Early career

Born on March 29, 1991, in Daegu, the third-largest city in South Korea, Irene grew up speaking the local Daegu dialect.

She auditioned as a trainee with the agency SM Entertainment in 2009 and had to spend a lot of time mastering the Seoul accent, in addition to her other regular singing and dance practice, during her five years of training.

Irene began to build her public profile before joining Red Velvet. She appeared in Canadian-born singer Henry Lau’s music video 1-4-3 in 2013.

After making her debut as an official member of Red Velvet in 2014 – with the release of the single, Happiness – she also featured in Kyuhyun’s single At Gwanghwamun later that year.

Red Velvet’s successful singles include the chart-topping Power Up and Red Flavor.

Queen of commercials

This year, Irene became the “face” the alcoholic drink, Chamisul soju, produced by HiteJinro, South Korea’s leading liquor maker, which is known for featuring the hottest female celebrities in its television adverts.

HiteJinro has released two themed adverts, of 15 seconds and 30 seconds duration, showing Irene, dressed in a green cloak and hood, walking alone in a snowy forest. She stops when she finds a drop of clear liquid on a tree branch, which later turns into a glass of Chamisul soju.

Feedback from viewers about the commercials appears to have been positive. Within 16 hours of the advertisement first appearing on YouTube in January, the 30-second video gained more than one million views.

At the last count, the two commercials have together attracted 32 million views.

Star-turn as TV host

She has shown her talent as a television host on several television programmes, including teaming up with actor Park Bo-gum – the recent star of the drama television series, Encounter – as presenters of the weekly music show, Music Bank from 2015 to 2016.

Newspapers praised the duo’s performances and natural on-screen chemistry, with critics saying they had formed the best partnership in the long-running show’s history.

Besides hosting television shows in South Korea, Irene has also taken part in a number of concert tours, including the 2017 Music Bank World Tour, featuring live concerts by numerous K-pop groups, in Singapore and Jakarta, Indonesia, and the 2018 Super Concert, featuring K-pop performers, in Taipei, Taiwan.

‘Game’ performance

Irene made her acting debut in 2016, when she received positive reviews for her lead performance in the web drama Female Employees of a Game Company, as mobile phone game programmer who specialises in coding.

Based on the Webtoon – online comic – of the same name, it focuses on the lives – and loves – of Irene’s character, Ah-reum, and her female colleagues at the gaming company. The drama attracted an impressive two million viewers a month after its release.

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