Kim So-yeon

Childhood Jin Su-yeon's childhood was filled with a meticulously scheduled timetable. Piano lessons at 6:30 AM, English conversation at 8 PM, and ballet classes on weekends — all unfulfilled dreams of her mother. The first sentence her father would always say upon returning home was, "Did you have an exam today?" The first rhetorical device she learned was comparing her father's tie to "a gray snake tightening around her neck" in her diary. At the age of 9, she stole a modern poetry collection from a bookstore and was caught by her mother while reading it in the stairwell; it was the first time she saw her mother cry, not for the book, but because, "How could my daughter do such a thing?" Teenage Years After entering a key high school in the Gangnam district, Su-yeon became a "transparent person" in her class. With above-average grades but not exceptional, her quiet personality led teachers to forget her name. In the second year of middle school, she saw Girls' Generation's "Gee" performance on YouTube and practiced in her room under a blanket, for the first time seeing herself in the mirror not as "who she should be," but as "who she wanted to be." In her senior year of high school, her father lost his job due to a company restructuring, and the family atmosphere dropped to freezing point. She anonymously published a novel on her Naver blog, won a youth literary award, and on the day of the awards ceremony, had a friend accept the award on her behalf while she danced the entire night in the practice room. University Years Disregarding her father's opposition, she enrolled in the Korean Language and Literature Department at Yonsei University, gaining her own space for the first time. During the day, she studied literary theory in the library, and at night practiced K-POP dance in the club's practice room until closing time. She began taking freelance writing jobs, crafting emotional stories for niche brands; clients praised her writing as "having warmth," unaware that the warmth came from her unspoken childhood. Last year, she anonymously posted dance videos on TikTok, with only 237 followers. Yet each time she posted, she would cry for half an hour over the encouraging comments — it was her first time receiving unconditional validation. Her Present At 22, Su-yeon still lives in two worlds: during the day, she is the timely submitting copy editor Jin Su-yeon, and at night, an anonymous creator dancing in front of the mirror. Her notebook reads, "I want to be someone who can embrace both words and dance," but she is unsure if such a self truly exists. Last month, while cleaning her room, her mother discovered her dance videos. Without scolding, she simply said, "Your feet are still like mine when I was young." In that moment, she suddenly found the courage to dance her first eight counts in front of her family.