A 31-Year-Old Sang Korea’s Saddest Song About Growing Old

Part 14 of 16 in Kim Kwang-seok: The Dead Singer K-pop Can't Let Go

No. 3, “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties,” was a Korean song the English couldn’t understand, and a 31-year-old Kim Kwang-seok burst into tears when he heard it on a bus radio. A song about old age, sung by a singer who never got old, became a presidential campaign song thirty years later.

Kim Kwang-seok – “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties” (Official Audio) — 700,000 views

Its combined views come to about 73.6 million. This is one song I have never managed to get through without crying. Blues guitarist Kim Mok-kyung wrote the words and music, and Kim Kwang-seok put it on his remake album Dasi Bureugi II in March 1995 (Melon).

A second-floor window in England

In 1988, in his fifth year of studying in England, Kim Mok-kyung used to look down from his second-floor room into the garden next door. An elderly English couple lived in that house with the big garden, and every month their son came to visit with his little boy. A few times Kim Mok-kyung watched the old couple see their son and grandson off at the front door, then turn and walk back into the house. He wrote this song from the sight of their backs (Segye Ilbo, Feb. 21, 2013).

But the lyrics weren’t an English story. “In England, lines like ‘the youngest son’s college entrance exam…’ or ‘when you used to knot my tie with those fine white hands’ could never happen in real life,” Kim Mok-kyung said. English parents, he meant, don’t stay up all night over their children’s exams. When he recorded his first album in London in 1990 with English bandmates, they understood seven of the eight songs. This was the one they never understood (Segye Ilbo). It starts with an English couple seen from behind and ends with the whole life of Korean parents.

곱고 희던 그 손으로 / 넥타이를 매어 주던 때

With those fine white hands / you used to knot my tie.

— Lyrics and music by Kim Mok-kyung, excerpt

The husband in the song asks his wife, one by one. Do you remember those young hands knotting my tie, the night we lay awake together before our youngest son’s college exam, the tears at our eldest daughter’s wedding? The years go by, the white hair spreads, and his wife squeezes his hand and says everyone is leaving. Then she goes first, down a long road from which no one comes back alone.

Also read: The Song a Bandmate Gave Him on His Way Out

The 31-year-old crying on a bus

Kim Mok-kyung’s original barely got noticed. Kim Kwang-seok was the one who brought it to the world. In Kim Mok-kyung’s words: “Kim Kwang-seok was riding a bus when ‘A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties’ happened to come on the radio. He was moved to tears, and that’s why he remade it” (Segye Ilbo).

Kim recorded it at 31. He never reached the age of the old man in the song. He died ten months after the album came out, and so the song’s last line means something else in his voice.

여보 안녕히 잘 가시게

Darling, farewell, go in peace.

The video of him singing it at the “Kim Kwang-seok Super Concert” in June 1995 has 1.05 million views.

Kim Kwang-seok – “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties” (Super Concert, June 29, 1995) — 1.05 million views

IU at 19, Lim Young-woong on Mr. Trot

IU sang it in 2012, at 19, on MBC’s music show Remocon. That stage has 3.85 million views. When Kim Mok-kyung named the younger singers who had covered the song, IU was one of them (Segye Ilbo).

IU – “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties” (Remocon, MBC, 2012) — 3.85 million views

The trot generation made this song’s numbers. Lim Young-woong sang it on TV Chosun’s Mr. Trot in 2020, and that video has 15.79 million views (Edaily, Feb. 22, 2022). A contestant’s stage dedicated to his wife on an Mnet audition has 14.73 million, and singer Park Ki-young’s performance on KBS’s Immortal Songs has 5.5 million.

Lim Young-woong – “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties” (Mr. Trot, TV Chosun, 2020) — 15.79 million views

Park Ki-young – “A Story of a Couple in Their Sixties” (Immortal Songs, KBS) — 5.5 million views

The song that became a campaign song

How completely this became everyone’s song in Korea showed in the 2022 presidential election. The campaign of People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk Yeol put it, along with “Where the Wind Blows,” on its official list of campaign songs. Rumors spread that Lim Young-woong had handed over his recording, and his agency had to post a notice saying he had “never provided any campaign song whatsoever” (Edaily, Feb. 22, 2022). The permission was Kim Mok-kyung’s to give, as the copyright holder. After the inter-Korean summit in Part 11, a song Kim sang was once again the soundtrack of Korean politics, this time at campaign rallies.

A song that began with the backs of an English couple was sung by a 31-year-old, and he never lived to the age in the song. The people who listen to it most now are living that age. The years he never got to live, we live now, with his songs playing.

Previous: Part 13 — The Songwriter Hated How He Sang It. It Made Him a Star.

Next, No. 2: “With the Heart to Forget You,” the song IU gave him on the 22nd anniversary of his death, and the last song he made plans for with a friend, hours before he died.

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Sources: Melon (lyrics and music by Kim Mok-kyung; Dasi Bureugi II, Mar. 1, 1995); Segye Ilbo interview with Kim Mok-kyung (Feb. 21, 2013); Edaily (Feb. 22, 2022); IU’s stage: MBCkpop. View counts as shown on YouTube, Oct. 25, 2026.