get the chance to study abroad for a year in high school because of dance. He spent a year at a private high school focused in the arts near San Francisco. However, while he learned some English while he was there, he had latched on to a few of his Korean-American classmates who were fluent Korean speakers fairly early on, and he kind of regretted not focusing more on English.



He graduated high school with grades that were not nearly good enough to go to any decent university. At the time, he felt horrible for disappointing his maternal grandfather, who was a very important person in his life. (Since talking to Joshua about this, he suspects that he probably has at least one learning disability, but he didn't know that at the time.) His mother insisted that dance was not a career path, and he didn't really know how to follow it to any sort of meaningful career. At the suggestion of his paternal uncle, he decided to enlist right after high school to complete his mandatory military service, thinking it might give him some sense of direction.



It really didn't, though it did help him figure out how to focus on things he didn't enjoy better. He finished his service near the end of 2014. While he was staying with a dance friend in Seoul during the week after he completed his military service, his friend dragged him along to an audition with Dreams Ent and bugged him into trying too, for fun. Two weeks later, Taehoon got selected to become a trainee, much to his own surprise, but he saw it as an opportunity to actually pursue a career in the one thing that he'd really cared about.



He wasn't entirely ready to be thrown into a trainee group that was preparing to debut very shortly, and less than two months after he joined the company, still feeling very uncertain of his singing ability, but already basically leading dance practices, he debuted in Yuseong. His mother was at first not terribly happy with his decision, but the groups resulting popularity and success slowly brought her around. For a while, Taehoon felt like he was the odd one out in some ways, not having trained with the others for nearly as long, but he found ways to bond with each of them, and he quickly became the peacekeeper and mom of the group. (And the company was very supportive of him because they liked that they wouldn't have to worry about his military service, and he saved them on dance instructors.)



Over the years he's grown into the role of being the peacekeeper in Yuseong as the generally most level headed member. After a weird on again off again not quite actually a thing between him and Shihyun that led to Taehoon figuring out for sure that he wasn't straight, the two of them ended up a little more awkward than they once were (though not to the point where fans have really noticed the difference other than some speculation that they had a bit of a fight at one point), but it did help him end up really really close to Josh again. He eventually realized that he actually had a rather major crush on Josh (that had been around for a good long while, just subtle), and eventually, they started very secretively dating.

Hello! My name is Etienne!
I was born in 1989.
My pronouns are he/him.