Lee Sun-hee
The song a twenty-year-old with cropped hair and round glasses began on the riverside stage became, forty years later, a song of her own writing that asks after fate and the well-being of others.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people around her ⏳🌊
- FamilyFather
He was a monk of a Buddhist order that permits marriage. She grew up close to the temple, within the Buddhist faith.
- InfluenceLee Se-geon
The composer who handed her a score he had meant to throw away, leaving us her debut song "To J."
- MemberLim Sung-kyun
A student at the same school, he took the Riverside Song Festival stage with her under the name 'Act 4, Scene 5.'
- InfluenceShin Joong-hyun
The original writer of "Beautiful Country," which she re-recorded in 1988 and made one of her signature songs.
- ProtégéLee Seung-gi
A junior artist she discovered herself and guided to his 2004 debut, he sang “To J” at her 30th-anniversary concert.
- ProducerPark Keun-tae
The composer behind Cho PD’s “Friend,” he wrote “Meeting You Among Them,” the title track of her 30th-anniversary album.
I. The girl from Boryeong · 1964–1983
(Birth) She was born in November 1964 in Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea. Sources disagree on her birthday, giving either November 11 or December 14. Her family register lists her birth year as 1967, reportedly because she was born premature and her birth was registered late. (The temple) Her father was a monk of a Buddhist order that allows its clergy to marry and raise families. She grew up close to the temple. With two younger sisters and a younger brother, she was the eldest daughter. She herself is known to be a Buddhist. Hers was a home within earshot of chanting and sutra recitation, but few records shed more light on her childhood. (Longing) She would later name Barbra Streisand, Madonna and Whitney Houston as the singers who influenced her most. From the Western divas she heard on the radio and on records, she learned how to sing with a big voice that soared out of a small frame. (The score) The story behind her debut song begins in her high-school years. Visiting a well-known music office, she is said to have watched Lee Se-geon, then an unknown composer, throw a score into the wastebasket. She reportedly ran after him, asked whether she might sing the song, and was given permission. That score would become “To J.” (College) After high school she entered the environmental management department at Incheon Junior College, graduating in 1984. It was a field far removed from music, but she kept singing, spending her time with the older members of the school’s music club.
II. J by the river · 1984–1985
(The festival) In the summer of 1984 she took “To J” to the MBC Riverside Song Festival. Sources disagree on whether it was the 4th or the 5th edition. She entered with Im Sung-kyun, a fellow student, under the team name ‘Act 4, Scene 5.’ The story goes that the name came from club seniors who had been eliminated in the preliminaries and, crestfallen, asked to have at least their names on the entry. Lee Moon-sae and Gil Eun-jeong hosted, and on that stage she won the grand prize. (Radio) The response was immediate. On some days, it is said, FM radio alone played the song sixteen times. Color broadcasting had begun only a few years earlier, at the end of 1980. The festival performance spread on screen, the song itself on radio and cassette tape. That year she won rookie awards from both KBS and MBC, and at the MBC Gayo Daejejeon she also took the most popular song award for “To J.” (Big sister) Her boyish look — cropped hair and round glasses — became a trend among schoolgirls. The phrase ‘big-sister brigade,’ for the packs of schoolgirl fans who followed her around, is said to have been coined at this time. Alongside a fan culture built on chasing male idols, a girls’ fandom devoted to a female singer had appeared on a large scale for the first time. (Album 1) In 1985 she released her first studio album, “Ah! The Good Old Days.” If “To J” was a ballad sung with aching sorrow, the title track was an up-tempo song that briskly shook off days gone by. It was the first test of whether she could survive as a professional singer rather than end as a festival star, and the result was a success.
A score that had nearly been thrown away met the voice of a twenty-year-old college student and became the Riverside Song Festival’s grand-prize song. Her career began with this song.
- Its manner of address — opening almost as if talking to oneself, like writing a letter to someone far away — sets the song’s mood. The first phrase sounds low and hesitant.
- Toward the end she draws the notes out long and climbs, belting into the high register. This passage is remembered as the moment she captivated the festival audience.
- The band accompaniment, typical of 1980s song festivals, is sparsely ornamented. It is arranged so that the power of the voice comes to the fore.
- At her 30th-anniversary concert in 2014, her protégé Lee Seung-gi sang the song again. It became a song passed down across generations.
The title track of her 1st studio album, with which the festival star opened her path as a professional singer. Unlike the aching debut song, it looks back on days gone by with a light step.
- The up-tempo band accompaniment and synthesizer (electronic keyboard instrument) sounds capture the texture of mid-1980s Korean pop exactly as it was.
- The song holds an attitude of missing the old days yet shaking them off without tears. A bright major-key melody supports that feeling.
- The exclamation in the chorus (the central passage repeated in a song) works as a hook (a short, catchy repeated phrase). Easy to sing along to, it has long remained a karaoke favorite.
III. The age of the charts · 1985–1990
(In succession) From late 1985 a studio album came out almost every year: her 2nd, “Autumn Wind”; her 3rd, “I Want to Know”; her 4th in 1988, “This Place Where Love Fades”; her 5th in 1989, “My Street / With a Hearty Laugh”; and her 6th in 1990, “Turning the Pages of Memory.” At the Golden Disc Awards she won a main prize five years running, from 1986 to 1990. (The charts) The center of the pop industry in this period was television chart shows, above all KBS’s “Gayo Top 10.” From the late 1980s into the early 1990s she reached No. 1 on the program many times. The number of No. 1s varies from source to source. It was an era when LP and cassette sales, radio request rankings and television charts pushed one another upward. (Rivers and mountains) Her 1988 4th album produced the two songs that would come to define her name. One was “Always You,” a ballad about forever longing for the one you love. The other was “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains,” a remake of a 1970s song by the rock musician Shin Joong-hyun. In the year of the Seoul Olympics, a song in praise of the land’s mountains and rivers rang out loud. The song would later become hers on inter-Korean concert stages as well. (Hani) That same year she also sang the theme song for the KBS animated series “Run, Hani.” The song of a girl who outruns the world’s sorrows carried her voice even to children who had never been her fans. By the late 1980s she was no longer just a newcomer from a song festival but a singer whose name was known across every generation.
The signature ballad of her 4th album, from the peak years when she won a Golden Disc main prize every year. It stands for the Lee Sun-hee of the “Gayo Top 10” era.
- It opens with a gentle keyboard accompaniment, and the sound swells as the whole band comes in at once on the chorus. It is the classic structure of a late-1980s ballad.
- Its manner is that of a confession, longing poured out steadily to one person. In the verses she holds her breath back; in the chorus she lets it burst.
- Her technique of driving straight up into the high notes without the voice cracking is especially clear in this song.
A cover of Shin Joong-hyun’s 1970s rock song, re-recorded for her 4th album. It was hugely loved in the Olympic year, and she also sang it on the 2018 Pyongyang stage.
- The original was a song by the rock band Shin Joong-hyun led. Lee Sun-hee’s version made the sound bigger and more lavish with late-1980s electronic keyboards and a band arrangement.
- Its manner is epic, calling out mountains, rivers and sky one by one in praise. As the song unfolds, the emotional pitch climbs like a staircase.
- The long belted high notes in the final section are counted among the great moments of her live performances. It is the passage most often cited when people speak of her vocal power.
- Singing this song at a joint North–South concert widened its meaning from a hymn to the homeland to one for the whole Korean Peninsula.
IV. Between the council chamber and the stage · 1991–1995
(Elected) In June 1991 local council elections were revived for the first time in 30 years. Running as the Democratic Liberal Party candidate for the Mapo district of Seoul, she was elected to the 3rd Seoul Metropolitan Council. She was twenty-seven at the time. The newspapers of the day wrote that a teen idol had stormed into the council. Asked whether she could manage both her singing career and her council duties, she answered that it would be fine once things settled down. (A double life) She did not stop singing. Her 7th album, “If You Love Me,” came out in 1991, her 8th, “Little Boat,” in 1992, and her 9th, “A Single Chrysanthemum,” in 1994. The gaps between albums grew a little longer than in the 1980s. These were years of juggling the council calendar with the concert calendar, and her KBS Song Festival main prizes continued into the mid-1990s. (Exit) By the mid-1990s the center of gravity in Korean pop was shifting fast. With the arrival of Seo Taiji and Boys in 1992, dance and rap took over the chart shows, and the record market was moving from cassette to CD. Where the 1980s queen of ballads would stand in this new market became her new task. (Politics) Her political activity continued for a while after her council term, through moves between parties, and she is known to have left politics around 2000. After that she rarely spoke of politics and devoted herself to singing. Her experience beyond the concert stage also carried over into later theater work such as “Bari.” In 1999 she received the popularity award in the theater category of the Baeksang Arts Awards.
V. Songs of her own · 1996–2009
(Her own songs) Beginning with her 10th album, “First Love,” in 1996, she started putting songs she had written herself on her albums. It was a turning point: the singer who had sung songs others wrote for her became someone who wrote her own story. Her 11th album, “Dream of Ruby,” followed in 1998, and her 12th, “My Life + Best,” in 2001. (Adolescence) Her 13th album, “Adolescence,” released in 2005, is an album on which she wrote and composed every song. “Inyeon,” included on it, is said to have been written after she watched the drama “Damo.” Over an Eastern-flavored melody laced with the timbres of traditional Korean instruments, it was a song that calmly accepts a fated love that cannot be escaped. (The King and the Clown) The film “The King and the Clown,” released in late 2005 and seen by more than ten million viewers, used the song. Along with the film, “Inyeon” spread widely once again around 2006. At a time when MP3s, music downloads and ringback tones were replacing record sales, a self-written song by a singer past forty reached the ears of a new generation. Young people who had not known her in the 1980s came to know her for the first time through this song. (Discovery) In the same period she also set out to nurture younger artists. She discovered Lee Seung-gi as a high-school student, guided him to his 2004 debut, and taught him singing and stagecraft at her side. Lee Seung-gi later said that at his senior’s side he learned everything one step at a time, from computers to instruments, while watching her make records. (Absence) In the late 2000s she was rarely seen on stage for some time. Then, in 2009, she returned with her 14th album, “Love....” It was her first studio album in four years.
A self-written song from her 13th album, every track of which she wrote herself. Through the film “The King and the Clown,” it reintroduced Lee Sun-hee to a new generation.
- It opens with an Eastern-flavored arrangement laced with the timbres of traditional Korean instruments. A Western-style ballad and traditional sound meet within a single song.
- Its voice is contemplative, accepting an inescapable love rather than resenting it. Unlike the explosive singing of the 1980s, it holds its feeling in.
- Toward the end comes a high passage that lifts the emotion. Many in the audience remember it entwined with scenes from the film.
- In an era when MP3s and ringback tones were replacing records, the song spread anew as a film soundtrack (OST). It became her signature song of the digital age.
VI. Old ties, met again · 2010–2026
(Carnegie) In February 2011 she gave a solo concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. She was the fourth Korean pop singer to take that stage, after Cho Yong-pil, Patti Kim and Insooni, and the hall seated some 2,800. (Serendipity) In March 2014 she released her 15th album, “Serendipity,” marking the 30th anniversary of her debut. Of its 11 tracks, she composed 9 and wrote the lyrics for 7. The title track, “Meeting You Among Them,” was composed by Park Keun-tae, who had written songs such as Jo PD’s “Friend,” with lyrics by Kim Eana. She said she had put her strength into the words rather than into belting. At the release showcase, Lee Seung-gi sang “To J” to celebrate her 30 years. In an age when streaming and YouTube had become the center of the music market, the song climbed high on the digital charts and announced that she was still very much active. (Pyongyang) In April 2018 she took the stage in Pyongyang as part of the inter-Korean joint concert “Spring Is Coming.” She sang “To J” and “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains.” She became one of the few South Korean singers to have sung in the North twice. That same year she won Stage of the Year at the Melon Music Awards. (Greetings) In 2020 she released her 16th album, “Greetings.” EXO’s Chanyeol joined her on the title track. The following year she lent her voice to AKMU’s “Hey Kid, Close Your Eyes.” From 2020 she sat as a judge on JTBC’s “Sing Again,” listening to singers whose names were less well known. The person who had been judged on a song-festival stage in 1984 now sat watching over other people’s second chances. (Now) As of 2026 she has passed the 40th year since her debut. In 2026 she released a new song, “Now I See Love,” once again working with the composer Park Keun-tae.
The title track of her 15th album, marking 30 years since her debut. Composed by Park Keun-tae with lyrics by Kim Eana, it climbed the charts once more in the streaming era.
- A pop ballad built around piano and strings. It paints, like a poem, the chance of meeting one person among so many.
- As she herself said, rather than belting loudly she puts weight on every single word of the lyric. A voice more restrained than in her prime sounds, if anything, deeper.
- The song is built so that sound accumulates and swells toward the end. The high notes of the final passage were talked about as proof of her vocal power, reaffirmed in a voice near fifty.
The title track of her 16th album, her first in six years. Sung with EXO’s Chanyeol, it exchanges greetings across generations.
- A duet in which the two voices alternate and then overlap. The timbres of different generations sound like a conversation.
- Its voice is tender, asking after the well-being of someone far away. A plain, unexaggerated arrangement supports that feeling.
- A collaboration with an idol singer, it led younger listeners on YouTube and streaming services to seek out her new songs.
Lesser-known stories
Her birth year in the family register is 1967, not 1964. It is said that because she was born premature, the registration of her birth was delayed by several years. Her birthday, too, varies by source between November 11 and December 14. The circumstances of the provinces in the 1960s, when official records and actual lives often failed to match, survive even in the profile of a national singer. That her father was a Buddhist monk is seldom mentioned when she is introduced. Korean Buddhism has orders that permit monks to marry, and her father was a monk of such an order. Growing up near a temple may seem to echo the Eastern melody of “Fate,” but it is hard to find any record of her linking the two herself. Because “To J” won the grand prize at the song festival, it is easily remembered only as her song, but it belongs to the composer Lee Se-geon. In a 2014 broadcast she revealed that after the festival she had returned all the song’s copyright to Lee Se-geon. She had, in effect, given the share of a score rescued from beside a trash can back to its rightful owner. In July 1991, the newspapers on the day the Seoul Metropolitan Council first opened carried a small item. In the election for the council leadership, one vote for chair had gone to Lee Sun-hee, a freshly elected twenty-seven-year-old newcomer. It is a one-line record now forgotten, but it shows how much of a sensation it was at the time for a singer to enter a local council.
Glossary notes 📚🔎
Song festival
(Meaning) Gayo (歌謠) means songs sung by the public, and je (祭) means festival. Together they make a feast of competing in song. (In Korean pop music) The term refers to the song contests held by broadcasters in the 1970s and ’80s. The MBC University Song Festival and the Riverside Song Festival were the best known. Mostly amateur college students took part with their own or unreleased songs, and winning the grand prize could make someone a star overnight. What audition shows do today, the song festivals did back then. It is like a friend who wins first place at the school talent show and is known to the whole school by the next day — except that the stage was national television.
Unni brigade
(In Korean pop music) A term for the crowds of schoolgirl fans who followed Lee Sun-hee in the mid-1980s. Girls chasing male singers were nothing new, but this is said to have been the first time a large fandom emerged that admired a female singer as a cool older sister, copying even her hairstyle and glasses. Picture a group of classmates trailing after a cool, athletic older girl at school, imitating even the way she wears her hair. (Elsewhere) Budae (‘unit’) originally refers to a group of soldiers who move together in the army.
Gayo Top 10
(In Korean pop music) A pop-chart program broadcast by KBS from 1981. Combining record sales, airplay and other factors, it announced a weekly ranking from first to tenth place. Five consecutive weeks at number one earned a “Golden Cup,” and in the 1980s and ’90s this chart was the most official yardstick of a singer’s popularity. Just as a school ranks its students each week by test scores, singers waited every week in front of this chart for the results.
Studio album
(In Korean pop music) A full-fledged record on which a singer formally gathers many songs. In Korea these are usually numbered, as in the first album, the second album and so on. They hold more songs than a single with one or two tracks or a mini album with a few, and they represent a period in the singer’s career. Lee Sun-hee released studio albums from her first in 1985 to her 16th in 2020. In comic-book terms, it is not a short special edition but an official numbered volume.
Singer-songwriter
(Meaning) A word combining the English singer and songwriter (composer and lyricist). (In Korean pop music) A singer who does not stop at performing songs written by others but writes the lyrics and music of their own songs. Early in her career Lee Sun-hee sang songs by professional composers, but she began writing her own with her 10th album in 1996, and she wrote every track of her 13th album in 2005 by herself. In cooking terms, she is not someone who follows another’s recipe but someone who writes the recipe first and then cooks.
Cover
(In Korean pop music) Singing and recording anew a song first released by another singer. In Korea the word remake is used as well. The original melody is kept, but the arrangement and singing style change to give it one’s own color. Lee Sun-hee’s “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains” is a cover of Shin Jung-hyeon’s original. It is like a round, where even when everyone sings the same song, each voice and feeling comes out different. (Elsewhere) In everyday use, cover means a book jacket or a lid, and in sports it means stepping in to fill a teammate’s gap.
OST
(Meaning) The initials of Original Sound Track, meaning the sound and music originally contained in a film or drama. (In Korean pop music) The songs and background music used in films and dramas, or an album collecting them. When a work becomes a hit, its songs spread along with it. Lee Sun-hee’s “Fate” originally appeared on her 13th album, but it reached a new generation when it was used in the film “The King and the Clown.” It works on the same principle as humming the background music of a favorite game even outside the game.