#yijen

Full Name: Kang Yízhēn

Name Meaning:

Surname: 江 (jiang)/강 (gang) meaning “river”.

Given Name: 怡 (yí) meaning “joy," "happiness," "harmony" and 真 (zhēn) meaning “real,” "genuine."

Korean Name: Kang Yijen (강 이젠)

Stage Name: Siren

Face Claim: cherry.entao

Vocal Claim: lily from NMIXX, juliaye314 on douyin

Dance Claim: AleXa, Sylvie Guillem

Position: Soloist

Birthday: October 6th, 2000

Chinese Zodiac Sign: Dragon

Western Zodiac Sign: Libra sun, Pisces moon, Sagittarius rising

Height: 165 cm (5′5”)

Blood Type: BD- (this is actually my grandmother’s blood type, i found it so cool that there’s literally no information about it because it’s so rare ♡)

Birthplace: Busan, Korea

Nationality: Taiwanese, Korean

Family: Father (N/A), Mother, and her Grandparents

Hobbies: Dancing, singing, songwriting, producing, painting, and language learning

Twitter Account: @sirennn

EARLY LIFE

Yijen, later known as Siren, was born in the city of Busan, Korea to her Taiwanese mother and Korean father. As a baby, she was known to be an excellent dancer (i.e. uncannily swaying her arms in time to random noises). Growing up, she frequently traveled between Taipei and Busan to stay with family, and thus grew up bilingual, speaking both Mandarin and Korean, as well as English in school.

At barely 3 years old, her mother had scraped together enough money to enroll her daughter in ballet classes. She excelled in them and gained a strong reputation for being an amazing dancer as she aged, even skipping a few years/grades of classes in order to join more advanced ones. Despite being younger than most of her peers, she frequently snagged the lead role in productions.

She was an excellent student, and always managed to stay top of her class in order to make her parents proud. Her photographic memory was part of the reason why she excelled, but loved learning new things from all different types of topics nonetheless.

However, her obsession to excel at everything she set her mind to stemmed from a much deeper problem. In 2010, after many years of abuse and torment, her father abruptly left and took her family's life savings with him. With all their money depleted, Yijen and her mother struggled to make ends meet as her Korean grandparents cut off contact with them and they couldn’t afford to move to Taiwan. Yijen was forced to quit her hobbies and give up her dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer in order to survive.

Yijen started busking just to earn a little bit more cash after her mother took up multiple jobs alongside her normal career as a teacher. A dance team happened to walk by one time and suggested that she audition for a music company. And so she did. She submitted a video to multiple entertainment companies and thought nothing of it, trying not to get her hopes up. To her surprise, she received an email from a small company called BigHit Entertainment about a week later. After interviews, she signed to BigHit in January 2011 and left for Seoul shortly afterwards.

TRAINEE LIFE

Yijen trained with BigHit for 2 years until BTS’ debut, after which she was transferred to SM, until finally debuting with KQ in 2017 as a soloist. BTS acted as her older brothers and introduced her to the world of hip-hop and music production, and she credits them as her biggest influences in music as they heavily impacted her style. SM “was tough,” and Yijen doesn’t talk often about how rigorous her training was there, or some of the cruel practices or strict diets they put her through. She entered KQ with much of her confidence destroyed, but training with and befriending ATEEZ helped her rebuild herself, allowing her to officially enter the industry with poise and confidence.

AFTER DEBUT

She debuted a year before ATEEZ on November 6th, 2017, at 17 years old. As an all-arounder, she quickly took the world by storm with her unique sound, seamlessly blending multiple genres together to create EP’s anyone could enjoy. As for her dance style, she’s known for her mix of ballet, hip-hop, and other forms such as popping, locking, and voguing to create her own choreographies.

Oppa collector who? Just kidding, but she won over many due to her naturally sweet, ambiverted, and humble personality. She’s known to have acquaintances and friends from many different groups due to her company-jumping as a trainee.

She’s collabed with multiple groups, like BTS, ATEEZ, SEVENTEEN, and Red Velvet as well as other soloists like Chung Ha and ZICO, just to name a few!

TRIVIA

a/n: this turned out more like general head canons than a simple list, i hope you still like it :D

her fan base is called ocean, and the fandom colors are ocean green, blue, and white

she has a light splash of freckles across her cheeks and nose but usually covers it with makeup

her favorite color is green, but more on the sage-y side

loves plants, during v-lives her potted prides of joy can be seen adorning her shelves and desk in her studio

hates hates hates horror movies and games and avoids them at all costs

team hufflepuff

her meyers-briggs personality type is enfp-t

during the tonight show with jimmy fallon, when asked what she would be doing if she wasn’t in the k-pop industry, she said she’d hope to be touring in the ballet

her representative emoji is an otter

very neat although her creative process has been described as spontaneous and an organized chaos

it’s well known she struggles with insomnia and OCD and is very open about how she manages it throughout her day, hoping to de-stigmatize it

it’s also theorized among the community that she’s LGBTQ+, and while she hasn’t explicitly stated it she utilizes “bisexual lighting” in a few of her songs and doesn’t restrict the pronouns of the subjects of her love songs to just those of the opposite gender. saesangs have also released photos of what appeared to be her at seoul’s pride parades, but for the sake of her privacy and safety those have been ignored or removed

knows many languages like mandarin/hokkien (taiwanese dialect), korean, japanese, english, german, some thai, a little bit of spanish, and a dash of french, she also knows some basic phrases in arabic

on that note she’s very proud of her heritage and speaks about the mistreatment she suffered just for being half-korean. some of her songs touch on this point and feature mandarin phrases or chinese styles of dance, but she also releases mandarin versions of her albums alongside japanese ones and will sometimes hold v-lives in mandarin

she’s delved into acting a little and starred in a couple k-dramas, saying that it’s really fun and allows her to meet new people she usually wouldn’t just by being in the music industry

her favorite drink is ube bubble milk tea while her favorite food is her mom’s steamed pork buns, and you’re considered one of her closest friends when she gifts you some

her favorite dessert on the other hand are brownies and she isn’t ashamed to indulge in them often, sometimes showing her baking process while on v-live

she cooks on v-live a lot too, which may or may not have turned into her own cooking show with idol guest appearances

i hope you love her as much as i do and will stay tuned for what’s about to come!

— bee