He Traded It for a Bottle of Soju: “Forever With You”

Part 6 of 10 in The One Album K-pop Learned From: Yoo Jae-ha

No. 5, “Forever With You,” is a song Yoo Jae-ha never recorded himself. Before his debut, he played it on guitar for Lee Moon-sae over drinks, and Lee later called it “the song that came over for a bottle of soju” (Sports Chosun, Sept. 19, 2025).

Lee Moon-sae – “Forever With You” (MBC, 2021) — 570,000 views

Its combined YouTube views come to about 4.67 million, just 370,000 ahead of No. 6, “Past Days” (about 4.3 million). A college student handing a song to an older singer over drinks, with nothing but a guitar: every time I picture it, I find him so lovable, and I miss him so much.

One song slipped into Lee Young-hoon’s album

Lee Moon-sae’s third album, I Don’t Know Yet (1985), was his first with composer Lee Young-hoon. Seven of its ten songs were Lee Young-hoon’s, and the only song by an outside writer was “Forever With You” (Sports Chosun, 2025; OhmyNews, Nov. 1, 2017). Lee Moon-sae hesitated to include it for the album’s sake, and later confessed: “Yoo Jae-ha wrote that song for me, so I squeezed it in, keeping an eye on how Young-hoon would take it.”

That album launched the Lee Moon-sae and Lee Young-hoon partnership. Overshadowed at first by the title track “I Don’t Know Yet” and “Girl,” this song spread by word of mouth and found its audience late (OhmyNews, 2017), and Lee recorded it again on his tenth album (Sports Chosun, 2025). The album that gave birth to the most famous duo in Korean ballads had a song by a college student who hadn’t even debuted tucked inside.

Also read: Rosé Cried Singing His Song. Bang Si-hyuk Won His Contest. Who Was Yoo Jae-ha?

He cried to keep the “red sea”

저 붉은 바다 해 끝까지 / 그대와 함께 가리

To the end of the sun over that red sea, / I’ll go there with you.

— Lyrics and music by Yoo Jae-ha, excerpt

That line got caught in broadcast censorship. The reason: “red sea” sounded like a nod to communists. The censors told him to change it to “blue sea,” and Munhwa Ilbo reports that Yoo only just stopped them by pleading in tears (Munhwa Ilbo, Oct. 28, 2003). A love song about the sea at sunset got a political loyalty check in 1985 South Korea.

Two years later, Yoo left it off his own album. His brother said, “It probably didn’t fit when he was working through the album’s concept” (Yonhap, Feb. 3, 2017). So there is no recording of “Forever With You” in Yoo’s voice. On the 1997 tenth-anniversary tribute, Lee So-ra sang it, and on the last track of the same album, Lee Moon-sae spoke to him: “Jae-ha, it’s Moon-sae. I feel like you’ll come to me and say, ‘Moon-sae, come to the tent bar and buy me a drink.’ Like you used to” (Munhwa Ilbo, Dec. 11, 2017).

Yang Yo-seob, Lim Young-woong, Park Myung-soo

Beast’s (now Highlight’s) Yang Yo-seob sang it on KBS’s Immortal Songs 2 in 2011. The song an idol main vocalist picked for a competition stage was one Yoo had given away.

Yang Yo-seob – “Forever With You” (Immortal Songs 2, KBS, 2011) — 71,000 views

The most-watched video of the song belongs to Lim Young-woong. His performance on TV Chosun’s Love Call Center has 2.33 million views on his official channel. In 2015, Yangpa took the stage with this song on MBC’s I Am a Singer 3 while on an IV drip (Seoul Economic Daily, Feb. 14, 2015), and on MBC’s Infinite Challenge, Park Myung-soo sang it with Jang Beom-june.

Lim Young-woong – “Forever With You” (Love Call Center, TV Chosun) — 2.33 million views

Park Myung-soo & Jang Beom-june – “Forever With You” (Infinite Challenge, MBC) — 170,000 views

Kim Woo-joo sang it on the 2017 30th-anniversary album, and Kim Feel on Sing Forest 2.

He handed this song over for a bottle of soju, and that’s why it survived outside his album. Of the nine, the one he never sang is No. 5. Still, whenever I hear it, I imagine his voice, playing guitar in the corner of a street-side tent bar.

Previous: Part 5 — The Debut Single That Hit No. 1 After He Died: “Past Days”

Next, No. 4: “In My Arms.” Kim Hyun-sik recorded it the year after Yoo died, and three years later Kim died on the same date.

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Sources: Sports Chosun (Sept. 19, 2025); OhmyNews (Nov. 1, 2017); Munhwa Ilbo (Oct. 28, 2003; Dec. 11, 2017); Yonhap (Feb. 3, 2017); Seoul Economic Daily (Feb. 14, 2015). Lyrics checked against Bugs and Spotify credits. View counts as shown on YouTube, Oct. 25, 2026.