Nobody Was Ready for Kim Gi-tae's Tearful Finals Win

For much of MBC's ambitious audition competition 1deungdeul, Singer Gain 2 champion Kim Gi-tae had lived inside a particular kind of frustration. He had ranked first. He had seen those rankings shift. "I ranked first, then fell back. It was driving me crazy," he admitted before taking the stage on Episode 9. What happened next settled weeks of accumulated tension in a single night.

Broadcast on April 12, Episode 9 of 1deungdeul was the final opportunity for remaining contestants to claim the last available ticket to the grand finale — a showdown known as the ggeut-jang-jeon, or Ultimate Battle. Son Seung-yeon, Lee Ye-jun, and Huh Gak had already secured their places. One ticket remained. Kim Gi-tae was determined it would be his.

Kim Gi-tae Sings Into the Dream and Claims His Place

When he chose "Kkume" (Dreaming) — the landmark ballad by vocalist Park Jung-hyun — he was reaching for a song built for emotional climax. "Every stage on this show has felt like a dream to me," he said in the moments before performing. "I wanted to make each one worth remembering." That intention came through in every measure of what followed.

Kim Gi-tae had spoken candidly before taking the stage about the invisible weight the competition had placed on him. "When I first started, I felt myself growing smaller among so many incredibly talented people," he said. "I kept hitting walls I couldn't see, alone." It is a specific kind of suffering — the kind known to anyone who has worked at the outer edge of their ability and watched others seem to do it effortlessly. For Kim Gi-tae, this performance was the answer to all of it.

When the first and second round scores were combined, he stood at the top. The last finals ticket was his. He ran across the stage — unable to stay still, unable to contain it — before the trophy was placed in his hands. He cried, and then he spoke to himself: "I feel like I have the whole world right now. You have worked hard, Gi-tae."

It was a moment that required no further commentary. The four competitors who will meet in the grand finale are confirmed: Son Seung-yeon, Lee Ye-jun, Huh Gak, and Kim Gi-tae — audition champions from Voice Korea, Superstar K, and Singer Gain, converging for one final contest. The ggeut-jang-jeon airs April 19 on MBC at 9:30 PM KST.

The Song That Set the Night on Fire Before Kim Gi-tae Stepped Up

The emotional temperature of Episode 9 had been building long before Kim Gi-tae performed. Earlier in the episode, Park Chang-geun — the beloved folk vocalist who won Tomorrow Is National Singer in 2021 after more than two decades of quiet persistence — sang "Naega Piryohan Geoya" (You Need Me), originally recorded by the late Kim Kwang-seok.

Kim Kwang-seok, who died in 1996 at age thirty-one, remains one of the most revered names in Korean folk music. His songs carry a specific emotional weight that few contemporary performances manage to approach. Park Chang-geun's rendition — delivered with the delicate falsetto and expressive depth that have defined his career — was described by those present as a performance of exceptional feeling. Kim Gi-tae, watching from offstage, was moved to tears. He said afterward: "Those lyrics felt like they were speaking directly to me tonight. I really wanted to lean on someone."

What followed — Kim Gi-tae stepping into his own performance still raw with that feeling, channeling it into "Kkume," and winning — is the kind of chain reaction that makes live competition television genuinely difficult to replicate in any other format.

Episode 9 Soundtrack: Eight Voices, One Historic Night

Released on April 13 at noon across major Korean digital music platforms, the Episode 9 soundtrack from 1deungdeul captures all eight performances from the broadcast in studio-quality audio. The tracklist reads as an unofficial survey of Korean vocal history, with each singer interpreting a different piece of the national musical canon:

• Park Chang-geun — "Naega Piryohan Geoya" (originally by the late Kim Kwang-seok)
• Jamie — "Oneul Gateun Bameumyeon" (originally by the late Park Jeong-un)
• Ahn Sung-hoon — "Tesyeong!" (originally by Na Hoon-a)
• Lee Ye-ji — "Nae Sarang Nae Gyeote" (originally by the late Kim Hyun-sik)
• Son Seung-yeon — "WANNABE" (originally by ITZY)
• Lee Ye-jun — "Sarang Two" (originally by Yoon Do-hyun)
• Huh Gak — "Geudaeneun Nunmulgyeopda" (originally by M.C the Max)
• Kim Gi-tae — "Kkume" (originally by Park Jung-hyun) — Title Track

The designation of Kim Gi-tae's "Kkume" as the episode's title track is both fitting and deliberate. Production teams for the show have consistently selected the performance that best captured the emotional arc of each episode, and Episode 9's arc belonged to him — from the tears he shed watching a rival, through the silence before his own stage, to the celebration that followed.

The soundtrack was produced to preserve the live energy of each performance while delivering the sonic detail that streaming audio demands. For audiences who experienced the episode in real time, the recordings offer a way to return to those moments with full fidelity. For new listeners, they offer a compelling introduction to eight singers at the peak of their competitive form.

What the Finals Will Look Like

The final lineup of 1deungdeul brings together vocalists whose careers span different eras and different paths to recognition. Son Seung-yeon and Lee Ye-jun carry the technical precision and emotional range that propelled their respective Voice Korea victories. Huh Gak, who won Superstar K2 over a decade ago and has spent the intervening years rebuilding his audience, arrives in the finale with the particular intensity of an artist with something to prove and the experience to prove it.

And Kim Gi-tae, the most recently crowned of the four, enters as the competitor who had to fight hardest for the final spot. There is a quality to competitive resilience that tends to manifest in performance — a sharpened focus, a greater willingness to take risks, a relationship to each note that has been earned rather than assumed. Whether that translates into the finale's ultimate result remains to be seen.

What is already certain is that Episode 9 of 1deungdeul delivered something rare: a night where the emotional stakes were visible on every face in the room, where one singer's tribute to a legend set another singer free, and where a man who had spent weeks feeling small ended the night telling himself he had done well.

The grand finale airs Sunday, April 19, at 9:30 PM KST on MBC.