Cut for His Korean in 2017, Stray Kids’ Felix Is Now the Face of Hanbok

Featured photo: Felix at the opening of Louis Vuitton’s Visionary Journeys exhibition in Seoul, December 3, 2025. Photo: K-POPIT 케이팝잇 via YouTube / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped).

December 2017: cut after a busking mission in Sinchon

Episode 8 of Mnet’s survival show Stray Kids aired on December 5, 2017. After the trainees finished a guerrilla busking mission on the streets of Sinchon in Seoul, J.Y. Park called one name. It was Felix, a 17-year-old from Sydney, Australia.

“Felix, I think your biggest problem right now is the Korean language itself. It’s going to take time before you can deliver your rap parts convincingly. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you can be with us this time.” (Xportsnews via Daum)

“I wanted to debut together until the end, so it hurts to be eliminated,” Felix said, and the members who remained wept because they hadn’t been able to protect him (Hankook Ilbo).

Eight and a half years later, on June 17, 2026, Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism named Felix the face of “Hanbok Wave 2026,” its campaign to show the world Korea’s traditional clothing. He follows figure skater Kim Yuna (2022), Suzy (2023), Kim Tae-ri (2024) and Park Bo-gum (2025) in the seventh year of the project. Five hanbok makers are each designing ten outfits around Felix’s image, and the photo shoot will run on giant screens in Seoul, New York, Paris and Milan (NewDaily, News Seoul).

The boy whose problem was the Korean language is now the face Korea chose to dress in its own clothes and send out to the world. Felix’s road runs between those two scenes. I’ll be honest: when I saw the announcement, my eyes stung. Any fan who remembers that 17-year-old fighting back tears as he said goodbye would feel the same.

Also read: Lee Jae-wook Was the Second Lead Viewers Picked. In Netflix's Dead-End Job, He Is the Lead

2000: a taekwondo kid in Sydney

Felix’s Korean name is Lee Yong-bok. He was born in Sydney on September 15, 2000, to a family of Korean descent, and has an older and a younger sister. He trained in taekwondo for 12 years and earned a black belt. He applied after seeing a K-pop trainee audition on Facebook, signed with JYP Entertainment at 17, and a year later leader Bang Chan, also from Sydney, picked him for the survival show himself (Wikipedia).

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2.4 million likes as of Oct. 27, 2026.

December 19, 2017: nine

Being cut wasn’t the end. Felix and Lee Know, who had been eliminated earlier, got one last chance, and in the finale on December 19 both came back. All nine were confirmed as the debut lineup (Korean Wikipedia).

3.75 million views as of Oct. 27, 2026.

2018 to 2020: from “District 9” to “God’s Menu”

Stray Kids debuted with a showcase at Jangchung Arena on March 25, 2018, and released their first EP I Am NOT and lead single “District 9” the next day. The 2020 music video for “God’s Menu” has passed 580 million views on JYP’s official channel.

580.8 million views as of Oct. 27, 2026.

From Oddinary in 2022 to This & That in 2026, the group has taken nine albums in a row to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (Wikipedia).

218.9 million views as of Oct. 27, 2026.

2023 to 2024: a runway in the Louvre

Felix met Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton’s Pre-Fall show in Seoul in April 2023 and became a house ambassador that August. Within two months his media impact value for the brand was estimated at about $4.5 million (Wikipedia). On March 5, 2024, at the Fall/Winter 2024 show in the Louvre marking Ghesquière’s tenth year at the house, Felix walked a runway for the first time, and thanked Jung Ho-yeon, who walked with him, on Instagram (Vogue Korea). He walked again a year later (Vogue Korea), and in October 2026 he attended the Spring/Summer 2027 show at the Louvre as a global house ambassador (Topstarnews).

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2.8 million likes as of Oct. 27, 2026, the most among his recent posts.

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2 million likes as of Oct. 27, 2026.

2024 to 2026: money he gives away on his birthday

Felix spends his birthdays giving. There’s a reason fans call him “sunshine.” In January 2024 he gave about $75,000 to UNICEF for children in Laos, becoming the youngest member of the UNICEF Honors Club, and in February he visited the project in Laos himself.

1 million views as of Oct. 27, 2026.

For his 2026 birthday he gave about $210,000 in total: about $70,000 each to Samsung Medical Center (treatment for children and teens with cancer) and Seoul National University Children’s Hospital (children from low-income families), and about $35,000 each to Books International, which makes picture books in children’s mother tongues, and UNICEF Korea for flood relief in Nepal (iMBC, Medigate News).

Fall 2026: “Slow It Down” and the Tokyo Dome

On September 1 he released “Slow It Down,” a solo single he co-wrote, as part of the group’s creative project SKZ-PLAYER. Actress Roh Yoon-seo appears in the music video (Sports Kyunghyang).

6.48 million views as of Oct. 27, 2026.

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1.6 million likes as of Oct. 27, 2026.

In October he went from Louis Vuitton’s show in Paris to the Singapore Grand Prix as a guest of Ferrari’s Formula 1 team. His behind-the-scenes Ferrari photos passed 648,000 likes (Motorsport.com).

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1.8 million likes as of Oct. 27, 2026.

Next comes RUN IT, Stray Kids’ fourth world tour: three nights at the Tokyo Dome on November 6–8, Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Stadium on December 5, the Taipei Dome on December 12, Bangkok on January 16–17, 2027, and Singapore on March 6–7. The November 7 Tokyo Dome show will be broadcast live in cinemas around the world (Wikipedia).

66.6 million views as of Oct. 27, 2026.

Tickets: RUN IT tour dates and tickets on the official tour page and Live Nation — https://www.livenation.com/artist/K8vZ9179Vpf/stray-kids-events (checked Oct. 27, 2026)

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2.65 million likes as of Oct. 27, 2026.

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2.15 million likes as of Oct. 27, 2026.

No date has been announced yet for the Hanbok Wave photos. Nine years after he was told “the Korean language itself” was his problem, his face will soon be wearing hanbok in the middle of New York and Paris. I’m counting down the days until those billboards light up.