Hong Eunchae
LE SSERAFIM's maknae and the youngest host Music Bank has ever had. Her debut-song lines added up to under five seconds; now her members vote her the group's best dancer.
Born in Seoul in 2006 and raised in Gwanak-gu, Eunchae was the kid playing soccer and baseball with the boys, and she was even student body president. She wanted to be a nurse until, in her first year of middle school, she watched the school dance club perform and changed course. Her dad was hoping for lawyer or teacher. She started dance academy in 2019, cleared first-round auditions at PLEDIS and JYP in 2020, and finally signed with Source Music in January 2021, a label under HYBE.
Trainee life hit hard. She cried every day, kept calling her parents to say she was quitting, and the bubbly kid turned quiet. Then she became the very last member added to the LE SSERAFIM lineup. The night before she got the offer, she dreamed she'd made the debut team, which fans now treat as prophecy. To win over the older members she brought Capri-Sun pouches with handwritten notes, but the meeting got pushed back two hours and she ended up drinking every single one herself.
When the group debuted in May 2022, she had only six months of training. Her part in the title track was two lines, under five seconds total. From ANTIFRAGILE, the first comeback after the lineup change, her lines grew fast, and the lyric 'like a lion' gave her the nickname 'Raiong'. Her low, relaxed tone shines most on the group's rock-leaning tracks.
Dance is the real flex. She once said she learned a full choreography within two hours of getting the video. Long limbs and sharp, clean lines make her pop in boy-group covers. On a Na Young-seok variety show's random play dance she nailed EXO's Love Shot and Girls' Generation's Into the New World, then flawlessly danced H.O.T.'s Candy, a song the producers picked specifically to knock her out, and walked away with a coffee truck. She covered BoA's Atlantis Princess and got praised by BoA herself. In 2026 her members voted her the best dancer in the group almost unanimously.
From February 2023 to September 2024 she hosted KBS's Music Bank. As its youngest host ever she became the 'baby bank manager', a pun on the show's name. Her chemistry with actor Lee Chae-min won them the Best Couple award at the 2023 KBS Entertainment Awards. Hosting her own web show, Eunchae's Star Diary, with a new guest every week cured a lot of her shyness and made friends out of peers like KARINA and Leeseo. With same-age NMIXX member Kyujin she's part of the '06-liners' duo.
Her signature nickname is 'Manchae'. The Korean word maknae is actually pronounced 'mangnae', and to native Japanese speaker SAKURA it came out as 'mannae', so 'mannae plus Eunchae' became her official nickname. She's a hardcore F on the feelings scale, and her line to Sakura, 'the fact that you're a T just hurts my feelings', turned into a meme. Plot twist: in 2025 her own MBTI test came back ISTJ. Each member was assigned a gemstone before debut and hers was ruby, so she almost got a ruby-themed stage name.
Until November 2025 she was the group's only minor, so Kim Chaewon, Huh Yunjin and KAZUHA still baby her. She gets hugged so often that fans call her 'Hongbao', after the beloved panda Fubao. She also loves roasting her unnies right back. Snack person to the core: five-plus tangerines a day in winter, and a different bowl of gukbap every day in summer 2024.