K-Pop icon Sunmi opened up about her painful early years in Wonder Girls during a recent appearance on the SPNS TV YouTube channel, revealing the emotional struggles she faced as a young idol.
Debuting at just 14 years old in 2007, Sunmi reflected honestly on the difficult memories behind the group’s massive success. She shared that during her time with Wonder Girls, some fans dubbed her “Delivery Sunmi.”
“Fans would gather at the company and hand me gifts to deliver to the other members,” she recalled. “They’d say, ‘Sorry, Sunmi, but could you give this to a certain member?’ It was hurtful. I wasn’t even the one receiving the gifts—I was just the messenger.”
Sunmi went on to explain that she often felt overshadowed by her fellow members. “In comparison to the other members, I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t the best singer or dancer, or the prettiest,” she said. “At festivals and university performances, each member would give their individual greeting to the crowd, and you could really hear the difference in cheers for each one. These days, I could probably shrug it off as ‘that’s just how it is,’ but as a 16-year-old at the time, it was really hurtful.”
The harsh treatment took a toll. Sunmi revealed that she battled depression around ninth grade, saying, “I started to think, ‘What’s the point of smiling and greeting people brightly when no one is going to cheer for me anyway?’”
Despite those early hardships, Sunmi emphasized that she’s in a much better place today. And her career speaks for itself: she has become one of the most iconic artists to emerge from Wonder Girls. Her 2017 hit “Gashina,” released under Makeus Entertainment, debuted at No. 2 on the Gaon Digital Chart and was named the third best K-Pop song of the year by Billboard.
Most recently, Sunmi made her comeback with the single “CYNICAL,” with the music video dropping on YouTube just three weeks ago.
Source: Instagram
