LIKE — The Song That Keeps a Morning Alive

Some songs become yours not because they’re beautiful — but because they mark a moment you can never go back to.

A May Morning, 2014

My mother was ill for a long time. That spring, I was visiting the hospital often — one of those seasons that asks everything of you, quietly, without announcement.

One morning, earphones in, I heard a new song on the radio for the first time. Bright, a little sweet, the kind of song that feels like open air. I stopped walking. I listened to the end. Then I searched for it on YouTube and played it again.

The song was 좋아해 — LIKE. The artist was Kim Woo Joo. The song had just been released.

One More Time. Just One More.

I told myself I was replaying it because it was good. And it was. But standing there in the lobby, pressing play again — I think what I really wanted was to hold onto that spring morning a little longer. The warm air. The ordinary sounds. The moment before going inside.

One more time. Just one more time, and then I’ll go.

That July, my mother passed away. She had been ill for ten years. The spring visits were among the last.

I didn’t know then that it would be one of the last new songs I’d hear while she was still in the world.

Why This Is My 인생 노래

Korean has a phrase: 인생 노래 — literally “life song.” Not just a favorite song, but the one that carries a whole chapter of your life inside it. The one that, when it comes on, doesn’t just play — it arrives.

When I hear 좋아해 now, I don’t cry because the melody is sad. I cry because I remember standing in a hospital lobby on a beautiful spring morning, pressing play one more time, not wanting to go up.

And I think: everyone has a version of that lobby. A moment when music became the thing between you and what you had to face next. You didn’t choose the song. The song just happened to be playing.

That’s how a song becomes yours forever.

Listen — and maybe you’ll understand.

김우주 Kim Woo Joo — 좋아해 LIKE (2014)