Kim Jun-han's 2005 Band Hit Still Pays His Bills Today

Twenty years after performing on a hit K-drama soundtrack, actor Kim Jun-han is still collecting royalties from a song that refuses to leave the national karaoke consciousness. During a March 28 YouTube broadcast, the former izi drummer revealed that the band's beloved track "Emergency Room" (응급실) continues to hold a top-five position on karaoke charts — delivering a quiet but steady income stream that has lasted over two decades without interruption.

Kim made the revelation on "Yoo Yeon-seok's Weekend Late-night Talk" (유연석의 주말연석극), a YouTube talk format hosted by actor Yoo Yeon-seok. He appeared alongside fellow cast members from the upcoming film "Salmokji" — actors Lee Jong-won and Jang Da-ah — and what began as a casual co-star chat turned into one of the most candid and nostalgic segments the show has produced.

The Karaoke Chart Nobody Expected Him to Still Top

The moment that caught viewers off guard came when Yoo Yeon-seok casually claimed that "Emergency Room" had slipped out of the TJ karaoke top 100. Kim did not flinch. "Let me look it up and show you," he said, pulling out his phone on camera. The production team later confirmed the result: the song ranked fifth on the karaoke chart at the time of filming.

That kind of staying power is extraordinary for any track, let alone an OST from a 2005 romantic comedy drama. "Emergency Room" was composed for the KBS2 series "Quick-witted Chun-hyang" (쾌걸춘향), which reimagined the beloved Korean folk tale "Chunhyang-jeon" as a high-energy action-romance. The song's driving rock ballad structure gave it rare longevity — easily singable, emotionally resonant, and just difficult enough to feel like an accomplishment when performed well at a karaoke booth.

When his co-stars pressed him on the financial side of that enduring popularity, Kim offered a response that became the episode's most quoted line. "It's like rain soaking a coat slowly," he said in Korean, using the idiom "가랑비에 옷 젖듯이" to describe how the royalties arrive — small, consistent, and cumulative. "It just keeps steadily contributing to my life." The casual delivery made it funnier and more charming than any boast could have been.

From Masan to Seoul: How Kim Jun-han Found the Drums

Kim Jun-han's entry into music — and eventually acting — traces back to his high school years in Masan, a coastal city now incorporated into the broader Changwon metropolitan area in South Korea. He became absorbed in drumming while still a student, and the pull was strong enough to bring him to Seoul after graduation. "I just liked hitting things," Kim recalled during the broadcast, a line that landed perfectly given how rarely the typically serious actor drops into dry self-humor.

The band debuted in 2005 and found immediate cultural traction. "Emergency Room" became their defining track almost right away, riding the visibility of "Quick-witted Chun-hyang" into heavy rotation. The OST did what the best Korean drama soundtracks do: it became inseparable from the show's emotional moments, then outlasted the show itself in public memory. For a generation of Korean viewers who came of age in the mid-2000s, hearing it at a karaoke booth carries the texture of a specific cultural moment that idol group-era K-pop largely replaced.

Fifteen Years Away From the Kit — Then One Surprise Performance

One of the most striking disclosures of the episode came when Lee Jong-won playfully suggested an impromptu drum performance. Kim mentioned he had not touched a drum kit in approximately fifteen years. The room was surprised. What followed was anything but rusty: he sat behind the kit and played with evident skill, even accompanying "Emergency Room" in a spontaneous performance that felt less like a talk show gag and more like a genuine reunion between musician and instrument.

The segment resonated strongly with viewers and drew significant online attention after posting. Watching Kim reconnect with his original craft — through the song that first defined him publicly — turned a YouTube episode into a piece of light cultural history. Several Korean entertainment outlets covered it as a standout moment, noting that the fifteen-year gap appeared to have left his rhythm largely intact, which only deepened the charm of the performance.

The clip also sparked nostalgia conversations about izi and whether a reunion might someday materialize. Kim has mentioned in past interviews a genuine desire to reform the group. While no official plans have been announced, the topic surfaces reliably whenever he enters the public conversation — and this episode brought him squarely back into it.

RIIZE Kept the Song Alive for a New Generation

Kim's connection to "Emergency Room" gained a second chapter when SM Entertainment's K-pop group RIIZE recorded a remake of the track in recent years. The remake brought the song to an audience that was not born when izi first performed it, and the reception extended the original's cultural reach into the fourth-generation K-pop landscape in a meaningful way.

When asked about the remake during earlier interviews, Kim was warm and appreciative, describing it as a meaningful recognition of the original's worth. The RIIZE version also created an indirect financial ripple: new listeners discovering the song through the remake often sought out the original, feeding back into the karaoke streams and royalty counts that have already sustained Kim for two decades. It creates an unusual circular economy within Korean pop music — where a 2005 rock ballad can have its legacy renewed by a 2020s idol group, and its drummer-turned-actor can confirm the results with a simple phone search on a YouTube talk show in 2026.

The Actor Behind the Drummer

Kim Jun-han has built a steady acting career since transitioning out of music. He is perhaps best known internationally for his role in "Hospital Playlist," the acclaimed 2020-2021 medical drama that drew large audiences both domestically and through streaming services. More recently, his work in the 2024 legal drama "Good Partner" introduced his performance to a new wave of fans who may have known nothing of his izi origins.

"Salmokji," the film that brought him to the "Weekend Late-night Talk" broadcast alongside Lee Jong-won and Jang Da-ah, represents his current cinematic focus. The project is expected to draw attention to the cast's chemistry — chemistry that was clearly well established by the time they sat down for the YouTube show and began teasing each other over karaoke rankings.

For most viewers, the biggest takeaway from the episode will remain that quiet confirmation: that a song Kim Jun-han recorded when he was a young drummer from Masan is still sitting in the top five of national karaoke charts more than twenty years later, still arriving like slow rain. In an era of rapid content turnover and short cultural memory, that kind of staying power is worth pausing to appreciate — whether you are a fan of izi, a follower of Kim's acting work, or simply someone who has sung "Emergency Room" at a karaoke booth without ever knowing who was on the drums.