Kim Dahyun is a singer with a background in traditional Korean music who gained national attention in 2020 through MBN’s competition program Voice Trot. Although she was only 12 at the time, she stood out for combining a powerful voice and traditional vocal techniques with trot and ballad.
The One is a Korean vocalist known mainly for ballad and R&B. His style is marked by strong projection, a slightly husky tone, and a way of gradually building emotional intensity. “Saranga” is one of his best-known songs. During the final of Voice Trot, Kim Dahyun chose him as her duet partner, creating a performance in which the original singer shared his own song with a young vocalist coming from gukak and trot.
Media & Copyright Note: This article features an official YouTube video embedded through the YouTube player. K-POP CHRONICLES does not host or re-upload the video or audio. Full lyrics are not reproduced; the song’s meaning and emotions are explained through original editorial commentary and summary.
“Saranga,” Sung with Its Original Singer
“Saranga” is a ballad released by The One in 2007 as part of the soundtrack for the SBS drama My Man’s Woman. The lyrics were written by Bejjang-i and the music was composed by Gae-mi.
The song centers on loss and a sense of longing that remains even after a relationship has ended. The person at the center of the song knows it is time to let go, but the emotional connection is still there.
The song builds its intensity gradually, which makes breath control, tone, and phrasing especially important to the performance.
In this stage, The One returns to his own song and shares it with a singer whose musical background comes from a very different tradition.
Kim Dahyun Between Trot and Traditional Korean Music
For many international listeners, trot may be unfamiliar.
Trot is one of Korea’s longest-running and most recognizable popular music genres. Musically, it is not the same as American country music, but the comparison can be useful in terms of its cross-generational familiarity, emotional storytelling, and long-standing place in popular culture.
Kim Dahyun also has a background in gukak, a broad term for traditional Korean music.
For international readers, it is enough to think of it as Korean traditional or folk-based music, including older vocal styles.
That background can still be heard in her voice.
Her firm breath support, strong projection, the way she bends and shapes certain notes, and the amount of emotion she can place inside a sustained tone all make her sound different from a conventional pop singer.
Kim Dahyun keeps the melody and structure of a modern ballad while bringing in traces of her traditional training at specific moments. The gukak influence appears as an emotional texture inside the song without taking over the entire performance.
Why Kim Dahyun Chose The One
Kim Dahyun personally selected The One as her partner for the duet mission in the Voice Trot final.
During the program, she explained that her whole family were fans of The One and that she also wanted the chance to sing with him. The song they chose was “Saranga.”
The pairing was unusual for The One as well. He said it was his first time preparing a ballad with a singer trained in traditional Korean music.
On one side was the original singer of a well-known Korean ballad. On the other was a young vocalist whose voice had been shaped by gukak and trot.
The performance develops around the way those two musical backgrounds meet inside the same song.
The One’s Ballad Style and Kim Dahyun’s Voice
As the original singer, The One establishes the emotional center of the performance.
His voice begins in a relatively restrained way, then gradually reveals more power and a rougher texture as the song develops. That slow expansion toward an emotional climax is a familiar feature of many Korean ballads.
Kim Dahyun does not try to imitate that approach.
Her tone is naturally younger and brighter, but her traditional training gives her firm breath support and a distinctive way of shaping notes that adds unexpected weight to her voice.
When she sustains a note or increases the emotional intensity, she does not rely only on volume. She also uses small bends and movements within the note to create her own color.
Because of that, even when both singers are carrying the same melody, their vocal textures remain clearly different.
The One represents a recognizable form of modern Korean ballad singing, while Kim Dahyun brings techniques shaped by gukak and trot into that framework.
How Does a 12-Year-Old Sing About Heartbreak?
One of the reasons this performance drew so much attention during the broadcast was Kim Dahyun’s age.
The video title itself asks the question: how can a 12-year-old girl express the pain of a love song?
The judges also commented during the competition on the surprising depth with which she conveyed emotions associated with heartbreak.
A singer does not need to have lived through the exact same experience in order to express it musically.
Intensity, breathing, phrasing, control of volume, and the movement of notes can all be used to construct emotion.
Kim Dahyun had already learned from a young age how to communicate feeling through the voice within traditional Korean music. In this ballad, those tools are adapted to a very different musical setting.
The performance becomes more interesting when the focus shifts away from her age and toward the specific way she turns an unfamiliar emotion into sound.
Two Generations Inside One Song
The generational difference between the two singers is obvious.
The One is an experienced vocalist performing one of his own well-known songs. Kim Dahyun was a 12-year-old contestant still developing through a competition program.
On stage, that difference also becomes part of the music.
The One provides the weight and emotional structure of the song. Kim Dahyun adds a different tone and a style of phrasing shaped by another tradition.
Toward the end, their voices begin to overlap, and the same emotion is expressed through two different vocal styles.
One singer represents modern Korean ballad. The other arrives from a combination of traditional music and trot.
That contrast is one of the qualities that makes the duet distinctive.
The Stage of Voice Trot
Voice Trot was a competition program broadcast by MBN in 2020.
The program centered on trot, a Korean popular music genre with a long history and strong recognition across generations. Its format allowed performers with very different musical backgrounds to reinterpret trot and other Korean songs through their own styles.
Kim Dahyun finished the competition as runner-up, and “Saranga” was performed during the duet mission in the final.
The stage continued to attract attention because its impact came from the voices and emotional interpretation rather than complex choreography or large-scale visual production.
For international fans who mainly know K-pop through idol groups and performance-driven stages, this performance shows another side of Korean popular music.
One voice comes from gukak and trot. The other belongs to the original singer of a well-known Korean ballad.
“Saranga” is where traditional vocal sensibility, the emotional directness of trot, and modern Korean ballad meet inside a single performance.
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