Saturday 10 March 2012

Childhood to Present (According to Lee Min Ho's Mom)

Young Lee Min Ho (0 - 4 years old)


I had a dream when I was bearing Min Ho, the dream scene is a plateau of chilli ground. Although the hospital did not gave me the sex of my child, but since having that dream, I was confident that it should be a son. I don’t normally like to eat meat, but for some strange reasons, I liked it alot during my pregnancy period. I ate beef every four days and now Lee Min Ho’s favourite dish is chilli with beef.


Min Ho was 3.2kg when he was born, a little lighter than the average newborn babies. His health was toward the weaker side from young till his elementary school stage. His Bronchus had some problems, therefore he is prone to cold whenever the season changes. And also, no matter how much food he ate, he just couldn’t get fat. I’m of blood type A, his body and personalities are very similar to me.


He doesn’t eat alot, nutritional tonics were given to him almost every season. We gave him a lot of food just like what others did to their child but he just can’t grow fat. He was always very shy with strangers and very sensitive. Therefore, I always had to carry him around and coax him.


Min Ho is especially beautiful when young. His eyes were bigger than his elder sister, his nose was high as well. The earliest signs showing his talent of being an actor was during young, due of his eloquence. Although his sister is fluent in her speech, Min Ho had learned to talk much earlier. When he was still in his infancy stage, he could quickly detect moving objects. The very first time he called “mom” was also about 3 to 4 months faster than an average child.





Lee Min Ho ( 5 to 9 years old)


Min Ho loved to read the newspaper. He first started learning Hangul from the colourful advertisements printed on the newspapers.


Min Ho who was enthusiastic towards reading newspaper, cultivated a habit to read the commentary articles on the children newspaper and daily papers when he entered elementary school. He could do addition and subtraction very fast and had a very good memory. Even the multiplication table and Hanja didn’t trouble him at all.


During his lower elementary school stage, he was shy child that didn’t like to stand in front of everyone. Despite this, he enjoyed a high popularity and had acquainted many friends. Since kindergarten, Min Ho has been very popular among girls.


Compared to other children of the same age, Min Ho was always half a head taller than them. Even when placed beside children with fair features, Min Ho’s appearance was still very prominent and stood out among them. Whenever the season changes, the little girls who played with Min Ho will also change accordingly. There were even fights among them because some girls wanted to gain exclusiveness to Min Ho.


After learning Taekwondo, his body became muscular. Nobody in the school dared to pick a fight with him. Min Ho once harbor the aim to be a famous soccer player. He had played four years of soccer under coach Cha Bum Kun’s Youth soccer team. With this as a basis, Min Ho who was previously weaker gradually became a sports athlete. He also met a lot of new friends, which eventually shaped his positive attitude personality.


When he was five, Min Ho nearly became a lost child. Even till now, discussions on  “whether little Min Ho is scared at that time”, are still a common topic among the family members. It was only a short moment before Min Ho roamed around the playground and eventually went missing. Luckily, there was a little tag on his wrist that wrote his house address and his name. The citizens around that area sent him back home. Till now, the incident still sends a shiver down my spine whenever I thought of it.





Lee Min Ho (10 to 15 years old)


After Min Ho entered elementary school, videos and computer games were his only focus. If I did not reprimand him, he would be thinking of playing games all day long. Min Ho’s dad played the kind role, while I had no choice but to be the strict mum.


Min Ho is thrifty. Although our family was not wealthy, we tried our best not to disappoint our children and gave them about 100 thousand won as pocket money each time. Min Ho didn’t spend every single cent away. Instead, he deposited them into his savings account. Due to his inward personality, he would sometimes give carnations during Parents’ Day and disappear immediately after saying “Mom, please wear it”.


After learning soccer from coach Cha Bum Kun, Min Ho’s physique improved all of a sudden. His sports (lesson) was often an “A”. His mathematics was also kept consistently above 90 marks. During his first and second year in the middle school, his height increased at an astounding rate. In fact, he isn’t much taller now compared to then.


During his elementary education, the thought of becoming an actor one day didn’t even crossed his mind but after he was promoted to the middle school, he was often approached by star scouts. Those managers would often say: “Please come to find me if you wish to be an artiste.” As such, Min Ho received a lot of name cards. In the beginning, we shrugged the idea off as we thought he did not have the qualities to be one.


However, as the number of such occurrences increased, Min Ho also started to go for auditions and meet some managers. When he returned home, he would put it simply: “Mom, I went for an audition today. It was very interesting.” His began to harbor the dream of becoming an actor.


During his middle and high school, he liked Sol Kyung Gu and Kim Soo Roh respectively and often mentioned that he wanted to become actors like them.


According to rumours, Kim Soo Roh gave his mother an apple crate full of 10000 won notes after he became famous. Min Ho then often said to us: “If I’m able to rise in popularity in the entertainment circle, I will give dad and mom an even more precious gift.”





Lee Min Ho (16 to 19 years old)


The apartment that we are residing in now is in fact provided by Min Ho. After Min Ho signed the contract with his current management agency, he immediately gave us the entire portion as the rental deposit for the new apartment.


Min Ho is just such an affectionate child. He became a part-time model for a fashion magazine after he entered high school, with a daily salary of 50000 won. Every time he received his pay,  he would always buy some presents for his sister and mom.


Although neither was there any surprise, nor was there any touching words mentioned, he would often place a stalk of rose on the dining table without detection or put the cosmetic stuff that he had bought sneakily on my dressing table. If he saw me eating my meal alone, he would then say “Mom, why do you eat alone? Come on, let’s eat together”, and chat with me while eating.


During his second year in high school, he started to realize his dream of becoming an actor. Within the next few years, he underwent trainings as well as participated in several projects such as “Secret Campus” (2006), “Mackerel Run” (2007) and “My School E.T” (2008), and began his first step to become an actor.


It was a huge commotion in our neighbourhood when Min Ho first appeared in “Secret Campus”. Relatives and friends were all very concerned about him.They often discussed “who is that handsome actor?”, “after being a trainee for such a long time, Min Ho is finally on TV!”, etc.The first time Min Ho appeared on the fashion magazine as the main model, he bought several copies of that issue back and shared it with his friends and neighbours.


Lee Min Ho (20 to 22 years old)

I had two dreams before Min Ho took on the “Boys Before Flowers” project. The first was the “golden poo” dream in which I dreamt of my 5-year-old Min Ho playing with his grandpa and grandma but suddenly ran towards me and shitted in front of me. While cleaning the poo for him, I asked “Why is this child like that?”. However, he continued to drop more poo made from gold all around the house. Two days later, I had another dream. This time I dreamt of Min Ho’s huge poster photo being hung at a nearby photo gallery with people from the neighbourhood gathered in front of it. I’m not sure if these dreams were correlated, but Min Ho then indeed became a star through “Boys Before Flowers”.

We had just moved to Sangdo-dong less than a month ago but recently, there were always a lot of reporters waiting in front of our house. This was an “all-new experience” to our ordinary family.

On Valentine’s Day, Min Ho received many chocolates given by his fans. Currently, we are giving away all those chocolates to our neighbours because there are simply too many. No matter how much we eat, the amount still remains. Min Ho has also received some branded accessories and apparel vouchers, but we deemed them too valuable, thus we mailed them back.

Min Ho could only sleep for 3 hours a day recently as he had plenty of overnight filming. My heart aches whenever I see him lack of sleep. As his mother, I could only stew some ginseng and red ginseng tonic for him to replenish his energy. Min Ho’s path towards stardom isn’t quite smooth from the start. He had met with an accident soon after he began his activities, which required him to receive about a year’s treatment in the hospital. There were metal pieces inserted into his left knee cap and inner thigh. We planned to let him undergo another operation after he finished filming for “Boys Before Flowers”. Despite the media advocating that he “became famous overnight”, and is indeed partially-correct from some perspectives, but to Min Ho and us, “rewards after putting in much effort” is more appropriate in this context.

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