The tender glow of Sunmyeong
Written by Ethan Kim (@count.kim)
Sunmyeong's music is quiet, but never vague. Inside its soft melodies and folk-like contours, small glitching sounds drift in with a strange, unmistakable glow, strengthening the duo's own sense of colour. On their debut EP, sunmyeong, released in April, the band made themselves known through care rather than volume, finding precision inside noise, resonance and the blurred edges between the two.
The project began around April 2025, but its story is not one of sudden arrival. Both Cho Ji Su and Hee Soo had already been making music in other bands. Sunmyeong developed more gradually, through sharing music, talking about taste, and exchanging unfinished ideas until something quietly began to take shape.
"The things I'd done in other teams had a clearer concept, I think," Ji Su says. "I needed something that would let me move away from that and work a little more freely." For her, Sunmyeong offered a different kind of autonomy: not a lack of direction, but a place where the rules could remain open.
Hee Soo felt something similar. While his other band leaned more strongly towards a specific genre, Sunmyeong felt wider in scope. "When I make music myself, I've always wanted to try mixing different things together," he says. "We didn't start by deciding on anything clearly. We just shared the music we listened to and the things we liked. I would send something I'd made, Ji Su would add vocals, and it began very naturally."
Because there are only two members, the roles in Sunmyeong are fluid. Some responsibilities are loosely divided. "Ji Su usually takes care of the lyrics, visuals and design," Hee Soo explains. "I handle the mixing and the practical side of things." But even here, that sense of movement remains central. Their music seems to come out of that ease, not from fixed positions, but from a space where the two can keep passing things back and forth.
The orange eye on the EP cover existed before Sunmyeong itself. Ji Su had made the image earlier, and as the band became more concrete, it found its place as the album artwork. "I'd made the design before we started Sunmyeong," she says. "While we were working on the project, I showed it to Hee Soo and asked whether it might work as our album art. He liked it, so we decided to use it."
Even the name Sunmyeong began less as a heavy concept than a small accident. At the time, Hee Soo's home and workspace were only a few minutes apart on foot, separated by a single crossing. Nearby stood an apartment building called Sunmyeong.
"We kept making music without really deciding on a team name," he says. "But if we were going to release it eventually, we needed one. Then that name came into view, and it felt like it suited our music. I think we chose it quite lightly."
In Korean, Sunmyeong means clear, vivid or distinct. After settling on the name, Hee Soo began thinking more seriously about how each sound might be made clearer. Ji Su reached a similar conclusion. "The elements that make up the songs felt quite distinct," she says. "Each one seemed to shine in its own way. That made me realise the name suited the music."
Their tastes differ slightly, and that difference helps give the EP its unusual shape. Ji Su mentions Hasegawa Hakushi, khc/moribet and Sweet Trip, artists whose music moves somewhere between glitch and folk. Hee Soo, meanwhile, says he has spent the past few years listening to classic post-rock, folktronica and various Japanese musicians recommended by friends.
Sunmyeong have only released one EP so far, and for now they are careful not to define their music too firmly. Asked about the band's direction, they say they don't yet know what their future work will become. Still, speaking specifically about their first EP, Ji Su says, "I think these songs were an attempt to hold a lot of ambivalent feelings."
"I have a desire to talk in great detail about the things I like, and also the things I dislike," she continues. "But Hee Soo is a very different person from me. Rather than explaining things one by one in detail like I do, he tends to show things through action. Watching that, I learnt that sometimes this method can be more effective." The difference between them isn't treated as friction to overcome, but as the source of a slightly unusual harmony.
That intention matters. Hee Soo doesn't see the EP as a simple collection of tracks made to show off every side of the band. "Rather than thinking, 'let's show everything we can do,' I think we were trying to show the line of what we wanted to say within the five songs of sunmyeong," he explains. Ji Su agrees. "In terms of planning, it felt almost like planning a full-length album."
Hee Soo had previously worked as a live engineer at spaces such as Gongsangondo and the former Seoul club Salon Badabie, but he hadn't mixed recorded works before. Wanting to build the basics, he took mixing lessons from Pishu, who had seen Sunmyeong's music develop at close range, making it natural for the duo to ask him to master the EP.
"We tried to record as much of it ourselves as possible," Hee Soo says. "Apart from the MIDI notes, almost everything was recorded by us. We experimented with different sounds, used pedals, tried tape recorders, and kept looking for the kind of pleasure we wanted." The process was practical, playful and exploratory at once.
The vocal recording was helped by QRIM, also known as Lee Gyulim, a member of Nosie Between the Line and a bandmate of Ji Su's in Stego. Like much of Sunmyeong's process, the EP carries lessons learnt among friends, with small experiments folded into them.
Choosing a favourite song from the EP isn't easy for either member. Ji Su says she still hasn't listened to the record once since it came out, because she was so sick of hearing it during the making process. Still, if she had to pick one, it would be summer. "If I had to choose the song I'm most attached to, I think it would be 'summer,'" she says. "It was the hardest one to make, so I think I came to feel more affection for it than the others."
Hee Soo's answer changes depending on the day. On the day of the interview, he chooses swing. "The wind feels nice today," he says. "The feeling seems right." He explains that tracks such as snowdrift, summer and letter contain many changes within them. "But 'swing' keeps a similar mood from beginning to end, while still expressing the elements we wanted to put into it. So it feels like it suits today's weather."
Hee Soo says he has no regrets about the EP. "In any case, I think we did as much as we could," he says. "In terms of sound, and in terms of finding the textures I mentioned earlier, the two of us really thought hard about it. Instead, I think we gained a lot of know-how from making it." Rather than disappointment, what remains is the feeling of having learnt through the process.
Listeners have responded to Sunmyeong's music in different ways, which might be part of what makes the band exciting. "Looking at the feedback so far, people seem to feel quite different things from it," Hee Soo says. "Even with this EP, it was interesting that whenever we asked people which track they liked, they all gave different answers. I found that really fascinating, and I hope people keep telling us those things."
Ji Su remembers one especially moving response. Someone listened to letter, tagged the band on Instagram, and wrote that they had heard the song after the death of a dog they had lived with for many years. "They said that while listening to the latter part, they felt as if they were meeting their departed dog again in another world," she recalls. "They wrote about a process of release and healing. We didn't actually write the song with that specific story in mind, but the fact that it could offer such unexpected comfort left a deep impression on me. I was very grateful."
For now, Sunmyeong have no live shows planned. Their focus is on making and releasing music, and Hee Soo mentions that he is thinking about another EP. "There are musicians and friends whose music doesn't necessarily share one clear genre characteristic, but whom I'd still like to gather together," he says. "I'm thinking about remaking their music in our own way, and creating an EP where they can come together." Even if it's difficult to find artists who align perfectly in genre, he imagines a space where bands can gather around something shared, even if that something sits off to one side.
Both members value being able to separate Sunmyeong from their other projects. "I can't make songs like Sunmyeong's in NokeNok," Hee Soo says. "And the opposite is also true." Ji Su recognises a similarly clear difference between Stego and Sunmyeong. A person's own colour may appear naturally across different work, but neither of them wants each project to end up sounding the same.
Sunmyeong are a band with every possibility still open. They are not passive, yet they are delicate and precise. Their music may be filed under folktronica, but it's better understood less through the boundaries of genre than as a way for two people to discover how to share feeling with one another. Sunmyeong's music resists brief explanation. It's the result of gathered fragments, small details and stories carried from different places, all coming together into one vivid colour.