Promotional photograph for Never Gonna Dance Again : Act 2. Via SHINee on Twitter Lee Taemin has spent nearly half his life in the limelight. It has been six and a half years since the Korean idol released his first solo album, and twice that time since he made his debut as the bowl-cut-sporting, fourteen-year-old Main Dancer of K-pop group SHINee. Now, he is drawing the curtain on this chapter of his career. Mid-April, Taemin took to streaming service VLIVE to announce his enlistment in South Korea’s compulsory military service would be happening at the end of May. “It’s hard for me to talk about this,” he said in the tearful live stream with his kitten, Kkoong. For Taemin, it’s more than just an eighteen-month hiatus from the cycle of recording, promoting, and performing: “It’s like looking back on the first act of my life.”