AI Singer Meomuru Hit No. 2 on Melon. Koreans Cried Before They Knew

Featured photo: Sindorim Station on Seoul Subway Line 1, one of the city’s most crowded commuter stops. Photo: Doo Ho Kim / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The ballad at No. 2 on Melon that made Korean commuters cry on their way home, Meomuru’s “Have I Become the Grown-Up I Dreamed Of?”, was not sung by a person. A person wrote the lyrics, but the melody and the voice were made by AI. And because the song said so honestly, it is now losing out inside Korea’s copyright system.

What comforted listeners learned later

Melon is Korea’s biggest music streaming service, and its real-time Top 100 chart is where K-pop idols fight for No. 1. From October 26 through the afternoon of October 27, the song holding No. 2 on that chart was “Have I Become the Grown-Up I Dreamed Of?” (News1, October 27). Released on June 23, it first entered the monthly chart at No. 93 in September, then climbed to No. 18 on October 2 and No. 3 on October 13 before reaching No. 2 (AI Times, October 25; News1). The official YouTube video has passed 13.65 million views (checked October 28).

Many people had no idea there was no singer. The only mention that it’s AI is one sentence on the last line of the album description on Melon: “The vocals on this album were generated with Suno AI technology, and the concept, lyrics and overall production direction were handled directly by the artist Meomuru” (News1). Suno is an American music-generation AI that turns a text prompt into a song. People who stumbled on that line while looking up other tracks left comments like “This is genuinely shocking” and “I had no idea” (Herald Economy, October 14).

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A question written by a person, a voice made by AI

What made people cry was less the voice than the question. The song is about someone who gets through the day pretending to be fine, comes home and asks themselves in the mirror:

Can I call this small, jagged me / a grown-up? — “Have I Become the Grown-Up I Dreamed Of?”, lyrics by Meomuru (Glorywave), 2026

The song sets the grown-up you pictured as a child next to the self who falls apart every night, and in the chorus it measures the distance between the two at full voice. Pop music critic Lim Hee-yun called the lyrics “the first person of a human living a hard life,” and of the chorus that flips between chest voice and falsetto he wrote that it is “the truly sad sound a truly sad person would make” (JoongAng Ilbo, October 17).

That first person was written by people. Meomuru is the AI music project of Glorywave (Lee Yong-seok and Choi Sung-hyuk), a songwriting team that has worked with singers Hwang Chi-yeul and Gilgu Bonggu for more than 10 years. They write the lyrics first, generate melody, arrangement and vocals with Suno, then add sounds and mix in the music software Cubase. They fixed the AI’s awkward Korean pronunciation by rewriting the lyrics until it sounded right (AI Times). Asked the question in the song’s title, the team said, “We still can’t answer it with confidence either” (same article).

3.1 stars, 32,000 likes

Korean internet users split in two over this song. Its average rating on Melon is a low 3.1 out of 5, yet it has more than 32,000 likes. One side gives it one star: “AI? That’s gross.” The other gives it five: “I never thought I’d live to be comforted by an AI” (JoongAng Ilbo). That second line went straight onto this week’s list of Korean memes (Issue Itnayo, week 44 meme roundup). There’s also a camp that says, “If the song is good, that’s enough” (News1).

What the angry side objects to isn’t the song but the feeling of being fooled. Users are demanding, “If it’s an AI song, label it as an AI song” (News1). In a survey by research firm Opensurvey, 85.6% said AI content needs to be labeled (Herald Economy).

A chart where honesty costs you

Melon doesn’t label AI music. A Melon official said, “Producers have no obligation to disclose what work they used AI for, and there’s no standard for what counts as an AI track,” adding, “It’s hard for us to stick an AI label on things on our own” (News1). Platforms abroad have already moved. YouTube Music began labeling songs made mainly with generative AI on October 14, and Spotify since September has given AI virtual artists an “AI persona” badge and dropped them from recommendations (Seoul Economic Daily, October 22). The Korean government has reacted too. The Ministry of Science and ICT is reviewing a legal change to widen the labeling duty, which now applies only to AI developers and service companies (News1 exclusive).

The stranger part is the money. In August, the Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA) set a standard to register songs that partly used AI if a person was substantially involved, then withdrew it on the recommendation of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. With no standard in place, creators who disclose AI use have their registration delayed and get no royalties, while those who hide it get paid. That point was raised at a National Assembly forum on October 27 (Edaily). Meomuru’s team hasn’t entrusted the song to KOMCA either, so it collects no royalties for lyrics, composition or arrangement, only distribution revenue. According to Melon, the copyright share from AI tracks is piling up as “unsettled payments” (Kyunghyang Shinmun, October 16). The lyricist’s share of a song at No. 2 on Korea’s biggest chart is stuck in a platform’s ledger because of one honest line.

Meanwhile, covers of the song have appeared on YouTube. One of them uses AI to revive the voice of singer Kim Kwang-seok, who died in 1996, and has passed 380,000 views (YouTube, checked October 28). A song no person sang is now being sung by the voice of a person who is no longer alive.

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Koreans Cried to Melon’s No. 2 Song. Then They Learned AI Singer Meomuru Isn’t Human