Nichkhun Buck Horvejkul

Background

Nichkhun was born in Rancho Cucamonga, California to Thai parents on June 24th 1988 . His father is of Thai origin while his mother is a forth generation Thai Chinese. Nichkhun has one older brother and two younger sisters. At the age of two, he moved to Thailand with his family, but moved back to the United States to finish schooling in Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, California. There, he was scouted by Park Jin-young, a K-pop singer and producer of JYP Entertainment, at the Los Angeles Korean Festival.

After passing the audition hosted by JYP Entertainment, he signed a ten-year contract with the company but later resigned for an eight-year contract, not including training, and was brought to South Korea as a trainee, being put into a class of 24 other students. Park Jin-young informed him that he was required to learn Korean and Mandarin Chinese to also work out regularly and learn how to dance. There is a Korean show called "Hotblood," showed in 2008, which shows Nichkhun and many others as trainees of JYP Entertainment. From there, you can see how hard being a trainee of JYP Entertainment was.

Nichkhun participated in JYP's talent competition, Superstar Survival, where he took the role of the host.
Debut

In August 2007, JYP revealed a list of 11 trainees that were said to debut in a large boy band. However the boy band, One Day, was split into two smaller sub-groups. Nichkhun was put in the group's second counter part, 2PM, which is a seven boy band group. The other group is 2AM. On 4 September, 2008, 2PM debuted with their dance number, "10 out of 10," with their single album "Hottest Time of the Day."
Endorsements

After 2PM's debut in 2008, Nichkhun became a popular choice for Thai endorsements, and was selected by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) as the face of their newest campaign, "Come to Thailand; Let's Take a Break!"