From what the USCM have on file, Cha Jin Wook grew up in the densely-populated sprawl of South Korea. Cha is the only child of Tonette and Chu Wook, the former of whom never completed college and the latter having dropped out of high school. Cha's father made decent money as a farmer and welder who prided himself on honesty towards his customers, and his mother most often acted as an assistant that helped him with the more difficult repairs and harvest on the farm. While Cha's mother died fairly early on into his childhood, he has been heard speaking at length to friends about the influence she had on him, and how she encouraged him to apply his father's policy of pride in honesty to everything he did in life.
After his mother died, Cha was raised in part by his father and by his uncle, Chal Wook. Chal often took the burden of watching Cha while his father recovered from his mother's death. Himself a veteran, Chal taught the younger Cha to always have a healthy respect for the military, but at the same time cautioned him not to enlist, as he believed the price to be terrible and the reward to be worthless. Nevertheless, Cha continued to struggle in school, much like his parents. After barely managing to earn a high school diploma, he completely and utterly proceed to get into college for 10 years learning those stuffs and everything at medicine. Upset with his future prospects, Cha comes up with realization that having a lot of degrees doesn�t help and mold him for what he really is so Cha decided to go against his uncle's wishes and sign on with the Colonial Marines, hoping to become like one of the two men he respected the most in life.
Cha received an expert badge in basic marksmanship training. Afterwards, he applied to receive special weapons training and ended up in an advanced Medic & smartgunners' course. Completing this additional training and finally being cleared to ship out left Cha with an immensely satisfying feeling of belonging - after all this time, he had discovered something he was able to do something that came to him naturally. He spent approximately more than years at stationed aboard a small patrol craft responding to interplanetary disputes, before being transferred aboard the Almayer for active combat service. Cha Jin Wook was later assigned an nCO position in the Second Command, with the attached USCM Medical Corps aboard the USS Falcons, seeing small combat with better armament and surplus, becoming a commissioned officer. Later, upon emergency, he was transferred to Captain the USS Almayer, war had broken out. Locked onto the coordinates of a distress signal, the dark ship stabilized orbit over an area, LV-624.