I.N

Stray Kids' youngest member and the crystal-clear voice that shifts the whole mood of a track. A kid from Busan who, true to his nickname 'maknae on top', quietly runs the room full of older brothers.

He was born Yang Jeong-in on February 8, 2001, in Busan, and he's the only member of the eight born this century. He tried out at JYP Entertainment almost on a whim through his music academy and got cut in the second round. Half a year later he auditioned again and was told to come back after a haircut. He actually got the haircut, came back, and passed. He joined in early 2016, singing Toy's ballad 'I Lived Beside You for a While' as his audition song. It was leader Bang Chan who pulled him out of a younger trainee group and into the debut lineup. Right before Stray Kids debuted in 2018, he picked the stage name I.N himself and fans weren't sold. He flipped the mood with one cheesy greeting: 'I'm I.N, here to plop right into your hearts!' It's still his signature intro.

His voice is the group's secret weapon. In a lineup full of heavy, gritty tones, his sound cuts through thin and bright. He's said he used to think it stuck out too much, and now he leans into it as his thing. There's a well-known story that Hyunjin heard him sing a ballad in the vocal room before debut and followed him around for ages after. Drop one of his lines into a metallic title track like God's Menu or S-Class and the temperature changes. International fans call him the Siren Vocalist for the way he glows on dreamy tracks, and the nickname stuck so hard the official account uses it as a birthday hashtag. He's often named the most improved member since the pre-debut survival show, mostly because his live vocals got so solid. With Seungmin, he makes up the vocal unit VOCALRACHA.

Plot twist: he loves trot. He's confident enough in it that he entered MBC's 2020 trot audition show as a contestant, and judge Kim Shin-young kept gushing about how clear his voice was. His clean, no-frills delivery earned him the nickname 'trot master'.

Most of his nicknames come from his face. Squishy cheeks plus eyes that curve like the slits on a loaf gave him 'baby bread dough', later shortened to Agibbang, baby bread. His big eyes and foxy features made him the fennec fox, and his SKZOO character is a fox too, FoxI.Ny. Overseas he's Innie. But the one that fits best is maknae on top: technically the maknae, yet the guy who shuts his hyungs down with one blunt line. Bang Chan even wrote him a song with that title, featuring Bang Chan and Changbin.

He's a walking contradiction. He hates skinship, which is exactly why the members smother him even more. The one exception is Felix, whose hugs he actually accepts and sometimes even initiates. He uses formal speech with his own parents, calls himself a bit of a kkondae, and once said he'd have been way too strict as a leader, so it's good he's the youngest. Then when things get rough, he cries mid-meal. He's teared up over gopchang with Hyunjin and sobbed behind a pillar while eating with Changbin. Tough outside, soft inside.

As a kid he wanted to be a Catholic priest. He's Catholic, his baptismal name is John, and he always wears a rosary ring his dad bought him. His fan love is practical. Asked why he buys most of his clothes on Musinsa, he said that if he wore something too expensive, STAY couldn't buy the same thing. His personal vlog series 'Maknae's Private Life', started at the end of 2018, is his longest-running show, and he pops up constantly on Instagram and bubble. He skipped the 2021 suneung college entrance exam to focus on music.

His taste in food is chaotic. Mint chocolate, Hawaiian pizza, and his favorite ramyeon is Buldak. When he smiles he looks like actor Song Gun-hee's little brother, which went viral every time SKY Castle or Lovely Runner was trending, and Song himself said I.N feels like a younger sibling. His best friend is Beomgyu of TOMORROW X TOGETHER; the two of them plus Hyunjin once spent a whole night hanging out over a pot of crab stew.

Solo-wise, he wrote the lyrics to 'I'll Hug You' (2022) alone and released 'HALLUCINATION' (2024). In 2025 he sang an OST for the drama 'Resident Playbook' with Lee Know and Seungmin, and one for 'Genie, Make a Wish' with Han and Felix. For his birthday in February 2026, he donated 100 million won to fund treatment for low-income cancer patients and children and teens with cancer.