ABOUT
U-Know Yunho (유노윤호)
aka
Yunho from 東方神起
Solo fandom name: 찐친 (jjinChin) (best friends)
Solo color: Yellow
South Korean Icon of K-Pop phenomenon: leader of duo group TVXQ! (동방신기) and Tohoshinki (THSK or 東方神起) - vocalist, dancer, rapper.
Emperor of Stage
Yunho (Jung YunHo or YoonHo) was born/registered on Feb 6th, 1986 in Gwangju in Honam province. The city is most known for Gwangju Uprising from 1980 and a source of many famous Korean artists, including actors and actresses, as well as idols. Yunho has a sister, both are extremely talented vocally yet Ji-Hye did not pursue singing career giving it up for her brother,
His family book indicates he has royal origins, hence his dad wasn't initially very keen on his only son becoming an idol. Yunho was groomed to become a lawyer like his dad. Only after first successes his father became his biggest fan.
Yunho spent his training and early days after debut commuting between Seoul and Gwangju to finish high school. It required travel by train for a couple of hours one way, and sometimes re-dying of hair before school started in the morning. He was determined to continue on his path to stardom and he worked hard before the debut performing small jobs, sleeping at subway stations, etc as his pride didn't allow him to ask his family for money.
Yunho debuted in S Korea as a leader of TVXQ (natively 동방신기 -DongBangShinKi) - then 5 boy group as part of agency SME, on Dec 26, 2003. Before this official debut he toured China with Shinhwa in 2002 and performed as backup dancer and rapper for Dana - both from the same agency. Yunho was interviewed - rare occurrence for a dancer and a trainee and his interview was published in a magazine. Yunho's boy group debuted in Japan in April 2005 followed by what members described as ordeal of learning the language by immersion (if you aren't familiar with the term - immersion means being dumped on your own among foreigners and learning by ear without help or much of it at least)
His first solo songs were Checkmate, Crazy Life and Spokes Man. He was partially responsible for writing those.
The tragedy hit in 2010 when the group TVXQ/Tohoshinki split permanently and SM later decided to keep TVXQ as duo on their roster. Tohoshinki had to wait a bit before being reinstated as duo in Japan.
TVXQ brought profit of 65% to SME of their all earnings in 2013, the duo had murderous schedules until they both left to serve in obligatory military service mid of 2015. That year also marked first Japanese solo for both, however, the mini solo albums were released as fan club only releases, today you still can find them on eBay (U Know Y).
First official Korean mini album was released only on June 12 2019, True Colors. The 2nd solo came on Jan 18, 2021 being a continuation of a theme for Yunho. See more about his solo releases in Music tab.
In Japan, Yunho releases under name of YUNHO from 東方神起 and in Korea under U-Know (short for U-Know Yunho), 유노윤호. Also keep in mind, there's another spelling, romanized, that some streaming services added recently (and SME did not correct) Jung Yoon-ho. If you are looking for his releases, it's best to enter the album name and at least U-Know.
New release, first official marketed Japanese release is coming Feb 9, 2022. The name of album is 君は先へ行く which at this point is only roughly translatable as "you go ahead /first"