My Son, Minjoon

Our client, Zara is looking for a model for 2018 A/W E-commerce. Would you send me current pictures of Minjoon?’ When I received an Instagram DM from the CEO of Sugar Kids, a model agency located in Barcelona, Spain, the first thing that came to mind was ‘this must be a new kind of phishing.’ A month later, after finishing endless paperwork including ‘Request for Authorized Absence from School due to Exceptional Circumstances’ to meet the requirements of the British Government to protect working children, Minjoon stood in a nice, brightly lit studio in the center of London. That summer, our experience in London completely changed my view on modelling and acting. As it did Minjoon’s. Before we went to England, modeling was considered a tool to help Minjoon’s delayed verbal and behavioral development. 

When Minjoon was young, he hardly spoke to others. One day, I got a memo with heartful emojis from his kindergarten homeroom teacher. ‘Minjoon cautiously delivered his first sentence “Hello, teacher!” this morning.’ Minjoon was 4 years old at that time and 5 months had passed since he first started attending kindergarten. My husband and I had tried various ways to improve Minjoon’s verbal and behavioral expressions. At first, we took him to a language therapist, and simultaneously my husband enrolled Minjoon in a child modeling academy. I thought that it might be too stressful for my shy child. Despite my worries, my husband kept insisting that modeling would help Minjoon reveal himself to others.

Minjoon began his career as a child model in 2017 and started working for various brands in Korea. I clearly remember Minjoon’s first shoot. He took a lookbook shoot for an underwear brand’s new season’s products. I constantly fed him dozens of bags of Haribo jelly during the shoot. In order to make a child (who had very little interest in posing under strong light) laugh, the only way was to exceed the daily allowance of sweets. The shooting result went quite well. The client was completely satisfied with Minjoon’s best cuts. But I felt uncomfortable with the fact that I had forced my shy child to meet the contractual agreement with model agency and the client. Since that first shoot, Minjoon has had a string of modeling shoots. After watching him do his job, I felt that one more afterschool activity was added to his daily routine.

It was about that time when we received Zara's call. In London, Minjoon made his first foreign friend, Billy. Billy had flown to London from Copenhagen to shoot the same project. Billy, a child model and a skateboarder, always carried his own board. He even rode the board in the narrow alley in front of the studio. Skateboarding before a shoot was something we hadn't imagine since we had started modeling. We had lived in constant fear of face and body injuries. Billy's free movements and unpredictable poses were stunning. He seemed to model because he enjoyed himself rather than having to satisfy the client and his parent’s needs. Despite the language barrier, Minjoon and Billy became good friends. They laughed all the time during and the after the shoot.

Upon returning to Korea, we decided to expand into acting. As Minjoon took his acting more seriously, his verbal and physical expressiveness improved at a tremendous pace. It was as if he was running three times faster than others to catch up with his late start. I could feel Minjoon’s sense of the world expanding. When he was young, he was only interested in a select few things. While acting and modelling, his interest in the world exploded. He has become very outgoing and enjoys soccer, basketball and skiing now. He is still quiet in front of people but does not hesitate to speak up when necessary.

As we speak, Minjoon has auditioned more than 100 times for leading roles in movies and TV series. It is bitter to have the experience of failing an audition. Minjoon has experienced many failures and I hope that these lessons can be valuable in the future. Sometimes he is eliminated at an early stage and sometimes unfortunately it comes down to the final two. And other times, he receives a ‘Yes’ for his efforts. His first acting role came in 2018 in the TV series ‘Loss-time life’. That same year, he played the lead role of Taewoong in the TV series ‘I’m a mother too.’. He has steadily built up his career, and this fall he starred in the movie ‘Hypnosis’ and was featured in Korean indie band Janabi’s music video. 

When I watch Minjoon struggle with a difficult audition script, I wonder if our past choices were correct or not. Sometimes he is pushed to the extreme in his acting by me. Like the other parents whose children majored in arts and sports, gradually I feel like I've gradually become a tiger mom. In the past I had doubts about my husband's choices, but now I admit that he was right. The challenges given to Minjoon have made him stronger. He will continue to work in this competitive industry, where there are more dropouts than acceptances. If you want to keep an eye on Minjoon’s development, check out his Instagram account @minjoon_mjkim.