Hyunjin W Korea x Cartier Interview
👤 William Turner’s works, as well as Monet’s Haystacks, have a certain wistful and lonely quality to them. I guess I’m drawn to that kind of emotion.
🥟 I like people who somehow make me worry about them. You know when you meet someone and happen to notice a bruise on them? When I see something like that, I fall in love with that person. What can I do? I just want to put a pain-relief patch on it for them. So even when I’m getting to know someone or spending time with them, I try to have at least one deep conversation with them. I don’t want to meet people casually or superficially. As we talk and share things, I think I gradually come to cherish and love that person more and more.
👤 I imagine you must also get a lot of requests from the people around you to listen to their worries?
🥟 I’m a healer, a healer. (Laughs.) I actually really like listening to people’s worries. When someone tells me about their troubles, it means I’m someone they can rely on, right? It doesn’t feel like a burden to me at all. Rather, as I listen to them, it makes me think about things from another perspective too. I think, “Ah, I guess someone could see it that way as well.” And I don’t necessarily have to give them some kind of answer. I’m happy just listening. Although I’m not very good at talking about my own problems. (Laughs.)
#HYUNJINxCARTIER
💬: was there any ‘recklessness’ at the core of stray kids?
🥟: there was recklessness and there was also rebelliousness. since debut, our slogan that we've been using until now is ‘step out’. from the beginning, we're a team with a strong desire to break away from the established rules and processes. back then, we made a lot of attempts that made people think “they're releasing music like this?” “they're doing performance like this?”. we weren't a team that received the spotlight from the start and those words came from a very desperate place at that time. we desperately wanted to stand out somehow. there were times when we thought “is this right?” we clearly wanted to be different from anyone else but we didn't know if people would actually accept it. the response didn't come right away either. but now that we're doing our old songs and performances, they don't feel outdated and old-fashioned at all. i feel proud of that. especially because, rather than doing what was trendy at that time, we've always worked while thinking about our own music and our tomorrow.
💬: some people might tell you "you need to expand further" or "you need to show a new side of yourself" what do you think when you hear things like that?
🥟: there's no need for us to expand and we don't have the desire to expand either. becoming superstar is not my dream. i just want the team called stray kids to continue being recognized. that's enough for me. i think it's more cool when people continue to think “skz is just skz” the core of stray kids is something that can't be replaced by anything else. it's not about comparing ourselves to anyone and more about having the mindset of “we're just us” i believe there are things within us that can't be taken away in the first place, things that nobody can ever take from us.
kickflip minje mentioned felix in an interview: "i remember our senior felix said ‘personal success doesn't really exist because everything we do relies on the work of others. so we always have to be humble, kind and get our gratitude to others’ yeah that was really good"