Comedian Lee Sung-mi. [Lee Sung-mi's Instagram]
Comedian Lee Sung-mi. [Lee Sung-mi's Instagram]

Comedian Lee Sung-mi has shared her memories of the late Lim Yun-taek, lead singer of Ulala Session.

A video featuring Lee appeared Wednesday on the YouTube channel "Saeroptge Hasoseo."

In the video, Lee spoke about her past battle with breast cancer. "Getting cancer was something I am truly grateful for," she said. "I was thankful then, and I am still thankful now."

Lee recalled how she first came to meet Lim. "Yun-taek had been going to church but then drifted away, and while he was going through a rough patch, he became very ill," she said. "His manager asked me to meet with him. At the time I had not been diagnosed with cancer myself, so I did not know much about it, and I went with my sunbae Kim Ja-ok, who was fighting cancer at the time. I thought cancer patients would connect well with each other."

"Yun-taek and Ja-ok unni really clicked and had such a lively conversation," Lee said. "I watched them for a while and thought, 'This young man must have a real emptiness in his heart.'"

She then described a prayer she offered for Lim. "At the time, Yun-taek had a baby who was just 100 days old. When I got home, I prayed: 'God, please let Yun-taek live. Please put his name in the book of life, and even if you take me out, please watch over this child. The child is so young, and I have lived enough.'"

The two grew even closer after Lee was diagnosed with breast cancer herself.

"One day I was doing a broadcast when they told me I had breast cancer," she said. "The very first person I called was Yun-taek — I told him, 'I have cancer.' He said, 'Thank you for becoming my fellow patient.' He said, 'Now I can really talk to you,' and we became very close very quickly. We would laugh together comparing surgery dates and checkup schedules. But then his condition kept getting worse."

Lee said the two remained close friends right up until Lim's final days. "Near the end, he said, 'Sunbae, I want to hold a worship service.' That day, we held a service together with a pastor at the hospital," she said. "Then the next evening, I got a call saying he was about to pass and to come quickly. I was devastated on the way there. I cried out to God, asking how he could take him so soon. When I arrived at the hospital, he was already gone."

"I was so resentful," she said. "God had only answered half my prayer. I had asked for him to be healed, and he was not — and then I got cancer myself. My emotions were all over the place. But Yun-taek was smiling so brightly. In that moment, I thought: 'I prayed for him to live, but if dying this way — with a smile like that — is better than suffering in pain, then maybe this is a path I should not try to block.' That is how I found peace."

"The prayer I had been saying — asking for him to live — began to change," Lee added. "I used to think that living was the answer. But I came to believe that if someone can leave this world beautifully, then as a person of faith, I need to think about death differently too."

Ulala Session debuted after winning the Mnet talent show "Superstar K3" in 2011. Group leader Lim was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer in January 2011, underwent a gastrectomy in May of that year and continued treatment, before dying in February 2013 at the age of 32.

Lee was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer during a routine health checkup in 2013. She underwent surgery, 30 rounds of radiation therapy and chemotherapy, and was declared fully recovered five years later.


min3654@heraldcorp.com