A new brand of communication and empathy, 'Danbi', is hitting the road
Kim Jeong-yeon debuted as the first trot singer to emerge from People Who Seek Songs (Nochatsa) and has been loved under the nickname 'the nation's bus guide'. For 17 years, she crisscrossed rural bus routes nationwide, taking into her whole being the joys and sorrows of elders, and now she stands at another starting line. The life sense she honed by wearing out her knees in the field has been distilled into deep mastery that spans singer, MC, lecturer, and author.
Recently, as she prepares new music and content for this summer, she has brought out the icon called 'Danbi'. Before her full-fledged comeback, we asked how she plans to run back to people's side after stepping off at the terminal of the 'Hometown Bus'.
You are preparing new activities this summer under a new name?
Yes. I have long wanted to become someone who moistens people's parched hearts like the much-needed rain that falls after a drought. I have lived more than 30 years with the name my parents gave me, and preparing a new name is not a simple change of registration, but an act of resetting the direction of my life.
In the new song to be presented this summer, I captured the smiles and tears of people I met on the road, and the life patterns imbued with each person's identity. I want to set off again the 'happy life bus' that carries not only the new song, but also comfort and the empathy shared between people.
For someone from 'People Who Seek Songs', becoming a trot singer was quite a bold choice at the time. How did you come to take this path?
I did not know my life would flow this way. (Laughs) In the Nochatsa days, we sang the voice of the times, whereas trot is a genre that looks into each individual life. The grain is different, but in the end both are directed toward people.
At a 1992 Nochatsa concert at Hakchon Small Theater in Daehak-ro, I sang the popular song from the Japanese occupation era, 'Bokji Manri', and seeing the audience reaction then, I felt, 'I have trot vibes flowing in me, too'. After that I happened to receive an offer to do trot, and I released 'Because I Love You' in 2008 and 'Hometown Bus' in 2011.
So the 2011 release 'Hometown Bus' essentially made you the nation's bus guide. When did you feel most solid as a broadcaster?
That is right. My song 'Hometown Bus' completely changed my life. There is a joking saying, "A person's fate follows their favorite song," and Hometown Bus became my fate. It was not just a broadcast space; it was like a small history book that records the time of rural Korea, and it also served as a smelter that turned me into solid steel.
I built up experience on many programs. <Morning Yard> reminded me, as a Tuesday regular panelist, that broadcasting is not about making myself shine, but about making the other person shine; and as the sole MC of Cheongju KBS <We Lend You the Stage>, I learned on site that what a host needs is not flashy eloquence but the ability to read a person's trembling breath. For me, broadcasting was not craft and technique, but the art of 'listening'.
For 17 years you met countless elders on the 'Hometown Bus'. What did that time mean to you?
Inside the Hometown Bus, an unscripted real human documentary is completed. Many elders, while talking about their children, would recall a spouse who passed first and shed tears, and some would suddenly show off their singing skills. Those scenes, as raw as bouncing chubby cheeks, can never be produced by staging. To draw out stories buried in the heart for a lifetime, you ultimately have to kneel and meet their eyes. The tears and warmth that soaked in became a diary, and the droplets of stories gathered into a book. Looking back, I think I was a guide who recorded people's stories on their behalf before I was a broadcaster.
Ultimately, it was your knees that made you get off that bus.
That is right. To meet elders at eye level, I always had to kneel, and repeating that posture tens of thousands of times on a moving bus completely ruined my joints. I endured on painkillers before going to the hospital. The doctor asked me how I had managed on these knees. But strangely, as soon as filming started, I did not feel the pain. The moment I saw the elders' faces, my heart moved first. I cried a lot after finishing the last shoot this March. But I do not think it is the end. I think it is a time to catch my breath for a while.
I heard you have written nearly 20 diaries on the Hometown Bus.
At first, I started writing almost like a gripe because it was so hard. Then at some point I realized that the records I brought back from the field were capturing the everyday cultural history of rural life that is disappearing. So I packed many elders' stories into my autobiography, <Beep Beep, Kim Jeong-yeon's Life Bus>. I hope people will regard it less as a celebrity's success tale and more as a story that records human-scented lives and the scenes we are losing.
What has life been like as a mother?
I started traveling to out-of-town shoots before my later-in-life son was even 100 days old. I always felt sorry. I often wished I had two bodies. But seeing elders who lay awake at night worrying about their children, I realized that every parent's heart ultimately flows in the same directiondownstream love toward their children. Through my son, I also came to understand my own mother's heart. As I learned that dedicating daily gratitude to one's parents becomes filial piety and passing it on to one's children becomes affection, time passed and my son somehow became 13.
You are also serving as an honorary ambassador for Mungyeong City recently. Your philosophy toward the countryside seems distinct.
I do not want to just say, "The farm produce is good." I want to convey, along with it, the time of the people who grew that produce. I want to capture the lives of mothers and fathers who worked bent over, and the sweat and tears of elders who cut through the dawn fog to head to the fields. Urbanites consume products, but in the end they are moved by people's stories. I want to become a welcome rain that wets urban sensibilities, connecting emotion and forming a strong focal point that leads people back to the countryside. I will make it happen.
I hear requests for lectures never stop. Why do you think people are so enthusiastic about the lectures of 'singer Kim Jeong-yeon'?
Maybe it is because there is no rigid theory in my talks? (Laughs) I meet the audience at eye level, share life stories, and add songs at the right moments. Then the audience naturally opens their hearts. The asset that enables my lectures to open hearts is the laughter and tears I shared, knee to knee, with thousands of elders. So the common ground is wide and deep. As I share, unprocessed, the Korean sentiments I learned in the field, many people seem to relate.
Why do local governments and public institutions ask you to host and to give lectures?
I suppose they trust the experience I have built over 30 years roaming live broadcasts and outdoor sites. (Laughs) I do not get flustered when unexpected situations arise. I tend instead to turn them around cheerfully and change the mood. I think they appreciate the diligence I have built in the field and my own power to put people at ease. In particular, those in charge of education at local governments value audience feedback greatly, and thankfully the audience members proactively tell them, "Thank you for inviting Kim Jeong-yeon," and, "After laughing and crying, the indigestion I had for 50 years just melted away." I think they hand me the mic trusting in the "credibility that comes from diligence" and my "command of the room."
What path will you walk under the new name?
I have taken off the guide uniform and put on 'Danbi', so I will continue to connect hearts, link city and countryside, and break down walls between generations. I believe music and content are ultimately about people. People say I got off the bus, but I think I am still on the road. Now I want to approach people a little more slowly, a little more deeply. I want to be someone who comforts a person's wounded day and quietly soaks into parched hearts like a welcome rain.
The 'nation's bus guide' who for 17 years took in with her whole body the rough breath and sorrows of rural Korea. Her knees were worn down like a medal of time, but her gaze toward people grew deeper and firmer. Fifty-seven. An age when some consider slowing down and putting a period on life. But Kim Jeong-yeon has stepped onto a new road again. Without yet revealing the full new name, leaving only the afterglow of 'Danbi', she boards her second life bus and turns the ignition once more; from her, I sense human warmth. That is why her next destination is all the more intriguing. Whose tears and laughter will she carry this time, and how will she slowly enter our lives...
