sycor: Choi Siwon

Choi Si-won (born February 10, 1987), sometimes mononymously credited as Siwon, is a Korean pop singer and actor. He is a member of super boy band Super Junior and its subgroup, Super Junior-M, where he is known by his Chinese name Shi Yuan (Chinese language: 始源, meaning "Origin"). Aside from Super Junior related activities, Siwon is a successful male model and actor. Siwon is best known for his role in the 2006 Hong Kong historical action film A Battle of Wits as young Prince Liang Shi, as well as the lead male in the Korean drama Oh My Lady! opposite actress Chae Rim and the data analyst and rookie elite agent from the 2010 spin-off to Iris (TV series), Athena: Goddess of War. Siwon can speak Korean, conversational Mandarin and English, very little Cantonese (Shown in his Hong Kong interview), as well as a little Japanese. He is also one of the first four Korean artists to be on Chinese postage stamps.

He later moved into dormitories with fellow trainees and he was trained in areas of singing, acting, and dancing. Siwon stated that SM Entertainment saw potential for him in acting, and thus gave him training in the field. He made his first appearance in a music video of The Grace's Dana when he was still a solo singer in 2003. A year after, he made a brief appearance in the short drama, Precious Family. In 2005, Siwon made a brief appearance in the KBS drama Eighteen, Twenty-Nine as the young Kang Bong-man. On July 22, 2010, Siwon was appointed as a UNICEF envoy.

Not long after Siwon's first television appearance, SM Entertainment released an announcement that he would officially debut as one of the twelve members in a boy band. This band later became officially known as Super Junior 05, the first generation of the rotational music group Super Junior. A few months before the debut of Super Junior 05, Siwon made his first official media appearance with band mate Han Geng as one of the runway models in a fashion show by Bum Suk.

Super Junior 05 officially debuted on November 6, 2005 on SBS's music program Popular Songs, performing their first single, "TWINS (Knock Out)". Their debut performance attracted over 500 fans and also garnered oversea viewers from both China and Japan. A full studio album was released a month later, which debuted at #3 on the monthly MIAK K-pop album charts.

In late 2007, Siwon was put into Super Junior-M, the Chinese subgroup version of Super Junior. Super Junior-M is the first international music group in the Chinese music industry to have members of both Chinese and Korean descent, and brought an influence in the mainland music industry to produce multi-national music groups. The subgroup specializes in singing Mandarin songs, including versions of Super Junior's Korean songs, bringing the K-pop influence over to the Chinese music industry. Super Junior-M is the first international music group in the Chinese music industry to have members of both Chinese and Korean descent. Not long after Super Junior-M's debut, they became one of the most celebrated boy-bands in China. The band's popularity skyrocketed further after their highly anticipated Mini-album, "Super Girl" was released on September 2009.Super Junior-M debuted in China on April 8, 2008 at the 8th Annual Music Chart Awards with the release of their first single music video, "U". The subgroup released their first Chinese-language studio album, Me, on May 2, 2008 to critical success. The album debuted on Taiwan's G-music combo charts as #2 and #1 on many of China's and Thailand's music charts.

Siwon also appeared in Girl's Generation music video "Hoot". Siwon's fans are called The Siwonest, a play on words referring to Siwon's name translating into "cool," and can therefore be seen as "The Coolest."