ENHYPEN’s Sunghoon Did Not Plan On Debuting As A K-Pop Idol When He Was A Trainee—Here’s Why He Changed His Mind

ENHYPEN‘s Sunghoon is well-known for being an award-winning figure skater prior to his debut.

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What casual fans may not be aware of, however, is that he did not give up skating right away when he was scouted in 2018. He decided to juggle both types of training—on the ice and in the practice room—at the same time. It was only until two years after he was scouted when he decided which of his passions he would pursue, and he revealed this in an interview with Weverse Magazine.

ENHYPEN’s Sunghoon

Sunghoon mentioned that he originally had no plans to walk on the path of a K-Pop idol. This changed after being advised that it could help his skating career.

I was getting a lot of calls from Big Hit at the time. My parents suggested it couldn’t hurt to try out once, and that the dancing and expressions you learn while training to be an idol could also be helpful for my figure skating, so I decided to do both at the same time.

— ENHYPEN’s Sunghoon

Sunghoon Pre-Debut

Here, he enjoyed the time he spent with his new friends and he found it interesting to watch the groups who had already debuted.

The more I got into it, the more fun it was to spend time with my trainee friends, and watching other artists do amazing performances on stage made me really want to do that too.

— ENHYPEN’s Sunghoon

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These factors eventually led to his decision to give up figure skating. It was an important choice considering he was already an athlete who frequently earned medals in international competitions.

I became more and more interested in being an idol.

— ENHYPEN’s Sunghoon

Sung-hoon won gold in the 2015 novice division of the Asian Figure Skating Trophy

Sunghoon gave up figure skating in 2020 when he joined I-LAND, a survival show that formed the seven-member group he is now a part of. He currently dances to pop music instead of classical ones, and he’s just as good as ever.

He even sometimes gets the chance to reconnect with his figure skating roots in interesting ways!