To all the Sohas, Taesus, Yumins, and Bohyeons who want to live, and who are still looking for a reason to live. From HANRORO.

In your vlog about getting your personal color analysis, you mentioned wanting to try wearing more color. You’re switching up your style with different concepts for today’s shoot, too. Are you getting more used to switching things up?
HANRORO: After getting my personal color analysis, I definitely started trying new things. I’m over my all-gray phase. (laughs) But it’s not like I took that one comment too seriously. I just wanted to switch things up a bit. My tastes change pretty quickly, and more people have been quietly paying attention to my style and the way I’ve been changing. So I guess I’m finally paying a little more attention to it, too.

What’s changed the most?
HANRORO: I used to stick to neutrals like black, white, and gray. I dressed in a way that wouldn’t stand out too much. These days, I’m trying to be a little bolder. I’ve realized that olive green, lime, purple, sky blue, and even dark brown aren’t as bad on me as I thought. I still love stripes and plaid, but I want to keep trying new styles.

Do you think being a student at the time played a part in that, too? Early on, you were balancing school and your life as an artist. After graduation, you were able to focus fully on music.
HANRORO: After I graduated, I definitely had more space, both in my schedule and in my head. (laughs) Back then, I just felt grateful and excited to be a student during the day and make music at night. Looking back, I was probably pretty exhausted. But at the same time, if I had only focused on music, it might have been even harder. School gave me a break from music, and music helped me shake off the stress from school. Having both actually balanced each other out. It was such a fun time. I don’t think I could do it again now, but I think going through that is what made me who I am today.

You even performed at Konkuk University’s festival after graduating.
HANRORO: I actually hadn’t been back on campus much before that. The festival was the first time I’d really gone back. Some of my classmates and a few underclassmen came to see me, and getting messages like “When are you going on?” right before I stepped on stage felt so surreal. It was strange seeing people I used to sit next to in class out in the crowd. I sometimes get DMs from people saying they dreamed of going to Konkuk University because of me, and actually got in. When they tell me they’re at the show, it gives me a little boost before I go on stage.

You also received huge attention for opening Coldplay’s concert.
HANRORO: I’m really grateful that the organizers reached out to me first. Since I make rock music and my songs tend to carry uplifting messages, I thought it might match the energy of their show. I’ve never really chased goals tied to a particular stage or venue. My goals have always been more abstract, like hoping we can all be a little kinder. Maybe that’s what they saw in me.

Why is it important to you that we can all be a little kinder? It doesn’t feel that easy to be kind or to love someone these days.
HANRORO: I’ve been hurt a lot in situations like that, so maybe that’s why I cling to kindness even more. I know talking about love and kindness can start to sound cliché, and I know the world doesn’t change overnight. I’m human too. I get angry. I resent people sometimes. But when I really think it through, I always come back to the same place: I still want to choose love. That part always feels a little strange to me. It’s this messy mix of not wanting to hate, not wanting to hurt anyone, and not wanting to get hurt either.

Even when you get hurt, what keeps you from giving up on that belief?
HANRORO: Whether you’re the one who’s angry or the one on the receiving end of it, it really hurts. But when that happens, just thinking about what I love or talking to the people I care about helps me calm down. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way. So when I see someone showing a lot of anger, I don’t judge as quickly as I used to. Before, I might have thought, “Why would they go that far?” Now I think, “They must have something they love too. Maybe it’s just buried, and that’s why it comes out like this.” If someone helped them reconnect with that, maybe they wouldn’t lash out like that.

Like the poetry you love? On “Minumsa TV,” you mentioned that even when the situations in Yang Ahn-da’s poems aren’t positive, the way he portrays people desperately trying to keep living with the ones they love felt a lot like you, which is why you felt such a deep connection.
HANRORO: Yang Ahn-da’s poems might feel calm on the surface, but I felt like they hold really honest pain that only shows up in close relationships, and it’s all there unfiltered. In a way, it reminded me of my friends, and of my own heart, too. I’m not someone who brings my feelings out into words easily. I tend to think a lot before I speak, so it can take me a long time to say what I’m really feeling, and afterward I often end up thinking, “I shouldn’t have said that,” or “I should’ve said it differently.” I think that’s why I got into the habit of writing things down from a young age. I loved keeping a picture diary, and in middle and high school, I sometimes wrote things that were kind of like poems in a secret notebook. Putting those feelings into writing helped me sort through emotions that might sound exaggerated or embarrassing if I said them out loud.

On your YouTube channel “HANRORO,” in the series “Questions from Our Night,” you write poems for your guests. It was striking to see how you go beyond expressing your own feelings and gently hold space for someone else’s.
HANRORO: When I write about myself, I try to be as honest and fearless as I can. I write as a way of sorting through my thoughts, almost like letting them spill out. But when I’m writing a poem for someone else, I naturally think about them first. I try to choose words and images that feel right for that person. More than anything, I just hope they feel seen, and maybe a little comforted, when they read it.

The less you talk, the more carefully you choose your words. Out of all the things you could say, why do you keep coming back to understanding and comfort?
HANRORO: Because none of us lives alone. I don’t make music just for myself. The moment someone listens and responds to it, that’s what really moves me. It’s also what gives me the strength to keep going. We’re all living in the same world. If someone is struggling for reasons similar to mine, I naturally want to reach out and say, “I know how that feels.” That kind of connection, when hearts really meet, feels incredibly important to me.

Your novel “Jamong Salgu Club (Grapefruit Apricot Club)” also carries that same sense of connection. It brings together kids who feel like they have more reasons to die than to live, yet they end up searching for reasons to stay alive together.
HANRORO: There’s a lot of my personal hope woven into the novel. They’re still young, kind of standing at a crossroads, not really sure if they truly want to die or if death would actually end everything. When they meet others who are struggling in similar ways, they start looking for answers together. Maybe it’s a time when they ask themselves, “Do I really want to die, or do I actually want to live?” I wanted to hold onto the idea that maybe it’s just their current environment making them feel that way. If they find someone to live alongside, if they feel loved, maybe they could start wanting to live again. That’s why they promise to wait just 20 more days. During that time, they try to see whether they truly want to die, or if there’s still even a small part of them that wants to live. No matter what they decide in the end, I think the fact that they spend that time together already matters.

Why give them a 20-day grace period?
HANRORO: I wanted the story to feel realistic within the time between the start of middle school in March and summer break. As I worked through each character’s timeline and took school events like graduation photos and exams into account, I felt that giving them about 20 days was the right amount of time for them to hold onto the possibility of living. From a writer’s perspective, it felt like the most fitting choice.

Even after those 20 days, Taesu chooses death, while Bohyeon and Yumin decide to keep living, even through their grief.
HANRORO: I think of Taesu as someone who carries a lot inside. He seems bright on the surface, but he holds loneliness and sadness that no one really notices, and he doesn’t want to show it. Yumin truly loves Taesu. She’s warm and affectionate, but also fragile in her own way. When she’s hurt, she carries it for a long time. I wanted to show that softness, especially in the scene where she breaks down after losing someone she loves. Bohyeon, on the other hand, feels the strongest. She’s almost the opposite of Yumin. Even when she’s in pain herself, she tries to stay steady and grounded. She’s more mature, and when Yumin falls apart, she’s the one who comforts her and helps her find her balance again. As for Soha, since the story unfolds from her first-person observer perspective, I wanted her quiet depth to come through. She’s the youngest and hasn’t known the others for long, but she pays attention to things that other people might miss.

Although the novel unfolds through Soha’s first-person observer perspective, in the music video for “Can I Be Me?” she becomes the one being watched. After killing her father, the very person who had driven her to want to die, the camera follows her as she runs to the music room and the rooftop where they used to grow tomatoes together.
HANRORO: If the novel centers on Soha’s point of view, the music video centers on mine. The novel ends by emphasizing her fragmented inner monologue, but in the video, I wanted to frame it as if I were watching it all from above. I hoped to appear as an adult looking at Soha with sorrow, almost like a presence that exists somewhere between life and death. It was like asking myself whether I could protect her, surrounded by forces that keep pulling her toward death.

In the end, can Soha protect herself and truly live as herself, like the song’s English title, “Can I Be Me?” suggests?
HANRORO: Soha wasn’t someone who only wanted to die from the beginning. As she became interested in the Jamong Salgu Club, she gradually began to realize that she wanted to live. When the girls tell her she has to live, she makes the impulsive decision that the only way she can survive is if her father disappears. In her mind, she has to remove the very thing that keeps pushing her toward death. Of course, removing the source of her pain could lead to other consequences. But if it changes her reality even a little, maybe that’s enough for her to finally live as herself.

For Soha, the “Ticket from Tomorrow” feels like a real reason to live. The song of the same name builds with rock vocals, electric guitar, and drums, expressing her overwhelming first dream of tomorrow.
HANRORO: I wanted to capture what her mind must have felt like in that moment when she received the ticket. It might have been the first time she felt something like a rush of dopamine. Maybe it was also the first time she thought, “I might actually belong somewhere.” She was a kid who couldn’t feel at home anywhere, and even at school, she felt like she didn’t quite fit in. So, imagining her finally discovering a sense of belonging naturally led me to that kind of sound. I wanted the whole album to feel almost like an OST.

What did you mean by making it feel like an OST?
HANRORO: Since the novel unfolds only through Soha’s point of view, I wanted the other kids to feel like the main character in the album, too. For example, “The Suspect” was written around Yumin’s feelings as she lets Taesu go, and “Can I Be Me?” was shaped around Soha’s story. But once people started listening, I realized they were interpreting the songs in completely different ways. Some even hear “The Suspect” as Soha speaking to her mother. Seeing those different perspectives made me realize it was a good thing I hadn’t tied each song to just one character.

After songs that could be interpreted from different perspectives, “To. __” felt like the scene where the Jamong Salgu Club members play together after Taesu’s death. The castanets, triangle, piano, and vocals each stand out, and the slightly unpolished sound almost makes it feel like students playing together in the same room.
HANRORO: We actually call that track “To Taesu.” There’s a scene in the novel where the kids really do play together, and I wanted to preserve that feeling as it was. It almost feels like the last page of the story, so I wanted to sing it as if I were speaking directly to Taesu. To keep that sense of immediacy and liveliness, we didn’t record separately. We gathered around a single mic and played piano, castanets, and triangle together in one take. The next track, “Goodbye, My Summer,” also begins with piano and flows naturally from it, but the tone is much clearer and more refined. If “To. __” captures the emotion right before completely letting Taesu go, then “Goodbye, My Summer” expresses a state where those emotions have been somewhat settled.

“Goodbye, My Summer” begins with “Even if we disappear from each other forever,” and “0+0” ends with “I won’t ever lose us. You won’t either, right?” It almost feels like “Jamong Salgu Club” is a story about people who start with nothing, meet each other, and begin to dream of forever.
HANRORO: I know eternity doesn’t really exist. But if you keep remembering someone while you’re alive, maybe that becomes its own kind of eternity. Letting someone go doesn’t mean they’re erased. If you keep holding them in your memory until your last breath, that can be eternity for you. Even knowing eternity isn’t real, believing in it can give you strength. We joke about things like, “Let’s stay together until the grave,” or “Even if it’s hell, let’s face it together.” Those kinds of words come from the desire for forever. In the end, we just want to stay close to the people who shape who we are, and to live on in each other’s memories for as long as we can.

This might be abstract, but what does it mean to love someone without wanting to lose them, even knowing nothing lasts forever?
HANRORO: To me, love feels like something that keeps me going. Like medicine or vitamins, you take them when you’re not feeling well. It’s not something grand. It could just be the people around me, or moments like this, sitting and talking together. I really cherish the time I spend sharing stories with people who live in the same world as me. Even the inspiration I get from those moments feels like love to me. I try to keep loving myself, and at the very least, I try not to hate the things that make up my life. I think that kind of attitude might be what helps love last.

So even if you can’t fully love yourself or the people around you, you at least try not to hate them.
HANRORO: I say that, but there are still times when I really struggle with myself. And sometimes other people’s actions feel overwhelming. Still, I think people are more complex than just being two-sided. No one can be explained by only one version of themselves. When I remind myself, “They probably have something they care about too. They probably have their own pain,” it becomes harder to hate them so easily. I can’t fully understand everyone, but I try to look at them a little more softly. Even if I can’t completely explain why, and even if it might sound idealistic to other people, I still want to be someone and an artist who chooses kindness and love whenever I can.