Biography & History

Donghae was born in Mokpo, Jeollanam on October 15, 1986 . Donghae initially wanted to become an athlete, but under the influence of his father, who had a wish to become a singer, Donghae decided to train himself to become a singer.

In 2001, Donghae successfully signed a contract with SM Entertainment soon after he jointly won the Best Outward Appearance award with future band mate Sungmin on the company's third annual SM Youth Best Contest. Under SM Entertainment, Donghae was put in singing, dancing, and acting lessons that same year. He was then recruited into a five-member boy band Smile, with future band mate Leeteuk, but the idea was soon dropped.

In 2004, Donghae- along with Leeteuk- was put into another boy band and formed Super Junior with eleven other trainees. The group later became known as Super Junior 05, the presumed first generation of the rotational music group, Super Junior. Several days before the group debuted, Donghae made a brief appearance in November 2005 at SBS's Shin Dong-yup's There Is There Isn't panel.

On the 8th of August 2006, Donghae's father died due to cancer. The event still proves to be a difficult memory for him due to the close relationship they shared. In Super Junior's 4th Album (2010), Donghae's thank you is dedicated almost entirely to his father.

His best friend is fellow bandmate Eunhyuk, whom he has known for more than 10 years.

Super Junior 05 officially debuted on November 6, 2005 on SBS's music program Popular Songs, performing their first single, "TWINS (Knock Out)". Their debut performance attracted over 500 fans and also garnered oversea viewers from both China and Japan. A full studio album was released a month later, which debuted at #3 on the monthly MIAK K-pop album charts.

In March 2006, SM Entertainment began to recruit new members for the next Super Junior generation. However, plans changed and the company declared a halt in forming future Super Junior generations. The group dropped the suffix "05" and became officially credited as Super Junior. The re-polished group hit big after they released their first CD single "U" the following summer, which became Super Junior's most successful single in the music charts until the release of "Sorry, Sorry" in March 2009.

In late 2007, Donghae was put into Super Junior-M, the Chinese subgroup version of Super Junior.[6] Super Junior-M is the first international music group in the Chinese music industry to have members of both Chinese and Korean descent, and brought an influence in the mainland music industry to produce multi-national music groups. Super Junior-M debuted in China on April 8, 2008 at the 8th Annual Music Chart Awards with the release of their first single music video, "U". The subgroup released their first Chinese-language studio album, Me on May 2, 2008 to critical success. The album debuted #1 on many of China's and Thailand's music charts and Taiwan's G-music combo charts as #2.

Donghae has tried his hand at composing and songwriting. In late 2009, his first self-composed and self-written song, "Beautiful" was released with Super Show 2: The 2nd Asia Tour. He wished to produce more songs in the future given the opportunity and time.

Donghae composed 여행 (A Short Journey), which is on Super Junior's new 미인아 (Repackage) album, their 4th album to date.