Huh Yunjin From Le Sserafim on Her Crazy Pre-Debut Story, Almost Quitting K-Pop and Collabing With Katseye

In an alternate timeline, Huh Yunjin might be grappling with the usual pressures of college life. After grueling years of K-pop training in South Korea left her physically and mentally exhausted, she had committed to a conventional future—securing university admission, paying her deposit, and spending nearly two months on applications. Then, the very next day, her phone rang with an offer that would change everything: a call to join LE SSERAFIM. "It literally felt like the stars were telling me where to go," she tells Variety's "Up Next" podcast, marking her debut as a podcast guest. ("I love to yap," she quips, explaining her eagerness.) Within just two weeks of that pivotal moment, she was boarding a flight back to Seoul, ready to launch her career. This twist of fate, as Yunjin acknowledges, highlights the entertainment industry's unpredictable nature, where timing and opportunity often converge in surprising ways. "Yunjin's story is a textbook example of how resilience and readiness can turn a near-miss into a breakthrough moment," notes Park Ji-eun, an industry analyst at Seoul Music Daily. The singer's journey underscores a broader truth: in K-pop, where competition is fierce and success often hinges on split-second decisions, persistence can rewrite one's destiny.

That anecdote, delivered with the amused disbelief of someone still processing its improbability, has gained fresh relevance this month. On June 12, 2026, LE SSERAFIM unveiled "Iconic by Mistake," a collaboration single with fellow HYBE girl groups KATSEYE and ILLIT. This marks a historic first: K-pop girl groups releasing an official song together without forming a supergroup, reflecting HYBE's strategy of fostering cross-group synergy. The track, a pointed retort to online critics, debuted at No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100—a testament to its widespread appeal. Unsurprisingly, its success is anything but accidental. The collaboration arrives during a busy period for LE SSERAFIM, who dropped their second studio album, "PUREFLOW Pt. 1," on May 22, 2026. The album's concept began with Yunjin interviewing each of her bandmates individually. "The whole narrative started with us, and then we kind of worked around that," she explains. A world tour featuring new stops in Washington D.C. and Florida is currently underway, and Yunjin has one specific request for the Florida leg: "To my manager, who's watching, hopefully we can do Epcot." This tour marks the group's first major U.S. expansion, with additional dates in cities like Los Angeles and New York expected to draw massive crowds. For context, the O2 Arena in London—a venue LE SSERAFIM has sold out in the past—seats 20,000, and similar demand is anticipated for these new U.S. shows.

Born in Seoul and raised in Wisconsin and upstate New York, Yunjin has always been a creative force. She explored ambitions of becoming a writer, painter, actor, and stage performer before settling on songwriting and music as her true calling. She taught herself guitar and ukulele via YouTube tutorials, secretly learning Taylor Swift's "15" on her father's old nylon-string classical guitar after watching her sister master chords the same way. K-pop entered her life in 2017, when BTS made history with their performance of "DNA" at the American Music Awards. For Yunjin, who was grappling with her identity as a young Korean American, that moment was transformative. At fifteen, she moved to Korea alone, trained at a label for a month, returned to the U.S. for her sophomore year, then went back at sixteen and stayed. In 2018, she competed on the Korean survival show "Produce 48," where she met two future LE SSERAFIM members, before being eliminated on episode 11 at rank 26 and continuing to train. Her first dance teacher, assessing her coordination, nicknamed her "giraffe"—a label she has since far outgrown. The show, which aired on Mnet, was a launching pad for many K-pop idols, including members of IZ*ONE, and remains a significant chapter in Yunjin's early career. Notably, "Produce 48" was part of a series that also spawned groups like Wanna One, and its legacy continues to influence the industry's talent pipeline.

After four years of near-misses and no debut, burnout finally caught up with her. She returned to New York, applied to colleges in a two-month sprint, got accepted, paid the deposit, and accepted a different future. Then her phone rang. "I can't really let go of music," she reflects on what she learned during those months away. "I can't let go of this storytelling dream I have in me." Two weeks later, she was back in Korea creating music with LE SSERAFIM. "They truly are my sisters," she says of her bandmates. "A lot of it is non-verbal. It's just something that we feel." For someone whose path to that sisterhood involved survival shows, years of training, and a college deposit paid the day before her life changed, that connection took a long time to forge. Her favorite film is "Everything Everywhere All at Once," and while she acknowledges that alternate versions of her might exist in parallel universes living entirely different lives, she doesn't dwell on them: "The life that I'm currently living now is the best version of me that there is." This philosophical outlook, shaped by her unique journey, resonates deeply with fans who see her as a symbol of perseverance and self-acceptance in the often unforgiving K-pop landscape. As one fan on Twitter put it, "Yunjin's story isn't just about luck—it's about showing up for yourself even when the universe seems to be testing you."