The Other Song He Pitched to Cho Yong-pil: “Our Love”

Part 3 of 10 in The One Album K-pop Learned From: Yoo Jae-ha

No. 8, “Our Love,” is the song a 22-year-old Yoo Jae-ha brought to Cho Yong-pil along with “Because I Love You.” Cho picked “Because I Love You,” and the one left over became the brightest love song Yoo ever wrote.

Its combined YouTube views come to about 1.63 million. Most of Yoo Jae-ha’s songs ache, but this one always makes me picture him grinning from ear to ear. That’s why I hold it especially dear.

Two songs for Cho Yong-pil’s band

Around 1984, Cho Yong-pil and the Great Birth were looking for a keyboardist ahead of tours in the U.S. and Japan. Bandleader Song Hong-seop met the college student Yoo through Kim Kwang-min and Jung Won-young and remembers him as “a very quiet student” with a huge hunger for pop music. Soon Yoo came in with two songs of his own and asked Song to pass them to Cho: “Because I Love You” and “Our Love” (Busan Ilbo, Apr. 21, 2016). Cho put “Because I Love You” on his seventh album in 1985. Two years later, Yoo released “Our Love” in his own voice.

Also read: The Song a Korean Newscast Closed On the Night the Sewol Was Raised: "Fly, Chick"

A romance that starts with a phone ringing

햇님이 방실 달님이 빙긋 / 우리들의 사랑을 지켜봐 주는 것 같아요

The sun beams, the moon grins. / It feels like they’re watching over our love.

— Lyrics and music by Yoo Jae-ha (1987), excerpt

The song starts with a phone ringing. On the line, she says she missed him so much she worked up the nerve to call. When they meet they sulk over little things, then make up as always, and he smiles to himself on the way home. He’s sure the birds whisper and the flowers gossip because they’re jealous. If the album follows one romance from meeting to breakup to reunion, this is the joy of the moment the love is returned (Munhwa Ilbo, May 12, 2003). He had met her in his first year of college and was turned down for two years before he finally won her (Part 4).

Under the simplest lyrics on the album sits its flashiest playing. According to OhmyNews, Yoo overdubbed two electric guitars playing the same improvised line in unison, a performance that stood out even among Korean pop recordings of the 1980s (OhmyNews, Nov. 1, 2017). When the album was pressed on LP again from the original master tapes in 2014, this was one of the two songs played at the listening session as sounding most different from the old CD (Yonhap, Jan. 21, 2014).

The song Reply 1988 brought back

In 2015, tvN’s Reply 1988 laid about ten 1980s songs under every episode. In Episode 3, “Our Love” played alongside songs by Sobangcha, Kim Wan-sun and Byun Jin-sub (Sports Kyunghyang, Nov. 23, 2015). Yonhap wrote that when it comes on screen, “before you know it, your heart melts” (Yonhap, Nov. 29, 2015). To show a love affair in 1987, no prop beats a song that opens with a ringing phone.

TVING Alive – Yoo Jae-ha album analysis — 73,000 views

Lee Juck and Jung Jae-hyung, and Nick & Sammy

There’s no official video yet of an idol singing this song on a broadcast. Instead, both tribute albums chose carefully who would carry it. On 1997’s For You Who Came Back, Lee Juck and Jung Jae-hyung sang it together (Munhwa Ilbo, Dec. 11, 2017). Jung later said, “I went to Hanyang University’s composition department because of Yoo Jae-ha” (Maeil Business, Dec. 1, 2018).

On the 30th-anniversary album in 2017, the new duo Nick & Sammy sang it again.

The song Cho Yong-pil didn’t pick got picked 30 years later, when a drama needed to bring back 1988. The man who wrote a love song watched over by the sun and the moon never got to see that 1988. Still, whenever this song plays, I like to believe the young man who once waited by the phone, heart pounding, is somewhere smiling along with us.

Previous: Part 2 — The Lonely Night Shin Hae-chul Sang for Him: “Empty Tonight”

Next, No. 7: “Gloomy Letter,” the song a serial killer requests on the radio every rainy night in Bong Joon-ho’s film.

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Sources: Busan Ilbo (Apr. 21, 2016); Munhwa Ilbo (May 12, 2003; Dec. 11, 2017); OhmyNews (Nov. 1, 2017); Yonhap (Jan. 21, 2014; Nov. 29, 2015); Sports Kyunghyang (Nov. 23, 2015); Maeil Business (Dec. 1, 2018); Spotify album credits. Lyrics checked against Bugs. View counts as shown on YouTube, Oct. 25, 2026.