// History //

Early Years

Born in Busan to a widowed mother, Yoon-hee’s earliest memories were of her mother’s singing. It flowed in a way that made people around her smile effortlessly, sweet, melodic, and welcoming. The soft tones filled the family’s tiny apartment all throughout the day, and Yoon would find herself transfixed by it, and by the time she learned to walk and talk, she danced and sang along. 

As the years passed, the songs slowly turned sour, melancholy twinging her songs, financial burden weighing heavy on the family as bills piled higher and higher. In an effort to change fortunes, and find more opportunity for work, her mother took what little she had saved up, and moved the family to the U.S when Yoon-hee was 6 years old.

The transition to American life was hard for Yoon, with a clash of cultures throwing her life out of balance, with her Korean upbringing drowning in American idealisms and norms. In an effort to bring balance to her life, Yoon-hee dove into music, learning piano, taking voice lessons, learning to write songs, everything she could to put feelings into lyrics and give herself an outlet to let all the bottled emotions out. 

This continued as Yoon-hee grew up, her mother and older brother supporting her as best they could, wanting her to turn this talent into something real, but tragedy struck. A month after Yoon-hee’s 15th birthday, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, bringing everything to a screeching halt. Her brother dropped out of university to help pay for medical bills, Yoon-hee herself taking up a part time job to help in any way she could.

However, despite the family’s best efforts, their mother passed away a year later, leading a grieving Yoon-hee to the one thing that made her feel the closest to her mother, singing. She went to her lyric book and wrote, line after line, crafting something that could bottle of the despair and longing and heartbreak, and turned it into music. A week later, late at night on an old youtube account, she posted a raw, emotional love letter to her mother, and went to bed.

When she awoke, her life had irrevocably changed. The music that she thought no one would ever listen to had gone viral, picking up steam and within the first week reaching 1 million views, Yoon-hee was thrust into viral fame like a boat in a tidal wave. She had phone calls and text messages blowing up her phone constantly, from news reporters, to record labels, to fans, all wanting to hear from the girl who sang her bottled up emotions out, and it all felt so very wrong.

Unfortunately, virality alone does not pay funeral costs, and Yoon-hee saw the way her brother toiled away trying to pay for the mounting medical and funeral bills. She looked through her options, and chose a label to sign with a week later, and became ΔURΔ, a pop star for the people to cheer for. She tried her best to stay afloat with the constant pressure to deliver music and songs that the label would approve of, with mixed success, but her fame continued to rise as the record label crafted her into a star to rise where they needed her.

A year has passed now since Yoon-hee became ΔURΔ. An album released, a tour has been announced, and she has tried her best to distance her real life, and this strange reality she finds herself in, and now on top of it all, her phone keeps glitching out… you can never depend on technology I guess.