ABOUT SEO JIWON
On February 19th, 1976 in Seoul, South Korea, an angel appeared on Earth. He was born as Park Byeoncheol, although he went by Charles Park when he was in the US. Later, he'd adopt his stage name that he'd become best known by: Seo Jiwon. Even from a young age, Jiwon already had his dreams set on becoming a singer. When he was just an elementary schooler, he had already started to play the piano, and later learned the cello in middle school. In 1986, he was a soprano in the KBS Children's Choir, but just for a year, since only a year later, he moved to the United States and sang in the Angel's Choir(?). While he was at it, he even started a bit of a modeling career, somewhere around 1990! As you can see, he was a very accomplished child, but the real journey was yet to begin.
In 1993, things would start to change. While he was attending high school in LA, he went to an open audition hosted by a Korean-American broadcasting station and a Korean record label and passed, impressively going against the odds! (The odds in question were 1000 to 1. So that meant out of a thousand other auditionees, HE succeeded!) Clearly, his talent was unquestionable. At the time, he was already planned to graduate highschool early with perfect grades and was specially admitted to the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology. However, he decided to put off going to college for a while due to him passing the audition. After graduating from highschool, he left America in December of 1993 and returned to Korea.
He became a singer under the company Omni Music. After recieving further singing lessons from a composer for 4 months, and three months of recording what would soon become his first album, self-titled "Seo Ji Won", Jiwon would release his album on October 1994 (although for some reason we don't see him actually "debut" until like...December of that year? I'm not sure.) Regardless, he debuted with the title track, "Another Beginning". From there, he quickly started to build up popularity and make a name for himself. For the time, teen singers like him were quite rare. At the time, most singers were in their 20s or above, and there were few singers that were so young like Jiwon. This ended up playing a role in his popularity and he started to form a solid fandom. His presence began to spread like wildfire. Barely into his debut, he started appearing regularly on various music and entertainment programs, most notably SBS's "Jump Champ(점프챔프)", where he was the main MC of the show, as well as the main lead in the its mini-dramas, "College of Engineering (남녀공학)" and "Rival (라이벌)". In addition, he was a regular host on many others such as KBS's "Starting Saturday March (출발 토요 대행진)" and "Saturday 7'O Clock is Good (토요일 7시가 좋다)". Furthermore, he established himself in several categories. Other than singing, he displayed talent in songwriting, composing, modeling, MCing, and acting, demonstrating his versatlity as an artist.
As promotions went on, his song "Another Beginning" continued to recieve much love throughout 1994 and 1995, ranking 9th in KBS's "K-POP TOP 10" and 6th in SBS's "TV Songs 20". This was a commendable feat, as this was a time when the competition was extremely fierce, especially when it came to rankings. Overall, the song did fairly well considering it was Jiwon's debut song. The 2nd album was intended to be released around the fall of 1995, but due to Jiwon's health problems (he got pleurisy which caused him to be hospitalized and his weight to dangerously plummet), it was postponed to mid-January 1996. Unfortunately, fans would never be able to see Jiwon perform his second album songs on stage live.
(TW: mental health, drugs, suicide) Unfortunately, on New Year's Day 1996, tragic and sudden news came, leaving many devastated. Jiwon gained back his wings early. He had committed suicide through drug overdose, causing shock and grief for the Korean industry, the fans, and everyone who loved and knew Seo Jiwon. There is not a solid explanation as to why he decided to take his own life, as there were many internal struggles of Jiwon that we still don't know, but he had written and left behind a will that was released to the public + a voice recording (actually, I have the will, but, I'd prefer not to show it...for obvious reasons). There was one very telling detail in the will though; he wrote that he may have been better off living a normal life back in the US, indicating that it may have been the pressures of the idol industry that played a part in his depression and caused him to make such a heavy decision. He was also very stressed about whether his 2nd Album would be successful or not as well as the extreme amount of responsibility on his shoulders. And to add onto it, while this wasn't stated in the will, his company is comfirmed to have mistreated him...A LOT (unfair pay & control of Jiwon's money, forcing his mom to fly all the way from the US to Korea to give him medicine when he was sick with pleurisy instead of aiding Jiwon themselves, etc.) There were many other complex factors, thus assumptions shouldn't be made nor should misinformation be spread. He was not "weak-willed". He did his best. This decision wasn't made on a whim, he had been thinking about it for a long time.
After his death, his 2nd album, "TEARS", was released posthumously in January 1996, with the title song being a fittingly heartthrob ballad, "Gather My Tears". It became a hit, gaining wide popularity to such an extent that it swept #1 in all of the major music shows, including KBS's "K-POP TOP 10", MBC's "Inkigayo Best 50", and SBS's "TV Song 20". It was rather bittersweet when Jiwon won awards or had to perform, because he was no longer present. The awards were accepted by his mother and colleagues on his behalf and his performance was replaced by the music video of his single. To this day, "Gather My Tears" remains a beloved masterpiece, being featured on shows such as Reply 1994 and Hospital Playlist, as well as being covered by other artists. Jiwon's company also held a memorial concert in his name. In December of 1996, Omni Music released another posthumous work for Jiwon called "Made In Heaven", an album that was made up of recorded unreleased songs, live recordings, and Jiwon's song covers. His last voice message was also included. The last posthumous work that was released was in 1998, called "Seo Jiwon Best", made up of remixes of Jiwon's already existing songs.
Jiwon, you worked hard. You did well. Fly high.