Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
DRESSED in blue jeans and a checked shirt, the soft-spoken young contestant 40272 on Korea’s Got Talent seemed a far cry from a typical opera singer.
However, Sung-bong Choi’s powerful baritone and inspirational life story, which rivals that of Susan Boyle, has pulled at the heart strings of millions around the world.
Like Susan Boyle, who shot to fame on a British TV talent show and became an internet hit with a song from an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, Choi has become a global phenomenon.
His story has gone viral on YouTube, with more than 9 million hits. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BewknNW2b8Y&feature=player_embedded).
Choi, 22, attributes his talent for bringing him closer with people from all over the globe. “For me, singing is a wide bridge that links me to the people and the world,” he said.
In the first round of the competition in May, when a judge said she couldn’t tell his occupation from the way he looked, Choi gave a nervous smile and said he was a manual labourer.
“You mean, in the morning and things like that?” the judge said, inducing laughter from the crowd.
A moment later, Choi hesitated when asked about his leaving the ‘family’ portion of the application blank, then revealed in a soft voice that he’d been left in an orphanage when he was three-years-old.
He said he ran away two years later after he was beaten by people there, and then lived on the streets in the city of Daejon, south of Seoul. He survived by selling gum and energy drinks, and sleeping in public toilets.
Choi confessed just before his performance that when he sings he feels ‘like a different person’. Then he launched into the Italian song Nella Fantasia (In My Fantasy), reducing the audience and judges to tears.
In a country which has spawned countless manufactured pop boy and girl bands across Asia, Choi’s rise to fame is even more phenomenal than his choice of song.
Choi’s life story was all too familiar for many during the height of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, when authorities said thousands of children were abandoned by one or both parents.
“I have lived from hand to mouth and had even given up on my life as I guessed there was no more hope in the future. During that time, music was my only friend,” said Choi.
The turning point came when he was 14, after a woman from a snack bar near a bus station in Daejon helped him enter night school. He soon passed middle and elementary school equivalency exams, and teachers discovered his talent for singing.
“I still remember the moment I first met a singer. I was selling chewing gum at a nightclub and as soon as the song started, I thought it was just a miracle,” he said.
“Every melody of the song touched me deeply and made me feel alive amid happiness and joy. That highly motivated me.
“I want to be a person who gives hope and happiness with a song.”
