song displayed her talent for music at a very young age, which she later attributed to her father's habit of singing minyo, a genre of korean folk songs, to her. when she was five years old, her parents enrolled her in a gugak academy to develop her singing skills. she studied under gugak singers park seok-sun and lee ho-yeon, the latter of whom is classified as a "living national treasure" by the south korean government. she learned to play traditional korean percussion instruments under samul nori master lee gwang-su.