VAV : ST.VAN turns 30 years old
During these end of year celebrations, and also only one day after LOU, today we are celebrating the birthday of VAV‘s leader and main vocal, ST.VAN !
Lee Geumhyuk, also known as ST.VAN was born on december 22 1991 in Daegu, South Korea. If you still struggle to recognise him, you can not miss him with his big stature and tattoos. When he was younger, he wasn’t really proned to start a career as an artist. After living for 13 years in China with his family, he moved back to South Korea to start cooking studies, more precisely, he studied japanese cuisine in order to become a chef. However, since he had a beautiful voice and the will to do music as a full-time job, he joined Ateam Entertainment and debuted as the leader and an initial member of VAV, with the song “Under the moonlight” released on November 2, 2015. Although he is now turning 30, ST.VAN will not enlist in the military. The reasons are still a bit vague, but it is believed that he got discharged because of his Chinese/Korean double nationality.
For the ones who were wondering, ST.VAN‘s stage name is from that era. Back in 2015, VAV didn’t have the same members as today, there was the previous members Xiao, Zehan and Gyeoul who all left the group for different reasons. At the time, VAV had a vampire concept and ST.VAN‘s role in this concept was the priest. He was supposed to guide the other members (aka the vampires). He had a personnal official colour, gold, and a symbol which was earthquakes. The name of the fandom, vampz, comes also from this era. Although this concept is no longer topical since AYNO, LOU and ZIU joined the group in 2017, ST.VAN kept his stage name, as well as the name of the fandom which didn’t change.
ST.VAN describes himself as a short-tempered person. He says that it’s his worst flaw. But if you ask vampz to describe him, they will definetly start to talk about his infectious laugh or his paternal side. Talking about his paternal side, he adopted a dog he called Cash, whom you can find on Twitter (@VavCash) and Instagram (@Cash_Mini_Vampz). ST.VAN is a quite active member on VLIVE where he often do cooking lives, sometimes with the members that he uses as assistants. Sometimes his recipes are amazing, sometimes they fail. He pushes vampz to follow his recipes at the same time as him and post their results on the fancafe. You were searching for a cooking class ? Say no more, ST.VAN is there for you. He is also quite active on the app Tiktok where he posts funny videos or covers, and same for it’s chinese equivalent, Douyin, where he also goes live. He does spend a lot of time on the fancafe too, asking how vampz are doing. In fact, he his a very caring leader, as much with the fans than with the members, whom he protects a lot.
That is why we are sending our best birthday wishes to ST.VAN, and we are wishing you a good end of the year 2021 !
You can find ST.VAN on his personnal SNS, like Instagram or Tiktok (@stvan.vav for both).
Journalist: Solenne
Translator : Solenne
Source : VAV’s SNS