My Name is Hoya (Lee Ho Won)

[10Asia Interview Part 2] Infinite | My name is…3

My name is Hoya. My real name is Lee HoWon. Hoya is my nickname ever since I was young, and I’m glad that I debuted with this name. When people I meet for the first time call me ‘Hoya’, I feel like we get closer faster. (WooHyun: When we first met, I called him HoWon and it looked like he didn’t really like it, and so I called him Hoya and he suddenly beamed! SungGyu: Seriously it’s to the point that there’s even a rumor among the trainees that when you call HoWon Hoya, his mood gets better.)

I was born on March 28, 1991. My hometown is Busan. I have a hyung who is two years older than me and a younger brother who is five years younger than me.

That’s why when I first met our younger sister Jiae in Mnet’s <You’re My Oppa>, it was really awkward. I didn’t know whether she was a younger sister or a girlfriend or a new organism…

To be different from the other members, I chose the concept of ‘Bad Guy’ and didn’t take that much care of Jiae on purpose. Because it was a program about taking care of our younger sister, it all got edited out. Ha ha ha.

I was a Taekwondo player until middle school. I went until I got to the third level and went as the representative for a competition, but the level there was different. I got hit a lot there, so my desire to keep going disappeared completely. Wow, I really got hit a lot.

I dropped out in my first year of high school to go learn singing and dancing, but I was dropped from several auditions and was about to give up when my music teacher told me about the audition at our current company.

For practicing the choreography for ‘Come Back Again’, we taped ourselves dancing and watched it. Every one second, we would click the pause button and if someone had a movement wrong, we would do it again.

Up until the day before debut, we never once heard a compliment from our choreography teacher. But after watching our debut stage, he told us that he “got goosebumps”. It was the first compliment we had gotten, so I was really happy.

The name of the dance team I used to be in was ‘BK’. The letters stood for ‘Black Korean’. Because African-Americans have good physical bodies, good elasticity/flexibility during dancing, and good vibrations while singing, I was jealous and purposely went to go eat hamburgers with my hyungs who danced and learned slang that African-Americans use.

It was to the point that once during puberty, I asked my mom, “Why aren’t I African-American?”. My mom’s answer? “Because I’m not African-American.”

Recently while filming the music video for ‘She’s Back’, I got a natural tan. Everyone didn’t like that they got burned, but I was the only happy one. I can almost say that my role models are African-Americans.

That’s why my favorite artists are Usher, Chris Brown, and Omarion. I really wanted to go to the recent Usher concert in Korea, and I was really sad that I couldn’t go.

MyungSoo, no, L, has a strong and cold appearance, but when you get to know him, he’s as sensitive and warm a caring friend as any.

And SungYeol has a smart image like a model student, but when you spend time with him, he’s not the same! He has a lot of weak points and his voice cracks a lot when he talks and he cries easily! Ha ha ha.

DongWoo hyung and I once learned rap from Mithra sunbaenim and DoKki sunbaenim. Mithra sunbaenim took us to his parent’s house and fed us home-cooked food, and it was really delicious! We ate meat, eum. He eats meat with all three meals…

When we go to eat meat with all the members, we eat at least 20 portions. The manager hyungs always never get to eat because they’re busy grilling the meat for us. They’re like angels. (L: It looks like we’re going to eat meat again today.)

(T/N: I would like to remind everyone that 1. This is a direct translation, 2. Hoya is not being a racist or being offensive to African-Americans. He is just expressing his love for their culture in his own way.)

You are not allowed add yourself to the credits nor edit the credits.
CREDITS : Nate News (SOURCE); ilovepocky@NLi (TRANS)