The Song a Korean Newscast Closed On the Night the Sewol Was Raised: “Fly, Chick”

Part 2 of 11 in Shin Hae-chul: The Demon King K-pop Keeps Bringing Back

No. 10, “Fly, Chick” (Nalara Byeongari), is a song for the grave of one baby chicken, and Korea brings it out when it mourns young deaths. On March 22, 2017, JTBC’s Newsroom reported on the raising of the Sewol ferry and ended the broadcast with this song.

N.EX.T – “Fly, Chick” (DanalEntertainment) — 110,000 views

Its combined views come to about 5.8 million. It appeared in May 1994 on N.EX.T’s second album, The Return of N.EX.T Part 1: The Being, with music and arrangement by Shin (Melon). In the middle of the album where N.EX.T turned toward heavy metal sits this quiet song. A man who knew how to set down something this tender in the middle of all that roar: that is why I remember Shin Hae-chul as a gentle soul even before I remember him as the “Demon King.”

Spring 1974, a box on the footbridge

The song opens with a date.

나는 어린 내 눈에 처음 죽음을 보았던 / 1974년의 봄을 아직 기억한다

I still remember the spring of 1974, / when my young eyes first saw death.

(Music by Shin Hae-chul; key lines quoted)

Shin was born in May 1968, so that spring he was five. The boy in the song brings home a yellow chick named Yali from a peddler’s square box on a pedestrian bridge. The little heart that sang in his palm doesn’t last. One night Yali flaps weakly, by dawn it has gone cold, and it is buried in the front yard in the same small box it came in. As the crying stops, the boy dimly understands that he can’t stay in this world forever either. The chorus asks whether flowers have bloomed on that grave again this year.

Chicks sold outside school gates were something nearly every Korean child of the 1970s to the ’90s went through. Anyone who buried one a few days later doesn’t hear this as someone else’s story. JoongAng Ilbo opened its column on the 10th anniversary of his death with the line “It was ‘inside the square box on the footbridge’ that I first met Shin Hae-chul’s music” (Oct. 20, 2024).

Also read: The Love Song a Killer Requested on the Radio: "Gloomy Letter"

Sewol and Newsroom

On the night of March 22, 2017, the day the Sewol ferry came back up out of the water three years after it sank, JTBC’s Newsroom put up a drawing by illustrator Suk Jung-hyun of Shin with the ferry’s students on its final screen and played “Fly, Chick.” The chorus, wondering if they are flying somewhere without pain, ran over the 304 people who died (Asia Economy, March 23, 2017). Most of them were high school students on a field trip. A song written for a chick became a requiem for children that night.

Shin himself died in a medical accident. In that drawing he stood beside the students.

The covers on TV

This song mostly goes to rock and ballad singers with heavier voices than idols. In October 2015, on the first anniversary of his death, Ha Dong-qn, formerly of the group 7Dayz, sang it on KBS’s Immortal Songs with a string section and a choir.

Ha Dong-qn – “Fly, Chick” (Immortal Songs 2, KBS, 2015) — 200,000 views

On the same show in October 2024, the 10th anniversary, Ahn Shin-ae sang it, and Jung Dong-ha of the rock band Boohwal sang it on KBS’s Concert 7080. None of the big idol groups has an official cover of it yet.

Ahn Shin-ae – “Fly, Chick” (Immortal Songs 2, KBS, 2024) — 90,000 views

Jung Dong-ha – “Fly, Chick” (Concert 7080, KBS) — 70,000 views

Shin’s own performance survives from KBS’s Lee So-ra’s Propose in 1997.

N.EX.T – “Fly, Chick” (Lee So-ra’s Propose, KBS, 1997) — 50,000 views

The Busan Ilbo ended its profile of Shin with one line from this song: “Someday, be born as my friend in the next world too” (Aug. 4, 2016). The favor a five-year-old asked of a chick is what his fans now ask of him. I’m one of those fans asking.

Next, No. 9: “A Letter to Myself.” A 22-year-old teen idol asked Korea about its bank balance in a song.

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Sources: Melon (The Return Of N.EX.T Part 1: The Being, May 1, 1994; credits and lyrics); JoongAng Ilbo (Oct. 20, 2024); Asia Economy (March 23, 2017); Busan Ilbo (Aug. 4, 2016). View counts as shown on YouTube, Oct. 25, 2026.