12 K-Pop Idols You Never Knew Were Actually Incredibly Intelligent Students

1. Red Velvet’s Wendy

While studying at private school Shattuck-Saint Mary’s in Minnesota, USA she was not only an honours student but also won awards for various academic and music-related activities.

Wendy also received the President Education Award which was signed by Barack Obama, who was president at the time, for her outstanding academic excellence and leadership as well.

2. Eric Nam

Eric Nam graduated with distinction from Boston College in 2011 with a major in International Studies and a minor in Asian Studies, with a year abroad at Peking University — the top academic institution in China.

He had accepted a position as a Business Analyst at Deloitte Consulting, the largest professional services network in the world.

However, he decided to take the opportunity to compete on Birth of a Great Star 2 and that’s how his singing career was born.

3. Girl’s Day’s Sojin

Sojin was one out of eight girls in the Mechanical Engineering department at Yeungnam University.

There are claims that she got into the more prestigious Hanyang University, but was unable to attend due to the tuition costs.

4. BTS’s RM

RM allegedly has an IQ of 148, meaning he is a verified genius.

It is known that the charismatic rapper received a score of 900 on the TOEIC when he was in middle school and was included in the top 1.3% of Korea’s preparatory university entrance exams.

He is also a language genius, and taught himself how to speak English fluently by watching Friends.

5. Girls’ Generation’s Seohyun

Seohyun has been in love with books for a long time, being known to wake up early to read before schedules start.

Seohyun named former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as her role model, stating that his book, at one point in time, had helped her endure hard times. She was appointed as the United Nations Pavilion’s ambassador at Yeosu Expo, where she was presented with the honor by Ban.

She went on to major in theatre acting and graduated from Dongguk University in August 2014, receiving an achievement award at the graduation ceremony!

6. Block B’s Park Kyung

Park Kyung is actually a certified genius. With an impressive IQ of 156, he earned himself a membership with Mensa. 

Taeil even revealed that each month when the financial documents with earnings come out, Park Kyung actually calculated these numbers and broke them down in real time in his head.

Park Kyung’s calculations are so accurate that he has actually found errors in document calculations in the past.

7. BIGBANG’s Taeyang

You may be surprised to hear that Taeyang is an academic as well. In fact, he submitted a 104-page thesis for his Master’s degree in Producing Performances and Images at the Daejin University Graduate School of Culture & Arts — about himself!

The thesis was titled “The Influence of BIGBANG 2015 WORLD TOUR [MADE] on the Sustainability of the Korean Wave”!

Hopefully this gives you inspiration to write about K-Pop at school somehow!

8. Hyerim

Former Wonder Girls member Hyerim is well-versed in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese as well.

As of 2017, she was admitted to the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies‘ competitive Translation and Interpretation Department. Hyerim also revealed she got a 4.0 GPA in her first year of studies.

9. NU’EST’s Aron

Aron was in the top 0.5 percentile for the SAT, an exam used for college admissions in the United States. He received 2180 points out of 2400, and got 100% on the writing part of the exam.

Aron was admitted to New York University and was intending to major in Journalism, but decided to come to Korea instead!

10. John Park

John Park was an Economics major at Northwestern University, a school ranked at #20 in all of the USA by Forbes magazine.

He was also a member of his college acapella group Purple Haze, and placed 20th on the 9th season of American Idol.

11. Super Junior’s Kyuhyun

Kyuhyun was urged to study law by his family, and his father only agreed to give him permission to pursue music if he was accepted into a prestigious university.

Super Junior’s maknae was then accepted into Kyunghee University, one of Korea’s top universities, for a Bachelor’s degree in Post-Modern Music. Currently, he is enrolled in a Master’s program there as well.

12. EXO’s Xiumin

Xiumin majored in music for his Master’s degree at Catholic Kwandong University. His professors noted that he never missed any assignments and attended most of the classes.

He also enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Hoseo University!