It was an old Choi Baek Ho song Yoon Joo Won was listening to when painting
With older Korean songs making a comeback on various K-dramas this year (Divorce Attorney Shin and Crash Course in Romance to name just a couple), I was not too surprised to hear an old Choi Baek Ho song showing up on the first episode of See You In My 19th Life this month.
That song was played on See You In My 19th Life, Episode 1 just 12 minutes into the episode as young Yoon Joo Won (beautifully played by Kim Si Ah) is at school painting when an even younger Moon Seo Ha (Jung Hyeon Jun) runs past her, and knocks over the easel.
The song itself is a very famous Korean track from the 1990s — a track called ‘About Romance‘ by folk pop singer Choi Baek Ho.
The track was originally released in the early 1990s, and was then used as an insert song in the popular Korean drama Bathhouse Men in 1995.
The drama was an enormous hit in South Korea, as was Choi Baek Ho’s ‘About Romance‘ because of it.
From then on ‘About Romance‘ has been thought of as one of the now-73-year-old singer’s “signature songs”, so it isn’t too surprising it made an appearance in See You In My 19th Life.
Especially as ‘About Romance‘Â was popular in South Korea during the time Yoon Joo Won was still alive.
Old songs in Korean dramas are all the current rage, including Choi Baek Ho’s ‘About Romance‘
And this is just one of many things I love about watching Korean dramas.
Along with the wonderful stories, superb acting and writing, and beautiful cinematography, we also get a window into a world of older contemporary Korean music I had never heard of until then.
Choi Baek Ho, however, I was familiar with, as I had stumbled across his songs a few months ago while researching a couple of Korean trot tracks on Divorce Attorney Shin, then fallen in love with him and his music.
Listen to Choi Baek Ho’s ‘About Romance‘ as heard on See You In My 19th Life, Episode 1 on the Spotify player and in the video of Choi Baek Ho himself performing the song live on a Korean TV show last year.
The lyrics of the song, by the way, speak of regrets about the past and the somewhat futility of life. Yes, that is why it sounds so sad.
Of course, it is a song 12-year-old Yoon Joo Won loves in See You In My 19th Life, as she is a very old soul.