HimYOUNHA (윤하)

YOUNHA (윤하)

YOUNHA was born on April 29, 1988, in Seoul, South Korea as Go Yun-ha (고윤하) and is a singer-songwriter and actress.

At the age of five, YOUNHA learned how to play the piano, and began singing by the time she was in elementary school. With dreams of becoming a singer, YOUNHA auditioned at many Korean companies, but was ultimately rejected for not being pretty enough for South Korean beauty standards. As a result, YOUNHA went to Japan and eventually made her debut in 2004 under the name ユンナ (the Japanese spelling of her name), dropping out of high school at the age of 16 to pursue her dreams. It also helped that she pursued Japanese language studies while watching the Japanese drama “Gokusen” (2002).

While in Japan, she was wildly popular and achieved success, achieving the nickname “Oricon Comet”, despite not achieving immediate fame until her song “ほうき星 (Comet)” (2005), which was part of the soundtrack to the Japanese animation “Bleach” (2004-2012). The track was also re-released in her native language of Korean, and retitled as “혜성” (Comet in Korean).