The Kim Kwang-seok Song Gen Z Found on Its Own

Part 3 of 16 in Kim Kwang-seok: The Dead Singer K-pop Can't Let Go

No. 14, “The Night Alone,” was an album track buried on Kim Kwang-seok’s fourth album behind “About Thirty,” “Stand Up” and “It’s Not Love If It Hurts Too Much.” Thirty years later, the people who dug it up were born after he died.

Kim Kwang-seok – “The Night Alone” (Official Audio, 2022 Remastered) — 1.12 million views

Its combined views come to about 8.4 million. Park Yong-jun wrote the words and music, and it appeared in 1994 on Kim’s last studio album, his fourth (Melon). This official audio video (1.12 million views) has been played more than the main official audio of his No. 1 song (1.08 million). When I first saw that number, my heart swelled. Thirty years after he left, people are still discovering his songs one by one and falling in love with them.

The 22-year-old who came by bus

On Jan. 6, 2026, the 30th anniversary of his death, a contest called “Singing Kwang-seok Again” was held where the Hakchon Theater used to stand. A college student came by bus from Cheongju, about 70 miles south of Seoul. Hyun Ju-yeon, 22, had become a fan in September 2025, and she named “The Night Alone” as her favorite song. “I knew ‘A Letter from a Private’ and his other songs because they’re all over the media, and because singers of our generation like IU remade so many of them, but I only fell for him deeply recently.” She said she had been in the top 0.2% of his listeners on YouTube Music the year before (News1, Jan. 6, 2026).

A generation that met Kim through remakes had traced the covers back to the originals, all the way down to an album track on his fourth record. That’s what the K-pop covers in Part 1 do.

Also read: The Lonely Night Shin Hae-chul Sang for Him: "Empty Tonight"

When it gets sad, let’s sing

아 이렇게 슬퍼질 땐 / 노래를 부르자

Ah, when I get this sad, / let’s sing a song.

— Lyrics and music by Park Yong-jun (1994), excerpt

The song opens on a night when starlight shatters on the window, the lights go out one by one, and he is left alone in the room. He looks at time that can’t be turned back and at his own lonely face in a faded photograph. Then he turns it around: when it gets sad, go out into the street and sing, and the tears will turn bright.

It begins in the loneliness of a night left alone and turns on one line: when you’re sad, sing. Kim played 1,000 shows in a small theater over five years, starting in 1991 (Part 1). Someone else wrote these words, but few sentences describe the way he lived as exactly as this one. On YouTube, one lyric video titled with that line, “When I get this sad, let’s sing,” has passed 1.38 million views.

He sang it at Hakchon on Jan. 3, 1995, and the recording survives.

Kim Kwang-seok – “The Night Alone” (Hakchon Theater, Jan. 3, 1995) — 150,000 views

Sing Again 4’s 1.32 million

What brought this song back to TV was an audition stage. When contestant No. 44 sang “The Night Alone” on JTBC’s Sing Again 4, the show titled the clip “It feels like an heir to Kim Kwang-seok’s music,” and the video reached 1.32 million views in less than a year.

Contestant No. 44 – “The Night Alone” (Sing Again 4, JTBC) — 1.32 million views

Park Da-eun sang it in the 2020 finale of Mnet’s The Voice of Korea (460,000 views), and in January this year Lee Ji-hoon sang it in a medley with “On the Street” and “Love Has Gone” on SBS (230,000 views).

Park Da-eun – “The Night Alone” (The Voice of Korea 2020, Mnet) — 460,000 views

Lee Ji-hoon – “On the Street × The Night Alone × Love Has Gone” (SBS) — 230,000 views

The man who sang about being left alone at night is gone, and the 22-year-old who found the song on her own rode a bus all the way to the theater where he used to play. As someone who loves his songs, all I can say to that scene is thank you.

Previous: Part 2 — A Med Student Wrote It the Night Before an Exam. Kim Kwang-seok Made It Last.

Next, No. 13: “Please Wait for Me,” the song his bandmate Kim Chang-ki gave him on his way out, which became his first solo hit.

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Sources: Melon (Kim Kwang-seok 4, June 25, 1994; lyrics and music by Park Yong-jun); News1 (Jan. 6, 2026); 1,000 Hakchon shows: see Part 1 (Munhwa Ilbo, June 1, 2026; Busan Ilbo, July 28, 2016). View counts as shown on YouTube, Oct. 25, 2026. The “When I get this sad, let’s sing” lyric video is an unofficial upload and is not embedded.