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Jack Lau

K-pop girl group Twice have enjoyed phenomenal success around the world since their debut in 2016.
Their music videos have received millions of views on YouTube and the girl band’s releases have soared on global sales charts.
Although their “Twicelights” tour has been cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, Twice recently released a repackaged album which include Swings, a J-pop-style track on which Dahyun, one of the group’s main rappers, features prominently.
Here’s a look at Dahyun’s life so far.

Her early life
Dahyun was born Kim Da-hyun in Seongnam, the second largest city in South Korea’s Gyeonggi province, in May, 1998. As a young girl, she had many dreams, including becoming a piano teacher or court prosecutor, she said during Star Road: Twice, a variety show featuring the group.
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Dahyun auditioned for all the “big three” K-pop idol agencies. Before auditioning at JYP Entertainment, she had previously auditioned for SM Entertainment and YG Entertainment. Her big break came when a talent scout from JYP attended a dance festival Dahyun was taking part in.
Most performances involved groups of high school or university students, but that did not stop Dahyun – who was then in her second year of middle school – from performing solo.
The JYP scout was impressed by Dahyun’s self-choreographed performance to a track she had edited herself, and asked if she wanted to join JYP as a trainee.


That marked the start of Dahyun’s three years and four months of training at JYP.
As a trainee, Dahyun appeared in music videos released by established K-pop acts, including Stop Stop It by K-pop boy group GOT7 and R.O.S.E, a J-pop single released by Wooyoung of boy group 2PM.
In 2015, she took part in idol survival programme Sixteen and ranked fifth after the final rounds of voting, earning a place in the final line-up of what would become Twice.

Her role in Twice
Dahyun is a lead rapper and main vocalist in Twice. She specialises in softer raps at a slower tempo, with her lighter tone complementing the heavier colour of Chaeyoung, the outfit’s main rapper.
While Dahyun shared rap lines with Chaeyoung in early Twice tracks, both rappers have been performing solo rap lines more recently. Dahyun has risen to prominence in newer tracks such as Feel Special from September 2019 and the recent Japanese track Swing.
She also co-wrote the rap parts of the track Missing U from the 2017 album Twicetagram and the lyrics to Trick It and 21:29, both from the 2019 EP Feel Special.

Her solo career
During Twice’s second tour, “Twiceland Zone 2 – Fantasy Park”, Dahyun staged a full solo performance of Dahyunism, a cover version of a song by Rain, one of the first K-pop stars to break into the Western music scene in the 2000s.
Apart from her work in music, Dahyun also appeared as a regular panellist on the variety show Weekly Idol in 2016 and served as an announcer on Idol Star Athletics Championships, a show featuring K-pop idols competing in sport events.
Her image
Dahyun’s nickname is “Heung Dubu”, she told Cosmopolitan magazine. The nickname translates as “excited tofu” and was given to her due to her outgoing personality and fair complexion.
Dahyun went viral when she called JYP Entertainment CEO Park Jin-young an idiot on the variety show Knowing Bros for getting an answer wrong during a game of charades.
When Park showed that he did not understand the rules of the game, Dahyun said: “Why are you so bad at playing the game, Jin-young?”, ignoring the honorifics traditionally used in Korean culture to address a superior.
Still, Dahyun has said she is normally a quiet and serious person.

In her own words
The journey to becoming a K-pop star is full of hardship with its intense training and new-found pressure as a public figure, but Dahyun believes fortitude is the key to success.
“Many people must be wondering if they’re heading the right way. You have to run and fall, hurting yourself and suffering from pain,” she said in an interview with Japanese news website Modelpress. “But since this whole process is about going forward step by step, those who get back up to continue running without giving up will succeed.”
Dahyun told the Korean edition of Cosmopolitan magazine she becomes stronger by reading. “I read several books at once. There’s one that my sisters have been teasing me with. Was it How to Speak like a Champion? So my sisters were making fun of me by saying, ‘Are you studying to win first place again?’”


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Despite dreams of becoming a piano teacher or court prosecutor, when Dahyun was given her chance to impress JYP Entertainment, she took it
Dahyun’s nickname ‘Heung Dubu’ translates as ‘excited tofu’, and represents her outgoing personality and fair complexion



As the lead rapper and vocalist of girl band Twice, Dahyun has become one of K-pop’s most popular artists. She attributes her success to her mental strength and fortitude.


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Fame and celebrity