She got in a terrible car accident and passed away in 2014.
Video clip © 2001 SBS. I do not own this video.
Note: This post is from my former blog restored according to my memory.
Joanne Lee debuted in early 2000s with her song A Shiny Day. The Korean-American girl was the same age with me, and had an amazing voice tone and singing skills for her age when she debuted in early teenage. However, she became an one hit wonder because of a legal dispute with her agency, if I remember correctly. After few years when she became an adult, she came back to Korea and studied in Sungkyunkwan University for bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.
That was when I recognised the one hit wonder girl from a few years ago. We took a few same lectures, mostly freshmen mandatory general education ones. She did not want to be in the centre of attention and kept using her Korean name. I remember her as a smart and humble classmate.
A few years later, she tried to revive her dream of becoming a K-Pop star. She appeared on a few audition shows on the TV, but people were not really convinced. I heard she went back to LA and started working as a usual office worker. And before I and people around me could recover from the shock of Sewol ferry disaster, the news of her being in a terrible car accident and then not being able to make it in the end spread.
I know I was just a passer-by in her life and I don’t think she would remember me even if she was still alive, but I just get reminded of her time to time because she was a girl of the same age with me who pursued her dream, met several frustrations, and then became a protagonist of a tragedy. I wish her soul may rest in peace (and it has been almost a decade already, which makes me sad).