Musician

'Beautiful' was something that I kept really close to my heart, that I kept from a lot of people for years and years. It's my story. And I think that was the first impression I needed to give to people as a solo artist. This is who I am; this is what I'm about.

With anything new, if it's weird or cool, it will catch people's attention. But slowly, that new thing, if it catches on, it becomes a trend itself.

I felt very motivated to release some things in English because I wanna represent my community.

I hear that I dress like a boy and that I should be more girly, which I can understand, but I just focus on what I want to do and enjoy my time with fans who love me for who I am.

I'm really scared of everything. I'm very, very emotional. I'm extremely soft!

Definitely, doing my solo stuff, it's fun in a different way. I get a lot more say. However, there's a lot more work to do because I have to make everything happen.

I don't think you really get to know a person until you talk to them.

I was on an army show, and in the army - especially in Korean culture - there's a very, very strict hierarchy. Obviously, you would not talk informally or disrespectfully to your commanding officer. But me, in my limited Korean, I basically told my commanding officer, 'Thou shalt forget!' The Korean public thought it was really funny.

In a T-shirt and basketball shorts - that's just my go-to: I'm ready for a workout. I'm ready to go play basketball. I'm ready to go dance. I'm ready to go into the studio. It's my getup for anything. I can get it dirty, which is fine. I can sweat in it; it's fine. It's nostalgic because it's what I wore every day as a kid.

My Mandarin is slowly getting worse.

As the human race, let's continue to show love, compassion, and respect towards one another.

People assume a lot about me. Some people come up and think I'm hard. I'm actually very, very shy. I'm bubbly in the right circumstances. But I'm a big introvert.

Society tells you home is where you grew up or where you settled, but nah. I have friends all over the world. Maybe I have a billion homes.

Sitting on my butt waiting on opportunities won't do me any good.

I see that I'm very unique, but I'm not trying to be. I'm just being me.

I always had good skin as a little kid, but when I turned 25, everything just went south.

Sometimes, when I do certain looks, I don't want the intention to be taken out of context or expressed in the wrong way.

If I can give something to the next generation, I want to give a message of positivity, to believe in themselves, because I think the world has just a lot of unnecessary stresses to be a certain way, look a certain way, do certain things.

When I first debuted back in 2009, K-Pop was already starting to get bigger because of the Internet. And that's how I found it, because I'm not Korean.

I'm comfortable with myself now, and I understand how goofy I am, how stupid I can be, how emotional I can be, or how focused I can be.