Singer Lee Sang-eun on leaving stardom: 'I am not a product'

In the summer of 1988, Lee Sang-eun shook the landscape of the Korean popular music industry with just one song. 'Damdadi,' performed by then eighteen-year-old college student, gained explosive popularity immediately after winning the grand prize at the MBC Riverside Song Festival. At the time, Lee was a figure close to a top-tier idol by today's standards. However, she stepped back from the stardom surrounding her and left for Japan and the United States, subsequently choosing the path of a musician rather than a star.

During a conversation with Yuna Kim released on the BBC Korea YouTube channel on the 9th, Lee looked back on her brilliant debut era and her subsequent musical evolution. The two discussed the industrial gaze and social prejudices experienced while living as female musicians in Korea, as well as the struggle to maintain one's identity as an artist.

The popularity Lee experienced back then is difficult to grasp even by today's standards. She remarked, "I just blew up. I was incredibly busy," noting that she handled three provincial schedules a day and that fan letters arrived in sacks, measured in units of straw bales. Indeed, media reports from that time recorded that hundreds of fan letters poured in for Lee immediately after the release of 'Damdadi,' to the point where they had to be moved to her home.

Above all, Lee's emergence was significantly distant from the typical image of female singers at the time. She presented a boyish stage style with tall stature, short hair, jeans, sneakers, and a face without makeup, bypassing the social norms of 'pretty appearance and a demure image' required of female singers. Because of this, she is evaluated as an early example of a female fandom—a crucial concept in later idol culture—as she attracted a large number of young female fans.

However, public success and personal satisfaction were not proportional. Lee confessed that even then, norms existed centered around entertainment agencies, such as "a singer should be like this" or "female singers should wear these kinds of clothes," and that she felt uncomfortable with the gaze that viewed her as a product rather than a musician.

The emptiness she felt was different from a simple, temporary slump of a rookie star. It was a sense of dissociation—that while she was singing because she loved music, those around her were consuming her based on her appearance, image, buzzworthiness, and marketability. She shared that even at the moment of reaching peak popularity, she asked herself, "Am I truly making music right now?"

For Lee, the stardom of 1988 was a blessing and, at the same time, an overwhelming shackle. While the success brought by 'Damdadi' imprinted her on the public, it paradoxically made her realize early on that the image of that success could restrict her future musical direction.

Looking at the current idol system, she pointed out similar issues. She noted that today's idols are ultimately someone's children who were in school until recently, yet the industry constantly processes them into products on stage. She stated that she herself would have found it difficult to endure for long within such a system.

The turning point was her experience as a radio DJ. While encountering various types of music, Lee realized that musical worlds she never knew existed. She began to think, "There is meaning in singing about one's own life," and eventually chose the path of composing her own songs.

From that point on, the meaning of the word 'star' faded rapidly for Lee. She revealed that she came to believe that making good songs was the only thing that mattered, and that age, gender, and the evaluations of others were no longer decisive criteria. She explained that continuing to make music and improving the perfection of her works became the most important meaning in her life.

That choice led to her actual life trajectory. Lee suddenly left for Japan in 1990 and moved to the United States the following year to study fine arts. This move, where a popular singer at the peak of her career voluntarily stepped out of the spotlight, was quite unusual in the entertainment industry at the time.

Even after releasing her third album 'Deodin Haru' in 1991, she did not settle for her existing star image. After returning to Korea in 1995, she built her own world as a singer-songwriter, focusing on self-composed songs and relatively small-scale stages. Since the 2000s, she has expanded her territory into poetry and fine arts, establishing herself as an independent artist difficult to define by the past epithet 'the singer of Damdadi.'

In particular, her musical direction after 1995 seems almost like that of a different person compared to the Lee of 1988. Keeping her distance from mainstream trends, she infused her music with her inner life, Eastern sensibilities, and experimental sounds. Her album 'Gongmudohaga' is considered a masterpiece of this era, representing her transformation from a pop singer into a serious, auteur-like musician.

Interestingly, she does not completely reject her past. 'Damdadi' is not a dark chapter she wishes to erase, but rather a massive mountain she had to climb. She has previously reflected that 'Damdadi' brought both success and turmoil, noting that if she hadn't left Korea then, she might have become a singer who merely flashed brightly before disappearing.

Therefore, Lee's career cannot be explained by the simple narrative of a 'star who vanished at the peak.' Rather, she is a case of someone who let go of what the public wanted in order to choose the art she desired.

The Lee Sang-eun of 1988 was an idol created by the era. However, the Lee Sang-eun after 1990 is a musician she created herself. This is why 'Damdadi' remains such a powerful moment in Korean pop music history: instead of clinging to the stardom the song provided, she chose to transcend it.

'Damdadi' remains a song that symbolizes 1988. But for Lee, perhaps the most important thing was not the fame the song brought, but the musical self-awareness she fought to protect even by discarding that fame.