K-pop band 1VERSE, featuring two North Korean defectors, makes global debut

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Lisa Desjardins: Finally tonight, the debut of a new K pop boy band with an improbable origin story that includes two North Korean defectors. And a note for viewers. There is some flash photography in this piece.

Lisa Desjardins (voice-over): The world of K pop has fresh new faces. The band 1VERSE with a debut album and lead single, “Shattered.” That’s more than a pop hook, it’s anthem, especially to band member Yu Hyuk. He escaped North Korea as a child, joining his mom in South Korea. She arranged to get him across the border. His father chose to stay and died a few years later.

Yu Hyuk, 1VERSE (through interpreter): My song “Shattered” captures the feeling of my life breaking apart. I’m sharing the story for the first time. I wrote it drawing on the emotions when I heard my father in North Korea passed away.

Lisa Desjardins (voice-over): He remembers starting work at nine years old and having to resort to desperate measures for food.

Yu Hyuk (through interpreter): After I was caught stealing, I was beaten hard until I was bleeding. I’ve been through a lot in North Korea. I’ve eaten spoiled, smelly rice.

Lisa Desjardins (voice-over): Now that kid is a pop star in the making, worried no longer about basic survival and instead pushing back with music that is pointedly illegal in the North. Reports indicate the North Korean government is cracking down on consumption of South Korean culture. A group working with defectors released this video. They say it shows two high schoolers being publicly sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for watching K pop.

But they couldn’t stop the music from reaching Kim Seok, 1VERSE’s other North Korean defector. He was inspired when he was secretly shown a 2012 global hit by the K pop artist Psy.

Kim Seok, 1VERSE (through interpreter): I’d never seen a video like Gangnam Style before. I didn’t have it myself. A friend showed it to me in North Korea, and both the music video and the song really blew me away.

Lisa Desjardins (voice-over): Kim, now 25 years old, escaped the regime in 2019 with his father and grandmother. 1VERSE was carefully formed. Label CEO and producer Michelle Cho.

Michelle Cho, CEO, Singing Beetle: I did think that it was fascinating after casting the two. That would be fascinating to have North Korean defectors trying out something in K pop. Because who doesn’t love the story of someone from a humble background chasing their dreams.

Lisa Desjardins (voice-over): The rest come from across the globe. Aito from Japan. Kenny, a Chinese American from Los Angeles. And Nathan from Arkansas.

Nathan, 1VERSE: We learn from each other’s backgrounds. I think that only benefits us more just because we learn from each other things that we couldn’t have learned if we didn’t meet, if we’ve never met.

Lisa Desjardins (voice-over): The very existence of 1VERSE demonstrating the power of music to transcend even the most closed borders.