IU at the Baeksang Arts Awards, April 2023.

Ae-sun Left the Baeksang Empty-Handed. Then She Spoke: IU

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Part 5 of 6 in The Queen Who Said She Didn't Have a Celebrity Face: IU

Featured photo: IU at the Baeksang Arts Awards, April 2023. Photo: 월아조운 (MCJOUN) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Previously: Hotel del Luna’s boss walked the red carpet at Cannes, and four months later she became the first Korean female singer to fill Seoul’s Olympic Stadium alone.

On May 5, 2025, while When Life Gives You Tangerines took home four Baeksang Arts Awards, its lead, Oh Ae-sun, could only clap from her seat. Seventy-four days later, on another awards stage, she paid tribute in a shaking voice to every Ae-sun in the world. In the two years before that, she had passed through two stadiums and 18 cities.

2023: Dream

In April 2023 she played Lee So-min, a documentary producer following Korea’s Homeless World Cup team, opposite Park Seo-joon in director Lee Byeong-heon’s film Dream. That summer she opened Moment, an exhibition for her 15th anniversary, and Rolling Stone put her at No. 135 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time (Wikipedia).

Also read: Life After miss A: Suzy Swept the Charts Alone

January 2024: “Love wins all”

“Love wins all,” released January 24, 2024, debuted at No. 1 on the Circle Digital Chart (Wikipedia). Her co-star in the music video was V of BTS. It has been played 115.86 million times and has 5.11 million likes. She introduced it as “a story of people who love until the very end” (Sports Kyunghyang, Jan. 18, 2024).

115.86 million views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

2024: 18 cities and business class

The HEREH world tour opened in March at the KSPO Dome in Seoul, played 31 shows in 18 cities over five months, and ended in Los Angeles on August 2 (My Daily, Aug. 5, 2024). For the flight home she upgraded her entire touring crew to business class. One dancer posted on Instagram: “God-IU unnie, thanks to you I’m flying in comfort. Thank you” (My Daily). This story makes me smile no matter how many times I hear it. IU looks after the people behind the stage first, and that is exactly why I love her.

11.25 million views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

IU at a fan signing, March 2024.
IU at a fan signing, March 2024. Photo: MCJOUN via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

September 2024: her 100th concert, at Sangam

The tour’s final stop, on September 21–22, was Seoul World Cup Stadium in Sangam. No female soloist had ever played two nights there, a 60,000-seat stadium, and more than 100,000 people came (Money Today, Sept. 23, 2024). It was her 100th solo concert (The Fact). She opened with “Holssi,” flying over the stadium in a balloon covered in flowers, and filled three hours alone, without a single guest (The Fact).

12.47 million views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

12.24 million views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

March 2025: Ae-sun and Geum-myeong

Netflix released When Life Gives You Tangerines in March 2025. Oh Ae-sun is a girl born on Jeju Island in the 1950s who dreams of being a poet; Yang Geum-myeong is her daughter. IU played both mother and daughter, and Yang Gwan-sik, the man who stays at Ae-sun’s side for life, was played by her friend and fellow 1993-born actor Park Bo-gum. The show spent nine straight weeks in Netflix’s global top 10 for non-English series and logged about 35 million views in the first half of the year alone (Nocut News, July 21, 2025).

890,000 views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

600,000 views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

14.21 million views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

May and July 2025: two awards nights

At the 61st Baeksang Arts Awards on May 5, When Life Gives You Tangerines won four prizes: Best Drama, Best Screenplay, and both supporting-acting awards. Best Actress went to Kim Tae-ri for Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, and IU and Park Bo-gum went home with nothing (News1 via Daum, May 6, 2025). Afterward social media filled up with the same line: “She just sat there clapping” (Wikitree, May 6, 2025).

Seventy-four days later, on July 18, at the 4th Blue Dragon Series Awards, her name was called for Best Actress. Her voice shook: “To every Ae-sun who lived her own world more vividly than anyone, in a world that forced her to live faintly, and to every Geum-myeong who stubbornly planted and grew her own ambitions all over the world, I give my respect and my thanks” (Digital Times, July 19, 2025). The show, she said, “will be the greatest pride of my life” (Nocut News). That night it also won the grand prize. Any fan who remembered her clapping from the audience 74 days earlier cried along at this moment. I know I did.

900,000 views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

IU at the Blue Dragon Series Awards, July 2025.
IU at the Blue Dragon Series Awards, July 2025. Photo: 티비텐 (TV10) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

2025: A Flower Bookmark 3 and year’s end

Her third album of remakes, A Flower Bookmark 3, came out on May 27. At the end of the year she won six awards at the Asia Artist Awards, including the Actor of the Year grand prize (Star News, Dec. 7, 2025), and Gallup Korea named her Singer of the Year (No. 1 among people in their 30s and younger) and No. 2 TV Actor of the Year at the same time (Star News, Dec. 17 and 22, 2025). China’s NetEase Cloud Music announced that she was the most-streamed Korean singer in its 12-year history, with more than 3.9 billion plays (Wikipedia).

5.13 million views as of Oct. 26, 2026.

After saying goodbye to Ae-sun, she was already on her next set that winter: an MBC drama set in a fictional 21st-century Korea where the royal family still exists, with Byeon Woo-seok as the grand prince.

Where to watch (checked Oct. 26, 2026, via JustWatch) – Dream (2023): U.S. and Korea Netflix – When Life Gives You Tangerines (2025): U.S. and Korea Netflix

The Queen Who Said She Didn't Have a Celebrity Face: IU · Part 5 of 6

Part 6 arrives Nov. 1.

← Part 4: Hotel del Luna's Boss Walks the Cannes Red Carpet: IU

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