Kim Kwang-seok

The opening track of Dongmulwon's first album, written by Kim Chang-ki and sung by him. When he re-recorded it alone on "Sings Again" in 1993, it came to be remembered as entirely his song.

• The Dongmulwon version is the modest band sound of several amateur members making music together. The 1993 version is a spare, guitar-centered arrangement. Heard side by side, the two versions let you hear the distance the group's youngest vocalist traveled to become a solo singer.
• In the verses he starts low, almost as if speaking. Moving into the chorus he pushes his voice up little by little, yet it sounds closer to holding emotion back than to letting it burst.
• A fine trembling at the ends of notes (vibrato) is the mark that makes his voice recognizable. The trait comes through vividly in this song's long notes.
• A song that spread across campuses by word of mouth rather than broadcast, in the days of LP and cassette. It holds the air of 1988.

With this song, written by Han Dong-joon, he first won a popular name. It is the song with which a singer who left the group to stand alone found his place.

• An early-1990s ballad arrangement laid over keyboards and string-like background sound (synthesizer pads). It shows another face of a singer remembered only for acoustic folk.
• On the chorus's high notes he does not wring out his voice but holds on through the tremble. So it sounds not like a cry but like talking to himself.
• The song speaks to a love gone by, confessing lingering attachment and resignation at once. It is built so that each time the same chorus returns, the emotional temperature rises a little.
• Long beloved as a radio request, it has since been sung again by many singers on competition shows.

Written by Han Dong-heon, it carries a singer's vow. The signature song of his third album, it was taken as a self-portrait of the man walking into the small theater.

• The song rides on a repeating guitar rhythm (strumming) and moves forward as if walking. Its sense of beat is closer to a march than to a ballad.
• A first-person vow about what his own songs must be. So it sounds as if the choral spirit of the song-troupe days has passed into a single voice.
• Known as a song with many passages sung together with the audience at the small-theater concerts. On the live recordings, that atmosphere comes alive.
• A 2000s series of tribute albums by indie musicians took its name from this song's title, "My Song."

Kang Seung-won first sang this song of his own at a TV taping; he asked for it and put it on his fourth album. In the voice of a man who had just turned thirty, it became the song of a generation's growing older.

• A spare arrangement centered on acoustic guitar. With the accompaniment stepping aside, the voice and the lyrics come to the front.
• It touches on the feeling of youth slipping through one's fingers calmly, blaming no one. That is why many say it sounds different depending on the listener's age.
• Rather than pushing the chorus's long notes to the end, he lets them go inside the tremble, a treatment that meshes with the resignation of the whole song.
• In 2007 it was named the finest song lyric. In 2011 a commercial was made in which he, brought back in CG, sang the song together with IU.

A song he wrote himself for his fourth album. In a catalogue full of lonely songs, it is a rare one that pulls you up and sets you back on your feet.

• It is folk rock (folk music with the sound of a rock band added), driven by a brisk acoustic-guitar rhythm and harmonica. From the very first bar, the beat leans forward.
• He fitted his harmonica into a neck holder and played it at the same time as the guitar. The harmonica fills the gaps between the sung lines and lifts the song's energy.
• The lyrics take the form of a man goading his own weary self back to his feet. Paired with “Around Thirty” from the same fourth album, it shows both faces of resignation and resolve.
• It is said to have often served late in his concerts as the song where the audience clapped along to the beat.

A song by blues guitarist Kim Mok-kyung, which he sang anew on “Sing Again 2.” His remake became far better known than the original.

• Over a guitar line that keeps the original writer's blues feel, he lays his harmonica. The arrangement sounds like modest chamber music.
• A singer barely past thirty sings the reminiscence of an old man facing parting from the spouse he spent his whole life with. That gap in age, if anything, makes the song all the more composed.
• It is a narrative song that unfolds its story in order, built so that time passes with each new verse.
• It drew fresh attention years later when Lim Young-woong, Ha Dong-kyun and others sang it on competition shows and caused a stir.

Written by Kim Hyun-sung, it appeared on “Sing Again.” After his death, its inclusion in the 2000 film “Joint Security Area” made it the song that first introduced him to a new generation.

• A slow introduction (prelude) on harmonica and acoustic guitar paints the stillness of the night before enlistment.
• It speaks in the form of a letter in which a young man leaving home for the army conveys his heart to family and friends. A restrained delivery that holds the tears in rather than crying aloud gives the song its weight.
• The song moves forward at a slow, steady pulse, as if taking one step after another. It sounds like the spirit of a march turned inside out, very quietly.
• It is still counted among the songs young men about to enlist most often call to mind, and thanks to the film it was widely sung again in the 2000s.