EJAE fought back tears as she accepted the Golden Globe for Best Original Song on Sunday night, making history as the first Korean-American to win in any category at the prestigious awards ceremony. Her victory for 'Golden' from Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters arrived more than a decade after SM Entertainment told her she wasn't good enough to debut as a K-pop idol.
The 33-year-old singer-songwriter, born Kim Eun-jae, spent nearly 10 years training at SM Entertainment beginning in 2003 when she was just 11 years old. She trained alongside future members of Girls' Generation, SHINee, and f(x), but was never chosen to be part of a debut lineup. After being dropped by the company around 2014-2015, she moved to the United States and enrolled at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
