Red Velvet's Joy Says She Once Ranked No. 2 in Her Whole School

K-POP Group Red Velvet member Joy says she was such a serious student that she once ranked No. 2 in her entire school. She shared the story as a guest on Kian84's YouTube channel, "Life84" (Insaeng84), in a video posted on the 5th.

In the episode, Joy talked about her school days before her debut and how she ended up becoming a singer.

Kian84 started by asking whether Red Velvet was still active. "We promoted in the summer," Joy said. "How do you not know?" She added that she had written lyrics for the group's recent release. "I wrote lyrics, too. They were picked in a blind test."

Before she ever stepped on a stage, school came first. Joy said she had planned to give up on singing if she didn't make it into SM Entertainment.

"I was a lucky case," she said. "Our family wasn't very well off, so when I was young, the only thing I could do was study hard."

Then she surprised her host. "I was No. 1 in my class," she said. "I even made it to No. 2 in the whole school."

Joy said she worried about her future from an early age. "I started thinking back then, 'How am I going to make a living?'" she said.

Her interest in singing really came out during a school trip in her second year of middle school. She went up on the trip's stage herself.

"When I first went up, people were like, 'Who does she think she is? Why is she going up there?'" she recalled. "Then all of a sudden I was famous."

After that, she was asked to sing at all kinds of events. That was also when her grades started to slip, she said.

"I think you would have done well even if you hadn't become a singer," Kian84 told her.

"I think so, too," Joy said. "I was sure of myself."

Kian84 guessed that Joy had the best grades of anyone in Red Velvet. She quickly corrected him and pointed to bandmate Wendy.

"Better than you? You were No. 2 in your school," Kian84 said.

"Wendy even got an Obama award," Joy said. "She was a real elite student."