Soyoon Hwang, frontwoman of the Korean rock band SE SO NEON, is a storyteller at heart who expresses herself not only through song but through visuals, as she directed three of the music videos for songs off SE SO NEON’s album “<NOW>.” Hwang spoke to NYOTA about the U.S. becoming home base, the joy of translating her music, and Korean Rock’s resurgence in popularity.

You moved to New York to shake things up creatively. Can you talk about your typical day in NYC? How did the move help?

I didn’t move to New York; I only stayed there briefly to work on demos. It’s been about a year since I moved to LA, and I’ve been living a joyful life here. Leaving the city where I had spent my entire life and settling into a new place wasn’t easy, but I felt it was a necessary journey.

<NOW> is SE SO NEON’s debut album after almost a decade of the band entering the music scene. How much have the lessons from your solo projects helped in making this album? How did you know that the band was ready for this?

I can’t say there was much I specifically learned from my solo album. SE SO NEON’s journey belongs to SE SO NEON. I simply felt that, in the trajectory of my life, there were stories that needed to be told with a longer breath — that’s when I knew I was ready to make an album.

Walk us through the process of making <NOW>. What were the challenges that you faced?

This wasn’t just about making a record; it was also an important part of my life’s journey. I needed different kinds of experiences for that. I left home, wrote a lot, and spent long hours in the studio to strip things away and face everything with honesty. Leaving Korea — the place that had shaped my career so far — and setting my base in the U.S. to release an album was also a challenge.

Many of your songs are translated into the English language. Do you ever feel that your music loses or gains anything in translation?

The differences between languages are truly delightful to me. While translating some of the lyrics for this album, I enjoyed thinking about how I could still paint the scenes I envisioned in English and carefully choosing the right words. Similarly, living in the U.S. and communicating in English gave me the first real chance to experiment with how language reflects emotions — to think about it from multiple angles and experience it firsthand.

SE SO NEON has evolved a lot since 2016. How is this growth and evolution reflected in the album?

Growth and change always end up reflected in the album. I debuted right after becoming an adult, so my entire journey has been documented, and most of it has been revealed without hiding — in the albums and in my path. In that sense, it feels inevitable.

You directed the music video for your song “Remember.” What was your process for ensuring the video visually conveys the right emotions of the song?

Not only “Remember,” but the other music videos as well carry my touch. In fact, “NOW” and “Twit Winter” were even more directly shaped by me. I tried to translate what I had imagined while making the songs into visuals without filtering them. For example, in the “NOW” video, I went on real hitchhiking trips and documented the process, and through building and burning a house, I wanted to express what the <NOW> album signified to me.

Korean rock is having a resurgence in popularity. Have your efforts popularized it more globally? 

Honestly, I don’t know. It’s hard to look at how much influence I might have within the scene with complete objectivity. But I do hope that, in some way, my work has contributed.

What do you want listeners to take away from your new album?

Even if not right away, I hope the album can become a small gift in people’s lives.

This story first ran in NYOTA’s Empowerment Issue. Read more from the Issue here and purchase a print copy here.