Yeri
The late-arriving maknae who changed the group’s chemistry, then grew into a songwriter, actor and professional chaos distributor.
Profile
| Birth name | Kim Ye-rim |
| Born | March 5, 1999 |
| From | Seoul, South Korea |
| Group role | Vocalist · rapper · maknae |
| Debut | Red Velvet, 2015 |
Contents
Early life · Career · Style and strengths · Solo work · Official links
Early life
Kim Ye-rim trained under SM Entertainment and appeared through SM Rookies. She officially joined Red Velvet during the 2015 Ice Cream Cake era.
Career
Joining an already-debuted group could have left Yeri permanently treated as an attachment. Instead, her humor, social confidence and lighter vocal color changed the team dynamic while she steadily expanded into songwriting and acting.
Why she matters in Red Velvet
Yeri adds conversational rap, softer vocal texture and an ease that keeps Red Velvet’s elaborate concepts from becoming emotionally remote.
Solo work and side quests
She has released self-written music, hosted programs, acted in web and television dramas and pursued solo management outside SM while continuing as a Red Velvet member.
Start digging
Red Velvet group profile · Cosmic review · Sweet Dreams review
Official link
The member who joined after debut
Kim Ye-rim was born March 5, 1999, in Seoul. She entered SM in 2011, trained through the company system, and appeared with SM Rookies. Red Velvet debuted as four in 2014. Yeri officially joined in March 2015 for the Ice Cream Cake era.
That timing forced a fourteen-year-old into an established group and an established fandom at the same moment. Some fans welcomed her. Others treated a child like she had personally rewritten the company’s staffing plan. The five-member lineup became definitive, but the hostility around her entrance never belonged in the “harmless fandom opinion” drawer.
Maknae, connector, and social intelligence
Yeri brought a lighter vocal color and an unusually broad social network. She is quick with seniors, peers, actors, and younger idols, which helped Red Velvet feel less sealed inside SM’s walls. Variety programs also exposed a direct personality that could be playful without pretending the job was always adorable.
Songwriting and solo color
Yeri has written and co-written music, including “Dear Diary” and “These Days.” Her songs favor intimacy over spectacle. She sounds most convincing when the production gives her room to speak rather than asking her voice to compete with five layers of brass and a haunted amusement park.
Acting
Her acting work includes Blue Birthday and Bitch X Rich, where she moved away from the cheerful maknae image and into characters with sharper motives. Individual management decisions later changed, but she continued to identify Red Velvet as her group.
The Surfin’ Boy crossbow
In “Surfin’ Boy,” Yeri holds the era’s most important piece of conflict resolution: a crossbow that appears to enchant or redirect the aquatic men. I support women in STEM, archery, and suspicious beach hospitality.
RaeRae take
Yeri had to grow up while people debated whether she deserved the chair she was assigned. She kept the chair, built an acting career, wrote her own material, and developed excellent deadpan. That feels like an answer.
Current Red Velvet era
Red Velvet returned in August 2026 with Velvet Summer. Read the full “Surfin’ Boy” RaeRae Reacts review, including Joy’s sole lyric credit, the aquatic-men mystery, and Yeri’s extremely reasonable crossbow.