The Song IU Gave Him on the 22nd Anniversary of His Death

Part 15 of 16 in Kim Kwang-seok: The Dead Singer K-pop Can't Let Go

No. 2, “With the Heart to Forget You,” is the song IU dedicated to Kim Kwang-seok on her official channel on the 22nd anniversary of his death, and the song he agreed with a friend, hours before he died, to “do this way next time.” A song about trying to forget became the song that won’t let anyone forget him.

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

Its combined views come to about 83.3 million. Kim wrote the words and music himself and put it on his third album in March 1992 (Melon). Of the 15 songs in this countdown, it is the most-sung of the ones he wrote entirely on his own. I love that a song he wrote completely by himself is still this loved.

A promise made hours before he left

On the night of Jan. 5, 1996, Kim appeared on HBS’s Park Sang-won’s Winter Days with his friends Park Hak-ki and Jang Pil-soon. It was his last broadcast. Before dawn the next day he was found dead (Money S, Jan. 6, 2025).

Thirty years later, on Jan. 4, 2026, the 30th-anniversary concert “Meeting Kwang-seok Again” was held at the Arko Kkumbat Theater in Daehangno, where the old Hakchon Theater used to be. Park Hak-ki sang this song with a live video of Kim playing on the screen behind him. As the two voices overlapped, sobs broke out among the 140 or so people in the audience. When he finished, Park said:

“Hours before Kwang-seok left, we did a broadcast together, and we promised, ‘Let’s do this song with this arrangement.’ That was the last time I saw him” (JoongAng Ilbo, Jan. 4, 2026).

Thirty years later, Park sang the song they’d agreed to do together, with his friend on a screen.

Also read: The Breakup Song That Became a Musical About Bodyguards

Written on the window, then wiped away

하얗게 밝아 온 유리창에 / 썼다 지운다 널 사랑해

On the glass turning white with morning / I write it, then wipe it away: I love you.

— Lyrics and music by Kim Kwang-seok (1992), excerpt

He shuts his door with the heart to forget her, but the empty room is full of her scent. When he looks at the ceiling her face appears, and when he turns over, tears run from the corner of his eye. The past is supposed to be buried in memory and done with, so why is he awake all through the long night? When dawn comes, on the window of a room that feels bigger than yesterday, he writes the same words and wipes them away again.

“I write it, then wipe it away: I love you.” That one line is the whole song. It’s the song of someone who says he has to forget, and writes the same words again every morning. On YouTube, a lyric video titled with that line has passed 16 million views. More people come back to hear that one line than to hear the original recording.

Kim Kwang-seok – “With the Heart to Forget You” (Official Audio) — 1.65 million views

IU’s 7.17 million, and DAY6, SHINee and BTOB

After posting the tribute in January 2018, IU sang it on that year’s dlwlrma tour too (1.63 million views). Between this video in Part 1, “Stand Up” in Part 8 and “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties” in Part 14, IU is the K-pop singer whose name comes up most in this series.

IU – “With the Heart to Forget You” (2018 tour live clip, IU Official) — 1.63 million views

Idol vocalists keep choosing it. DAY6’s Young K sang it on KBS’s Limousine Service (980,000 views), SHINee’s Onew on tvN Joy’s SHINee’s Startup (180,000), and BTOB’s Seo Eun-kwang on KBS’s Immortal Songs this March (160,000).

Young K (DAY6) – “With the Heart to Forget You” (Limousine Service, KBS) — 980,000 views

Onew (SHINee) – “With the Heart to Forget You” (SHINee’s Startup, tvN Joy) — 180,000 views

Seo Eun-kwang (BTOB) – “With the Heart to Forget You” (Immortal Songs 2, KBS, 2026) — 160,000 views

Jung Seung-hwan and AKMU’s Lee Su-hyun’s duet on JTBC’s Begin Again Korea has 2.84 million views, and Roy Kim’s cover has 3.42 million.

Jung Seung-hwan and Lee Su-hyun (AKMU) – “With the Heart to Forget You” (Begin Again Korea, JTBC) — 2.84 million views

The people who won’t forget a song about forgetting

Critic Im Jin-mo noted that 1996, the year Kim died, was the year H.O.T. debuted and dance music began its takeover of Korean pop. His music, just a guitar and a harmonica murmuring his own story, “stands at the opposite pole from today’s K-pop, produced by a system, and that’s exactly what makes it rare,” Im said (JoongAng Ilbo, Jan. 4, 2026). The singers at the center of that K-pop system are the ones singing this song.

The man in the song shuts his door with the heart to forget. For thirty years, the people who kept opening that door again were IU, Park Hak-ki, DAY6 and SHINee. And all of us who listened and never could forget him.

Previous: Part 14 — A 31-Year-Old Sang Korea’s Saddest Song About Growing Old

Next, No. 1: “It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much,” the song he sang on his last broadcast, the night before he died.

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Sources: Melon (lyrics and music by Kim Kwang-seok, arranged by Cho Dong-ik; Kim Kwang-seok 3, Mar. 20, 1992); Money S (Jan. 6, 2025); JoongAng Ilbo (Jan. 4, 2026). View counts as shown on YouTube, Oct. 25, 2026. The “I write it, then wipe it away: I love you” lyric video (16.08 million views) is an unofficial upload and is not embedded.