SEOUL, May 20 (AJP) - There are moments when music accomplishes what politics, diplomacy, and economics often cannot. It dissolves distance. It softens history. It reminds people, however briefly, that civilization is ultimately sustained not only by power and institutions, but by the human heart.
This spring, Lee Gi-yeon, widely known in South Korea as the "Music Coach for the Nation" will travel to Paris with a group of South Korean amateur vocalists and professional musicians to commemorate the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between South Korea and France.
Organized by the Lee Gi-yeon Opera Institute, the performances will take place on May 24 and May 28 in Paris and are being viewed not merely as concerts, but as a form of cultural diplomacy carried out by ordinary citizens through the universal language of music.
Following last year's warmly received musical busking journey across Italy, Lee's Paris project represents a broader artistic mission: to bring together people of different nations, professions, and backgrounds through classical music and shared emotion.
The principal event, a commemorative concert titled Hymne à l'amour ("Hymn to Love"), will be held on May 24 at 5 p.m. local time at the historic Église protestante unie du Saint-Esprit in central Paris.
The venue itself carries a quiet but profound symbolism. The church, among the oldest Protestant churches in France, was once attended by members of the Hermès family and remains deeply woven into the cultural and spiritual memory of Paris.
Against that backdrop, Korean amateur vocalists — many of them doctors, professors, business executives, and financial professionals — will step onto the stage alongside accomplished musicians based in France. Together they will perform not as celebrities or officials, but as citizens connected by a love of music. Participants include Kim Moon-ja, Kim Hyun-mi, Noh Hee-jin, Park Byung-joo, Park Young-mi, Seo Mi-ra, Ahn Dong-hyun, and Jeon Hyo-jin.
Joining them as special guests will be soprano Seo Su-min of the Paris National Opera, tenor Seo Hyung-seok, baritone Kim Young-woo, and violinist Choi Seul-gi, a professor at the Arpajon Conservatory. The result promises to be something increasingly rare in modern cultural life: a performance where professionalism and sincerity coexist without hierarchy.
Four days later on May 28 at 2:30 p.m., the atmosphere will shift from the grandeur of a historic sanctuary to the quieter emotional world of healing and consolation. At Hôpital Vaugirard Gabriel-Pallez AP-HP, Lee and her fellow musicians will present Bienvenue au concert de printemps! ("Welcome to the Spring Concert!"), a special healing concert organized in cooperation with the hospital’s Protestant chaplaincy.
The performance is intended for patients, caregivers, and medical staff — individuals carrying the physical and emotional burdens of illness, exhaustion, and recovery.
Lee, serving as artistic director and opera coach, will again be joined by violinist Choi Seul-gi and tenor Seo Hyung-seok in delivering music designed not for spectacle, but for comfort.
In many respects, the hospital concert reveals the deeper philosophy behind Lee's artistic life. For her, music is not merely performance. It is companionship, consolation and restoration. Speaking ahead of the Paris events, Lee reflected on the emotional meaning of the project.
"To sing together in Paris with Korean amateur vocalists who possess a pure passion for music, alongside musicians living and working in France, during this meaningful year marking the 140th anniversary of Korea–France relations, is profoundly moving," she said. "I hope that South Korean residents in Paris, as well as French citizens, will gather together through music and experience moments of happiness, harmony, and shared humanity."
Both performances will be offered free of charge to local residents and members of the Korean community, with open admission for anyone who loves classical music and opera. At a time when the world feels increasingly fractured by geopolitical conflict, ideological division, and digital isolation, these concerts offer something fundamentally human: people gathering in one physical space to listen together, breathe together, and feel together.
In that sense, the performances transcend the boundaries of ordinary cultural events. They represent a form of civilian diplomacy — one in which artists, educators, and ordinary citizens become ambassadors of goodwill without official titles or political authority. Music, after all, remains one of the few languages that does not require translation.
Who Is Lee Gi-yeon?
Lee is one of South Korea's most recognizable public music educators and opera coaches, widely admired for her efforts to bring classical music closer to everyday audiences.
She currently serves as director of the Lee Gi-yeon Opera Institute and as an adjunct professor in the Department of Korean Music at Seoul Institute of the Arts. She is also a successful YouTube creator with approximately 170,000 subscribers, where she introduces opera, vocal technique, and classical music appreciation to the broader public in an accessible and engaging way.
Lee studied piano and completed the advanced opera coaching program at the prestigious Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, one of Europe's oldest and most respected musical institutions. Over the years, she has pursued a career that combines artistic excellence with public education and cultural outreach.
In 2018, she received a commendation from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in recognition of her contributions in public lectures and cultural engagement. From 2020 through 2025, she also served as a program review committee member for the Korea Forest Service.
Lee previously taught in the Future Culture Executive Program at Sookmyung Women's University and has delivered invited lectures and performances for major Korean institutions and corporations, including Samsung Life Insurance, Hyundai Mobis, LG Uplus, the Ministry of National Defense, and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.
Her performances and musical projects have been staged at some of Korea's most prestigious cultural venues, including Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul Arts Center, and Lotte Concert Hall. As an opera coach, she has participated in productions including L'elisir d'amore, Samson et Dalila, and Le nozze di Figaro.
Yet perhaps her most meaningful contribution has been her effort to restore humanity to classical music itself. For Lee, opera is not an elite ornament reserved for concert halls and specialists. It is a living art capable of comforting ordinary people, healing emotional wounds, and reconnecting individuals to beauty in an increasingly anxious world. That may ultimately be the lasting meaning of these Paris concerts.
They are not simply performances commemorating 140 years of diplomatic relations between two nations. They are reminders that culture, at its best, allows human beings to recognize one another beyond language, nationality, profession, or ideology. And in an unsettled age, such recognition may itself be a form of hope.
This spring, Lee Gi-yeon, widely known in South Korea as the "Music Coach for the Nation" will travel to Paris with a group of South Korean amateur vocalists and professional musicians to commemorate the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between South Korea and France.
Organized by the Lee Gi-yeon Opera Institute, the performances will take place on May 24 and May 28 in Paris and are being viewed not merely as concerts, but as a form of cultural diplomacy carried out by ordinary citizens through the universal language of music.
Following last year's warmly received musical busking journey across Italy, Lee's Paris project represents a broader artistic mission: to bring together people of different nations, professions, and backgrounds through classical music and shared emotion.
The principal event, a commemorative concert titled Hymne à l'amour ("Hymn to Love"), will be held on May 24 at 5 p.m. local time at the historic Église protestante unie du Saint-Esprit in central Paris.
The venue itself carries a quiet but profound symbolism. The church, among the oldest Protestant churches in France, was once attended by members of the Hermès family and remains deeply woven into the cultural and spiritual memory of Paris.
Against that backdrop, Korean amateur vocalists — many of them doctors, professors, business executives, and financial professionals — will step onto the stage alongside accomplished musicians based in France. Together they will perform not as celebrities or officials, but as citizens connected by a love of music. Participants include Kim Moon-ja, Kim Hyun-mi, Noh Hee-jin, Park Byung-joo, Park Young-mi, Seo Mi-ra, Ahn Dong-hyun, and Jeon Hyo-jin.
Joining them as special guests will be soprano Seo Su-min of the Paris National Opera, tenor Seo Hyung-seok, baritone Kim Young-woo, and violinist Choi Seul-gi, a professor at the Arpajon Conservatory. The result promises to be something increasingly rare in modern cultural life: a performance where professionalism and sincerity coexist without hierarchy.
Four days later on May 28 at 2:30 p.m., the atmosphere will shift from the grandeur of a historic sanctuary to the quieter emotional world of healing and consolation. At Hôpital Vaugirard Gabriel-Pallez AP-HP, Lee and her fellow musicians will present Bienvenue au concert de printemps! ("Welcome to the Spring Concert!"), a special healing concert organized in cooperation with the hospital’s Protestant chaplaincy.
The performance is intended for patients, caregivers, and medical staff — individuals carrying the physical and emotional burdens of illness, exhaustion, and recovery.
Lee, serving as artistic director and opera coach, will again be joined by violinist Choi Seul-gi and tenor Seo Hyung-seok in delivering music designed not for spectacle, but for comfort.
In many respects, the hospital concert reveals the deeper philosophy behind Lee's artistic life. For her, music is not merely performance. It is companionship, consolation and restoration. Speaking ahead of the Paris events, Lee reflected on the emotional meaning of the project.
"To sing together in Paris with Korean amateur vocalists who possess a pure passion for music, alongside musicians living and working in France, during this meaningful year marking the 140th anniversary of Korea–France relations, is profoundly moving," she said. "I hope that South Korean residents in Paris, as well as French citizens, will gather together through music and experience moments of happiness, harmony, and shared humanity."
Both performances will be offered free of charge to local residents and members of the Korean community, with open admission for anyone who loves classical music and opera. At a time when the world feels increasingly fractured by geopolitical conflict, ideological division, and digital isolation, these concerts offer something fundamentally human: people gathering in one physical space to listen together, breathe together, and feel together.
In that sense, the performances transcend the boundaries of ordinary cultural events. They represent a form of civilian diplomacy — one in which artists, educators, and ordinary citizens become ambassadors of goodwill without official titles or political authority. Music, after all, remains one of the few languages that does not require translation.
Who Is Lee Gi-yeon?
Lee is one of South Korea's most recognizable public music educators and opera coaches, widely admired for her efforts to bring classical music closer to everyday audiences.
She currently serves as director of the Lee Gi-yeon Opera Institute and as an adjunct professor in the Department of Korean Music at Seoul Institute of the Arts. She is also a successful YouTube creator with approximately 170,000 subscribers, where she introduces opera, vocal technique, and classical music appreciation to the broader public in an accessible and engaging way.
Lee studied piano and completed the advanced opera coaching program at the prestigious Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, one of Europe's oldest and most respected musical institutions. Over the years, she has pursued a career that combines artistic excellence with public education and cultural outreach.
In 2018, she received a commendation from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in recognition of her contributions in public lectures and cultural engagement. From 2020 through 2025, she also served as a program review committee member for the Korea Forest Service.
Lee previously taught in the Future Culture Executive Program at Sookmyung Women's University and has delivered invited lectures and performances for major Korean institutions and corporations, including Samsung Life Insurance, Hyundai Mobis, LG Uplus, the Ministry of National Defense, and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.
Her performances and musical projects have been staged at some of Korea's most prestigious cultural venues, including Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul Arts Center, and Lotte Concert Hall. As an opera coach, she has participated in productions including L'elisir d'amore, Samson et Dalila, and Le nozze di Figaro.
Yet perhaps her most meaningful contribution has been her effort to restore humanity to classical music itself. For Lee, opera is not an elite ornament reserved for concert halls and specialists. It is a living art capable of comforting ordinary people, healing emotional wounds, and reconnecting individuals to beauty in an increasingly anxious world. That may ultimately be the lasting meaning of these Paris concerts.
They are not simply performances commemorating 140 years of diplomatic relations between two nations. They are reminders that culture, at its best, allows human beings to recognize one another beyond language, nationality, profession, or ideology. And in an unsettled age, such recognition may itself be a form of hope.
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