IU’s Upcoming K-Drama With Park Bo Gum Caused A Big Problem In Her Latest Comeback
IU is one of the most well-respected names in both the Korean singing and acting industries. She debuted in the former with “Lost Child” in 2008 and landed a K-Drama role three years later in Dream High.
Since then, she has been carefully balancing both careers so that they do not overtake each other. This was harder than ever to accomplish in the past years when she was completing her sixth mini album, The Winning.
In a new interview posted on her YouTube channel, IU shared the cause of her three year hiatus. After finding songwriting inspiration, she was able to quickly work on all the tracks. However, she soon hit a roadblock when it came to the final stages of preparations: filming When Life Gives You Tangerines.
This is the first K-Drama that she acted in since Hotel Del Luna in 2019. She plays the role of Ae Soon, a bright bookworm who is too poor to attend school in 1950s Jeju.
Production of the Netflix series began in March 2023 and according to IU it extended longer than initially planned. This became a problem as the target release date of The Winning was on February 20, thus overlapping preparation periods.
The filming period of the drama got extended than the plan so the album could have been delayed longer
— IU
Instead of delaying her album, she worked double time to be able to finish everything as planned, both the filming for When Life Gives You Tangerines and the completion of her album. She did so for the sake of her fans.
But I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to wait any longer than this. I knew the fans were waiting so long and I was also waiting to meet the fans.
— IU
She made a decision easily to do whatever it took to release this album on time: “I didn’t want to let this drag any longer though I might get exhausted.”
She persevered through her busy schedule, reminding herself to work hard. She even apologized to her staff members for the number of hours they had to work overtime in order to reach this goal.
‘I don’t have to take the easy way out’ I pushed ahead thinking that. My staff overworked themselves too because of me. About that, I would like to apologize once again.
— IU
Luckily for fans, IU was able to come back on schedule with the release of The Winning.
Check out the full interview below!