Face Claim: Kim Sunoo

Yeowoo is about 165 cm/5' 5" and slight and willowy in his build. Especially when he was younger, he was often described as doll-like in his appearance, but it's not become less true, people are just less likely to say it. He's got soft, delicate features and big dark brown eyes and a face that pouts easily and is in general very expressive. He keeps his naturally dark hair relatively short, but with enough length to do some styling. 

He's got his ears pierced twice on the right, and once on the left and generally wears silver hoops in them, though he takes them out when he wants to pull of sweet and clean cut as an appearance. He doesn't have an eyebrow piercing (yet) but he has a glue on one that he wears pretty regularly, though not always on the same spot. He plans to get one, along with his first tattoo once he turns 18.

He has a fairly strong prescription and wears glasses occasionally, but prefers to wear contacts because it's a lot harder to drop them. Sometimes he has to wear his glasses when he's been having headaches though.

Yeowoo is either very shy, soft-spoken, and almost prim, seeming like the most straight-laced person imaginable. Or he is extremely flamboyant and ready to argue with or befriend just about anyone. There is no in between.

Yeowoo learned to really lean into his natural personality as a defense mechanism. If he couldn't hide who he was, he was going to be himself so loudly and in people's faces that they'd back off.

Yeowoo loves fashion and good food and music and acting and literature. He's in general very good at school, but he doesn't love most of it, it just comes pretty naturally to him.

He hates being physically weak, and wishes that he could be more active without risking his health. He covers for it by acting like it is a personal choice to be like that lot of the time because he doesn't want to talk about his health problems, thanks.

He's scared that he'll get really sick again at some point. He's scared of getting hurt or rejected for being gay. He hates people acting like he's somehow weird for being himself. He also hates that Americans are so bad at saying his name.

Mother
Name: Kim Yerin
Birth Year: 1960
Occupation: Stay-at-Home Mom, artist
Feelings Toward: Love, frustration, like they are starting to exist in different worlds. She cares for him and accepts him, but she doesn't understand where he's coming from a lot of the time. He gets his artsy-ness from her though.

Father
Name: Eum Kanghyun
Birth Year: 1955
Occupation: Software Engineer, OS design
Feelings Toward: Complicated. They really don't see eye to eye, especially because his dad is awfully old to be his dad from his point of view. His dad has provided him all the opportunities though, and he knows that his dad cares for him a lot. They're tense around Yeowoo's sexuality though.

Oldest Brother
Name: Eum Yeobin
Birth Year: 1982
Occupation: Chemical Engineer - in Korea
Feelings Toward: Distant, didn't know him well as a kid, really doesn't know him well now. They are 24 years apart, and when he was little, and Yeobin took him somewhere, people thought that Yeobin was his dad, so his older brother stopped taking him places.

Oldest Sister
Name: Eum Yeomi
Birth Year: 1989
Occupation: Stay-at-Home Mom - in Korea
Feelings Toward: Misses her and her kids, even though she's 17 years older than him, they were close before he left Korea, and they regularly talk still. She was actually the first person he came out to. She has three kids (Jeon Ahri b.2009, Jeon Ahmin b. 2011, Jeon Ahyoung b. 2013), and Yeowoo was kind of a big brother figure to them.

Older Brother
Name: Eum Yeomin
Birth Year: 1993
Occupation: High School Teacher - English, in Korea
Feelings Toward: Distant, used to hate him because Yeomin bullied him when he was younger, but now the distance has made him just not care.


Older Sister
Name: Eum Yeori
Birth Year: 1999
Occupation: Nurse - Houston, TX
Feelings Toward: The only sibling who also came to the US, they weren't close until they were the only two Korean kids in a small school district in the outskirts of Houston. She's seven years older than him, and only did her senior year of high school in the US before starting college there, but she lived at home all through college (she graduated, right before they moved and started her first real nursing job, staying behind in Houston, but she's in the city now and has found a place for herself).

Yeowoo was born in Daejeon, South Korea. He was a bit of a surprise for his parents, since when he was born, his mother was 46 and his father was 51. Yeowoo was decidedly the baby of the family as well, with older siblings 24, 17, 13, and 7 years his senior. Yeowoo was born nearly two and a half months early, and spent the first three months of his life in the hospital, much of that in intensive neo-natal care. While overall, he's considered to have thrived as a child for having been born so early, he does have long term health concerns derived from being born so early, including a minor heart problem and some pretty major respiratory issues. He's also allergic to a lot of things, and in general has a pretty weak immune system, which doctors have attributed to probably at least being connected to him being a preemie, since none of his siblings have similar concerns.

As a child, Yeowoo was small and delicate and general kind of babied. He didn't know his eldest brother super well, since at 24 years his senior, Yeobin was actually doing his military service when Yeowoo was born. After an incident when Yeowoo was a toddler and someone thought that he was his eldest brother's son, Yeobin was also reluctant to take him places and do things with him. In contrast, he was very close with his eldest sister, Yeomi, as a child, and she watched out for and cared for him a lot. She got married when he was still quite young and has three kids of her own, who Yeowoo in many ways played an older brother role to. He stayed in close contact with her when he came to the US with their parents.

Yeowoo's first real bully was the younger of his two older brothers. They don't really have interactions anymore, but from what he gathered, Yeomin pretty intensely hated him for basically absorbing all of their parents' attention. Yeowoo really blossomed more as a person once his older brother moved out of the house.

His father worked as a computer scientist, focusing on operating system development, at an international company, and his mom was a stay at home mom and artist. From before Yeowoo was even born, they knew that there was a very good chance of Yeowoo's father at some point getting transferred to one of his company's locations in the US, so both Yeori and Yeowoo were enrolled in an international school with education in both English and Korean. Yeowoo spent most of his childhood unable to keep up with a lot of his peers and often sick, but he did very well academically, finding it a place that he was able to thrive.

When Yeowoo was 10 and Yeori was 17, their father was transferred to the location of his business in Houston, Texas, and the family relocated (the three eldest siblings stayed behind in Korea, where they had lives built for themselves). Yeowoo entered 5th grade in the US, young for his year (birthday technically actually a day after the cut off, but his academic record and his dad's willingness to argue for his placement got him put in 5th instead of 4th). While Yeowoo had mostly been socially ignored in Korea, in a small suburban district in the outskirts of Houston where he and his sister were the only Korean students, he found himself the regular focus of bullying, especially because was physically small and weak and had both no interest in nor any ability in sports.

Yeowoo's stubborn streak really began to show at that point, but it also unfortunately for his mental health coincided with him starting to realize his sexuality and being really bad at hiding that part of himself. Being a delicate, soft looking guy with a lot of stereotypically feminine interests didn't serve him well socially through middle school and the start of high school in Texas. He did make a few passing friends, mostly girls, but a lot of his refuge was in keeping up with media from Korea and buckling down on his studying. He did find that he had a little bit more freedom to express himself through choir and theatre in school, but even then, he regularly felt isolated.

In middle school, the first person that Yeowoo actually came out to was his eldest sister in Korea, over a phone call. She was very accepting of him and encouraging, and he's since come out to the rest of the family that he's in regular contact with (parents, Yeori). Yeori also took it relatively well, though she wasn't particularly surprised. His mom was supportive but doesn't really get it. His father is still tense around the subject but hasn't tried to change Yeowoo's mind.

Partway through his sophomore year of high school, his father was transferred again, this time to the Seattle location of his company, and Yeowoo was thrilled at the possibility of being in a liberal area that was known for being accepting of the queer community. He'd developed a kind of in your face expression of himself over high school to that point, but he was very ready for the move, if a little bit sad that Yeori was staying behind in the Houston area, having just started a nursing job there. The two of them had become close after their move to the US.

Yeowoo moved to Cedar Beach during the second half of his sophomore year, diving into high school in a new place, hoping to make some good friends during the rest of high school and hoping to leave behind the image of the sickly kid a little bit. His health is still delicate, and he's got a complicated IEP that mostly deals with PE and the fact that he can't be marked tardy for taking a while to get across campus. Because of moving between school districts (and honestly between states with different requirements) and just being generally ahead in some of his subjects, he ended up in classes with mostly juniors (and some seniors). He also was able to find a community that he meshed with much better than any of his experiences in Texas, joining the GSA and Asian American Clubs among other extra-curriculars that suited him and his interests.

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