Taeyong

Taeyong was born on July 1, 1995, in the Gwanak District of Seoul, South Korea. He and actor and television personality Hong Seok-cheon are distant cousins.

Taeyong was deeply interested in music as a child. He especially wanted to learn how to play the guitar. At the age of six, he began attending music school. He learned the guitar when he was 11 years old and often appeared as a performer at cultural programs in his school, where he garnered a small group of followers among other students and teachers.

He attended Nam-Seoul Middle School before enrolling at Namgang High School. He later was transferred to the School of Performing Arts Seoul, from where he graduated in the early 2010s.

Sometime in 2012, Taeyong was signed by SM Entertainment. On December 3, 2013, he was introduced alongside Seulgi and Jeno as members of SM Rookies. In July 2014, Taeyong put out the music video for ‘Open the Door’, a song he himself composed. Between August and October 2014, he was featured on the reality TV series ‘EXO 90: 2014’ and appeared in the music videos for the songs ‘Yo!’ and ‘Missing You’. He also worked with the group Red Velvet on the track ‘Be Natural’, which was released on October 13, 2014.

On April 4, 2016, SM Entertainment announced the formation of NCT’s first unit, NCT U, which, at the time, was comprised of six members: Taeil, Doyoung, Ten, Jaehyun, Mark, and Taeyong. Two singles were released in the following week. ‘The Seventh Sense,’ featuring Taeyong, Doyoung, Jaehyun, Mark, and Ten, was put out on 9 April, whereas ‘Without You,’ released on 10 April, and was performed by Taeil, Jaehyun and Doyoung.

In July 2016, the formation of NCT's second unit, NCT 127 was announced. Their first television appearance occurred on July 7 at Mnet’s music program ‘M! Countdown’, where they sang ‘Fire Truck’ and ‘Once Again’, tracks from their extended play ‘NCT #127’. Taeyong co-wrote ‘Fire Truck’ as well as ‘Mad City’. The EP was released on 10 July and subsequently topped the Korean music chart.

Their second EP, ‘Limitless’, was put out on January 6, 2017. It topped both the Korean and the US World charts and sold over 141 thousand copies in South Korea. As a lyricist, Taeyong contributed to the album by co-writing the songs ‘Good Thing’, ‘Back 2 U’, ‘Baby Don’t Like It’, and ‘Angel’. On May 12, 2017, the song ‘Around’, which was written by Taeyong in collaboration with Kim Boo-min was released. ‘Cherry Bomb’, their third extended play, was put out on June 14, 2017. One more extended play was released by Taeyong and others under the NCT 127 banner. It was ‘Chain’ and it was put out on May 23, 2018.

On March 14, 2018, they released their debut studio album, ‘NCT 2018 Empathy’. Taeyong contributed to four songs in this album as a lyricist, ‘Boss’, ‘Baby Don’t Stop’, ‘Yestoday’, and ‘Black on Black’. Furthermore, ‘The Seventh Sense’ was also included in this album. It peaked at the second spot on the Korean music chart and sold over 300,000 copies in the country.

In December 2014, Taeyong became the centre of a controversy, when Korean netizens accused him of being involved in a scam on an e-commerce website called Joonggonara when he was younger. The scandal originally began after the people found several comments that he had posted online years ago, which contained derogative language aimed towards a group of Japanese students. Furthermore, they discovered that Taeyong had set up several accounts from which he was selling broken or damaged figurines without providing prospective customers proper information. He was also overcharging them. Eventually, SM Entertainment was compelled to issue an apology on Taeyong’s behalf. In April 2016, when he became a member of NCT, the matter resurfaced again.

Taeyong was ranked 99th on the TC Candler: The 5th Annual Independent Critics List of World's 100 Most Handsome Faces of 2017.