처음부터 지금까지
류
류's "처음부터 지금까지" (From the Beginning Until Now) is the emotional spine of *Winter Sonata*, the 2002 drama that detonated the Korean Wave across Asia, and it carries all the snowbound melancholy of that phenomenon in a single sweeping melody. This is the OST ballad as a national institution: a slow, stately progression of piano and swelling strings, unhurried and almost unbearably tender, built to soundtrack longing glances across a frozen landscape. Ryu's voice is the quiet miracle — gentle, slightly fragile, never showy, holding back so that the restraint itself becomes the ache. He sings not to impress but to confess, each phrase landing with the weight of a love that has waited and suffered. The lyric is devotion across time and obstacle: from the first moment until this one, my heart has only been for you — the destined, tragic, memory-haunted romance the drama trafficked in. Culturally its reach is enormous; in Japan especially the song (and *Winter Sonata*) ignited a middle-aged-women's fandom that reshaped cross-border pop culture, and the melody remains instantly recognizable to a whole generation. It's a snowfall song, a song for missing someone, for the particular Korean sentiment of 그리움 — aching nostalgic yearning. Best heard alone by a window in winter. Two decades on, it still works like a key turning in the lock of memory.
slow
2000s
snowbound, tender, delicate
South Korea
K-ballad, OST. Drama OST ballad. melancholic, nostalgic. Opens in pure quiet longing and never escalates — restraint itself deepens the ache until the final note. energy 2. slow. danceability 1. valence 3. vocals: gentle, fragile, restrained, confessional, tender. production: piano, swelling strings, orchestral, unhurried, sparse. texture: snowbound, tender, delicate. acousticness 6. era: 2000s. South Korea. Alone by a window on a winter night, missing someone across distance or time.