Kimberly's Seoul Trip: Recording IU's "Love wins all" at KING STUDIO

A UAENA from the Philippines books the KING STUDIO PREMIUM experience and walks out with her own version of "Love wins all" — and a lot more confidence than she came in with.

Recording your bias's song in a real Seoul booth — that's the KING STUDIO PREMIUM experience

If you've ever sung an IU song into your phone at midnight and wondered what it would sound like done properly — a real booth, a real vocal director, a real mic — that's exactly what KING STUDIO does. We're a K-pop recording-studio experience in Seoul built for international fans, and the PREMIUM experience is the fullest version of it: you record your chosen song the way an idol does, and we film a K-pop music video of you doing it. This is Kimberly's day. She's a UAENA from the Philippines, she picked IU's "Love wins all," and her Seoul Trip turned into the moment she stopped apologizing for her own voice. Here's how it went, start to finish — and how you can book the same thing → KING STUDIO.

• Inside the booth: what the PREMIUM session actually looked like
• What Kimberly said afterward
• For UAENA planning a Seoul Trip: where IU's world actually is
• KING STUDIO services — which one is right for you?
• 5

Why Kimberly chose "Love wins all"

Kimberly didn't pick a high-energy title-track flex. She picked the quietest, most exposed song IU has put out in years.

"Love wins all" is IU's January 2024 pre-release single — a soft piano ballad from the EP The Winning, with a now-famous music video starring BTS's V. It is, technically, one of the hardest kinds of songs to sing: there's nowhere to hide. No big beat to carry you, no harmonies to lean on. Just breath, pitch, and restraint. For a confident singer that's a challenge. For someone who hadn't really sung in a long time, it's a deep end.

And that's the part that makes Kimberly's choice matter. She's been a UAENA for years — IU is her artist, "Love wins all" is the song she loves singing most — so when she wanted to give herself something for a special day, this was the one. Not because it was easy, but because it was hers.

She was honest about the nerves. She told us she hadn't sung a song all the way through, let alone recorded one, in a long time. Her voice felt tight to her, a little stuffy, out of shape from disuse. She came in genuinely unsure whether her voice would hold up under a microphone — which is a very different thing from belting in the shower, where no one is listening back. That gap, between "I sing for myself" and "I'm about to hear myself recorded," is the real challenge point of her session, and it's why what happened in the booth landed the way it did.

If you're a fan abroad sitting on a song you love but afraid you're "not a good enough singer" to record it — Kimberly is the case study. You don't book this because you're already great. You book it to find out what your voice can actually do.

Inside the booth: what the PREMIUM session actually looked like

Here's the day as Kimberly lived it, not as a brochure describes it.

STEP 1 Meeting the team

First came the welcome and the introduction to her vocal director, Jisun — and honestly, this is the part Kimberly kept coming back to afterward. She'd never worked with a professional vocal director before. Not once. For someone walking in nervous about a rusty voice, having one person responsible for guiding her through every single step changed the entire temperature of the room.

STEP 2 The studio and the gear

A real recording booth, real monitoring setup — the same kind of environment a K-pop artist tracks in. The point of the PREMIUM tier isn't a karaoke room with better speakers; it's that the space and the equipment are the genuine article, so the recording you take home actually sounds like a record.

STEP 3 Vocal training and warm-up

Before any recording, Jisun ran Kimberly through vocal training to loosen up the voice she'd described as "stuffy." This is where the rust starts coming off — opening up the breath, finding where the voice sits, getting it moving again after a long time unused.

STEP 4 Key check and rehearsal

Then the practical engineering: adjusting the backing track's key so it fit her voice rather than forcing her to chase IU's original. "Love wins all" lives or dies on the soft, sustained phrases, so the rehearsal focused there — getting the breath control steady and the pitch landing cleanly on the quiet parts, the exact spots that expose a tired voice.

STEP 5 Idol-style recording

Then the real thing, tracked the way idols do it — recording in sections and across multiple takes, comped together into one clean vocal rather than demanding a flawless single run-through. This is the difference between "record yourself" and being produced: you're allowed to be human, and the best of you gets assembled into the final.

STEP 6 Directing through the hard parts

This is where Jisun earned the gratitude Kimberly kept expressing. A vocal director doesn't just hit record — she shapes the take in real time: where to breathe, where to pull back, where to let a phrase open up. Guided start to finish, hands-on, one detail at a time. Kimberly said working with a director like that, for the first time in her life, was on its own an enormous help — and she thanked Jisun specifically and warmly for it.

STEP 7 Final monitoring — and the MV

Last, she listened back to the finished, monitored recording. And because this was the PREMIUM experience, the day also included a full K-pop music video filmed during the session — DIAMOND-level produced audio plus the video, the complete package. Hearing your own "Love wins all" played back, properly recorded, is the moment most customers go quiet. For Kimberly, it was the moment the nerves she walked in with turned into something else entirely.

What Kimberly said afterward

"Honestly, I don't have much confidence in my voice, so I don't usually sing for people. But through this recording and the whole experience, I realized my voice has way more charm and possibility in it than I'd ever let anyone hear. It genuinely lifted my confidence. Such a meaningful day." — Kimberly, Philippines 🇵🇭

For UAENA planning a Seoul Trip: where IU's world actually is

For UAENA planning a Seoul Trip: where IU's world actually is Quick honesty, because we'd rather be useful than make things up: IU is a soloist, not a group, so she doesn't have the permanent fan-café-and-landmark map that a big group's fandom builds up. This is KING STUDIO's pick, not Kimberly's route. So instead of sending you to a random café with IU's name bolted on, here's the one genuinely UAENA thing worth timing your trip around:

• The annual UAENA / IU birthday café events (mid-May, around IU's May 16 birthday) — Every year for IU's birthday, official and fan-run birthday cafés pop up across Seoul, clustered in neighborhoods like Seongsu, Yeonnam, and Yongsan. Members of the official fan club get drinks and exclusive goods at the official events. Best time: plan a mid-May Seoul Trip if you can. Insider tip: these are time-limited pop-ups, not year-round venues, so check the latest UAENA community posts close to your dates before you go.

That's deliberately one entry, not a padded top-five. A short, true guide beats a long, fake one.

KING STUDIO services — which one is right for you?

• PREMIUM (what Kimberly booked): the complete experience — you record your chosen song with full production and we film a K-pop music video of you during the session. It's DIAMOND plus the MV. Best if you want both the finished track and the visual to take home and post. See current options on KING STUDIO.
• DIAMOND: record your chosen song, get pitch and timing correction, then a full mix and master — a properly finished, take-home produced track. This is where take-home, mastered recordings begin.
• GOLD(Personal Vocal): a 120-minute session focused on you — a vocal diagnosis of your range, timbre, and habits, coaching, personalized song and genre recommendations, plus a roughly 30-minute hands-on recording experience in the booth. Note: GOLD's booth time is an experience — it's unedited and you don't take home an audio file; the deliverable is a personalized PDF vocal report.
• K-Pop Making Class: a group experience for 2–15 people, where one song is split into idol-style parts across the group. Perfect for friends or a fan-group trip.

Not sure which fits? The full rundown is in the complete KING STUDIO recording guide.

Ready to record your song in Seoul?

You don't need to be a trained singer. You need a song you love and one day in Seoul. Kimberly walked in unsure her voice would hold up and walked out hearing what it could really do — that's the whole point.

➡️ Book your PREMIUM experience now

Book your PREMIUM experience → KING STUDIO. And tell us: which IU song would you record in Seoul, UAENA? Drop it in the comments — especially our readers in the Philippines 🇵🇭✨

🎙️ Book your own K-Pop session → Book your PREMIUM experience now
🌐 Visit us: https://kingstudio.co.kr/en
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