IU and BTS’s Suga Both Sang Him. Who Was Kim Kwang-seok?

Part 1 of 16 in Kim Kwang-seok: The Dead Singer K-pop Can't Let Go

Kim Kwang-seok was a Korean folk singer who died in 1996 at the age of 32, and the biggest names in K-pop are still singing his songs. Korea has refused to let go of him for thirty years, and the reason lies as much in his life and death as in the songs.

IU – “With the Heart to Forget You” (tribute video, IU Official) — 7.17 million views

IU, Suga and AKMU are singing the same man

In January 2018, on the 22nd anniversary of his death, IU posted “With the Heart to Forget You” on her official channel as a tribute. That video now has 7.17 million views. She sang the same song on tour that year, and the live clip passed 1.63 million. Back in 2012 she had already sung his “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties” on an MBC music show (3.85 million views).

BTS’s Suga played guitar and sang “It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much,” and Weverse’s official channel posted the moment as its own clip. AKMU’s Lee Su-hyun sang “Where the Wind Blows” on JTBC’s Begin Again 3 and got 8.27 million views. EXO’s Chen stood in front of Kim’s image on a giant screen at the 2015 SBS Gayo Daejeon and sang “Love Has Gone” in a “legend tribute” stage (Korea Economic Daily, Dec. 28, 2015).

SUGA of BTS – “It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much” (Weverse) — 520,000 views

Suhyun (AKMU) – “Where the Wind Blows” (Begin Again 3, JTBC) — 8.27 million views

Chen (EXO) – “Love Has Gone” (2015 SBS Gayo Daejeon) — 150,000 views

MAMAMOO’s Solar remade “Where the Wind Blows” with its own music video (1.23 million views), and Ailee’s KBS performance of “It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much” has 6.67 million. Step outside idol pop and the numbers get bigger. Kim Feel’s “It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much” on Begin Again 3 has 39.72 million views, and trot star Lim Young-woong’s “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties” has 15.79 million.

Solar (MAMAMOO) – “Where the Wind Blows” (Official MV, 1theK) — 1.23 million views

Kim started out in a university protest-song circle in the 1980s, sang lead in the band Dongmulwon (“Zoo”), and from 1989 went solo with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a harmonica (Money S, Jan. 6, 2025). Koreans call him a gagaek, an old word for a wandering singer who carries stories from town to town.

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There is a song waiting at every turn of life

The first reason Koreans can’t let him go is that his songs wait for you at every age. A 20-year-old heading into the army listens to “A Letter from a Private.” Someone about to turn thirty listens to “About Thirty.” The heartbroken listen to “It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much,” and an old man who has lost his wife listens to “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties.” On the 25th anniversary of his death, the Hankyoreh wrote that people “about to enlist, just starting work, or entering the twilight of life” each laid their own voices over his songs (Jan. 6, 2021). Almost every Korean man has to do military service, so that order is close to the order of almost every Korean life.

Music critics point to the same place. In 2007, Korean critics voted “About Thirty” the best song lyric in Korean pop (Money Today, Dec. 29, 2013). Composer Jung Won-young called his work “music that beats time,” and composer Kim Hyung-suk, whose first song ever given to a singer was the title track of Kim’s debut album, said he “gained eternal life by staying in the memory of the people who loved him” (Yonhap, Jan. 6, 2026).

A star made without television

The second reason is that he became a star on stage, not on TV. On Aug. 11, 1995, he played his 1,000th concert at Hakchon, a tiny theater in Seoul’s Daehangno district. That is one show every other day for five years, and his friends nicknamed him Ttohae, “Again,” because he never stopped (Munhwa Ilbo, June 1, 2026). The Busan Ilbo called him “the one and only figure who conquered Korean pop with concerts alone, in the 1990s, when you could not become a star without television” (July 28, 2016). Songs that won over a few hundred people at a time don’t wear out the way chart hits do.

The voice that stopped around thirty

The third reason is his death. Before dawn on Jan. 6, 1996, he was found dead at his home in Seoul’s Mapo district. The night before, he had appeared on the cable show Park Sang-won’s Winter Days on HBS and sung “It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much” and “The Day She First Cried.” It was his last stage (Money S, Jan. 6, 2025). Police at the time ruled it a suicide. There was no note (Chosun Ilbo, Jan. 6, 2026).

The man who sang “About Thirty” stopped at 32. His friends who sang with him are now in their sixties, and in every video he is still thirty, still playing guitar. Director Hur Jin-ho saw the smiling portrait at his funeral and built his 1998 film Christmas in August around it (Hankyoreh, Jan. 6, 2021). A face that never aged and an early death froze him as the youth of an entire generation.

The murder theory ended in court

Doubt kept his name in the news for thirty years too. In 2017, reporter Lee Sang-ho released a documentary, Kim Kwang-seok, that claimed he had been murdered and pointed at his wife. That same year it came out that his daughter had died back in 2007, and the theory became front-page news.

Investigations and courts settled it. In November 2017, Seoul police found no grounds for the abandonment and fraud allegations against his wife over their daughter’s death (Yonhap, Nov. 10, 2017). In July 2018, police confirmed his death as a suicide and sent Lee to prosecutors for defamation, calling his murder claims false (YTN, July 3, 2018). In May 2020, Korea’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling ordering Lee to pay her 100 million won (about $84,000). The trial court had found that his claim that “Kim Kwang-seok was murdered and the plaintiff is the prime suspect” was false (iNews24, May 29, 2020).

The doubt lost. The attention stayed. On the 30th anniversary in January 2026, 110 acts applied to sing in a Kim Kwang-seok song contest held where Hakchon used to stand (Yonhap, Jan. 6, 2026).

Kim Kwang-seok’s 15 songs, ranked by YouTube

The series counts down from No. 15 to No. 1. I built the ranking on Oct. 25, 2026, by adding up the YouTube views of Kim’s own recordings and of other singers’ remakes, covers and TV performances of each song, 40 to 90 videos per song. For the songs he remade, I left out the original writers’ own videos.

Rank	Song	Total views	Part
15	Writing a Letter on a Cloudy Autumn Sky	about 7.2 million	2
14	The Night Alone	about 8.4 million	3
13	Please Wait for Me	about 12.6 million	4
12	The Day She First Cried	about 13.4 million	5
11	A Letter from a Private	about 19.9 million	6
10	Becoming Dust	about 21.2 million	7
9	Stand Up	about 27.4 million	8
8	On the Street	about 34.9 million	9
7	Those Days	about 35.7 million	10
6	Where the Wind Blows	about 43.9 million	11
5	About Thirty	about 51 million	12
4	Love Has Gone	about 58.3 million	13
3	A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties	about 73.6 million	14
2	With the Heart to Forget You	about 83.3 million	15
1	It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much	about 251.4 million	16

Only three of these 15 songs were written entirely by Kim, words and music. The rest were written by friends and older musicians, and he made them his. No. 1 has three times the views of No. 2, and it is the song he sang on television on his last night alive.

Next, No. 15: “Writing a Letter on a Cloudy Autumn Sky,” written by a medical student the night before an exam and sung by a 24-year-old Kim Kwang-seok.

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Sources: IU Official and MBCkpop YouTube channels; Korea Economic Daily (Dec. 28, 2015); Money S (Jan. 6, 2025); Hankyoreh (Jan. 6, 2021); Money Today (Dec. 29, 2013); Yonhap (Jan. 6, 2026; Nov. 10, 2017); JoongAng Ilbo (Jan. 4, 2026); Munhwa Ilbo (June 1, 2026); Busan Ilbo (July 28, 2016); Chosun Ilbo (Jan. 6, 2026); Herald Economy (Oct. 5, 2017); YTN (July 3, 2018); iNews24 (May 29, 2020). View counts as shown on YouTube, Oct. 25, 2026. Exchange rate: 2020, $1 ≈ 1,190 won.