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Sandara Park (Korean language Korean:,Hanja:, born November 12, 1984 in Busan, South Korea) is a Korean actress who stars in movies and television shows in the Philippines. Her unusual three-syllable Korean name, as she has said numerous times in interviews, comes from that of a Korean general, Kim Yushin whose childhood name was Sandara. (source: WikiPilipinas: Sandara Park)

Sandara was born to affluent Korean parents. However, by the time Sandara was 8-years-old, her father's relatives placed him in a financially tight spot which then crippled his business. In hopes of recovering from this business strain, Sandara's father tried his luck in the Philippines, settling in a small apartment in Pasay City and started a business. Sandara and her family remained in her grandmother's house in South Korea for some time until her father finally had enough money to relocate his family to the Philippines.

Initially, no one in their family were fluent in English or Tagalog. Sandara eventually enrolled in voice lessons at the Center for Pop Music in the early 2000s.

In 2007, she then decided that she, her mother, and her siblings should move back to South Korea to begin a new life for themselves. On August 2,2007 it has been reported that Sandara Park has been signed to YG Entertainment, a South Korean entertainment management which holds lots of popular korean names like Se7en and the boy group Big Bang. From then on, she became a YG trainee and was trained by the management to further improve her singing, dancing and acting skills.

Afterwards, it was announced that Sandara would be a part of a 5-member girl band (branded as the female Big Bang) produced by the YG family. After series of speculations, the management was able to give out the names of the girls who would be taking part in the new band. Instead of a 5 member girl group like they had originally planned, the girl band consisted of only 4 members. The new girl group was named Sista at first but was changed to 21. The members are CL, Minzie, Park Bom and of course Sandara Park who goes by the nickname Dara.

Due to a similar band name, YG had to change the band name from 21 to 2NE1.

Sandara was able to make her korean acting debut by appearing in a Gummy MV entitled "I'm Sorry" as the lover of T.O.P (from Big Bang) and by starring as Rie in MBC's drama "The Return of Iljimae" in its 7th episode. On May 6,2009, 2NE1 released the music video of their debut song Fire. Their first live performance as a band was on May 17th in SBS Inkigayo. Sandara and her bandmates have also sang and starred in a music video called Lollipop with YG brother group, Big Bang. Lollipop and Fire later became hits in South Korea.