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Soon ja Yoon

Soon-ja Yoon (Korean: 윤순자) was the Korean mother of Sung-ho Yoon and paternal grandmother of Travis and Hana. Born in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, she later immigrated to the United States and lived with Sung-ho’s family in Evanston, Illinois. The folk melodies she carried from Gyeonggi became source material for Travis’s compositions, including a cello passage later incorporated into Ezra’s Travis Yoon Wrist Tattoo. Those melodies made her a foundational influence on Travis’s final compositional project.

Background

Soon-ja was born in the late 1940s or early 1950s and grew up in Gyeonggi Province during the decades after the Korean War, coming of age amid South Korea’s rapid industrialization. She learned regional folk melodies as part of daily family and community life rather than through formal musical study. She later immigrated to the United States.

Korean remained Soon-ja’s primary language, and she spoke conversational English. She used Korean with Sung-ho, Eun-joo, Travis, and Hana and lived in the Yoon family home in Evanston.

Role in the Yoon Household

Soon-ja helped Sung-ho and Eun-joo choose Min-jun (민준, 敏俊), the Korean given name Travis carried as his legal middle name. They chose it as a family rather than through a formal ‘’dollimja’‘, or generational-syllable, tradition.

Soon-ja’s care for the family centered on cooking, close observation, and work done by hand. She often communicated care through a prepared meal, a brief touch, a handmade object, or a practical adjustment rather than a verbal declaration. Her recipes became part of the household’s shared memory, and she adjusted meals around family members’ health and preferences without requiring them to ask. She also made a quilt for Travis after noticing that he had difficulty staying warm before his leukemia diagnosis.

Soon-ja noticed the habits particular to each grandchild and watched Travis especially closely: he sat on floors when chairs were available, saved every sea-creature photograph Hana sent him, and composed unobtrusively in corners. Those habits belonged to the grandson she knew before his illness rather than becoming visible only after treatment began.

Hana later described Soon-ja in an interview about her marine-biology career as someone who had “watched the world with total attention and no urgency to make it say something it wasn’t ready to say.”

Music and Travis’s Compositions

Soon-ja alone supplied the Korean folk melodies that became source material for Travis’s final compositional project. She hummed songs associated with Gyeonggi Province while cooking and working around the home, including “Arirang” while she made juk. Travis retained the melodies as part of his musical memory.

The cello-led string quartet at the center of the album was built from one of Soon-ja’s melodies. One three-measure passage from it was later reproduced in Ezra’s Travis Yoon Wrist Tattoo. Travis completed ‘’이어받은 선율’’ during treatment with Ezra Cruz’s assistance, and Ezra arranged its posthumous release through the Fifth Bar Collective. Soon-ja later heard the finished recordings of the melodies she had passed to Travis.

Travis’s Illness and Death

Main article: Travis Yoon (Battle with ALL)

Soon-ja visited Travis during his induction treatment at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. She brought homemade juk in a thermos, distinct from the juk Eun-joo had routinely made for Travis during childhood illnesses. Travis ate the porridge and cried because it tasted like home. A second thermos of Soon-ja’s juk accompanied him when Sung-ho drove him back to Evanston after induction.

When Travis returned home in February 2025 after induction, Soon-ja came down the porch steps carefully across the ice. Travis was barely present, leaning into his family’s support and moving where they guided him. She briefly touched the back of her fingers to his cheek, then held the storm door as they brought him inside. After he was settled, she spread the quilt over him with precise movements and smoothed its edge once. During consolidation, she continued adjusting her cooking around the nausea, taste changes, and appetite loss caused by chemotherapy.

Soon-ja also noticed that Travis slept more peacefully during his daily telephone calls with Ezra. After second-line treatment failed, the family honored Travis’s request to leave the hospital and return home. Soon-ja was present when he died at the Yoon family home in August 2025.

Main article: Death of Travis Yoon (2025)

Relationship with Ezra Cruz

Main article: Ezra Cruz and Yoon Family

Soon-ja accepted Ezra into the family during Travis’s treatment. During his visits to Evanston, she fed him from the same household repertoire she used to care for the family, including her juk. Her connection with him continued after Travis’s death as part of the Yoon family’s broader relationship with Ezra.

Memorable Quotes

“Watched the world with total attention and no urgency to make it say something it wasn’t ready to say.”

(Hana Yoon, describing Soon-ja in a later interview)

Characters Supporting Characters Living Characters Korean Characters Yoon Family