On Witnessing Cha Eun-Woo’s Pain

After Moonbin’s death, ASTRO’s Cha Eun-Woo wrote an EP titled “Entity” to remember him. Can grief and darker emotions find a place in K-Pop?

Three nights before Moonbin died, Cha Eun-Woo, Moonbin’s teammate in ASTRO, was in Indio, California at Coachella to catch BLACKPINK’s headlining set. In the desert that night, he slipped into the crowd to watch the women make history as the first K-Pop group to ever headline the festival. Later that night, as he attended PINKCHELLA, the girls’ VIP after party, he posed with other Korean actors and idols who had flown in for the girls’ performance.

Eun-Woo’s choice to attend Coachella was, in part, strategic. Earlier in the week, Eun-Woo had attended a Dior event as an ambassador in Los Angeles. But Eunwoo, who is a superstar in film and TV in Korea, was positioned for more in the States. Eunwoo, who is fluent in English, had filmed a role in a forthcoming American film starring Rebel Wilson. 

It was unfortunate and strange, though, that even as K-Pop was experiencing its biggest burst in the U.S., ASTRO had yet to find the same success. How ASTRO could have a member as famous and as visually gorgeous as Eunwoo and still be considered nugu was a running joke in K-Pop fandoms. 

It wasn’t because ASTRO didn’t have great songs. When they debuted in 2016 with “Hide & Seek”, ASTRO became an extension of when K-Pop music was more innocent and wide-eyed. They had diverted only once from their signature sound in 2021 with “ONE”, a harshly produced track that sounded similar to something NCT might release. If their label fantiago was eager to rebrand the group to keep up with the trends, it did little to raise their stock. 

“Candy Sugar Pop”, their last single, had been a return to form for the group: a bright and bubbly pop song that emphasized the members’ charms. When I think of ASTRO, it’s songs like this that stick out the most in my mind. “Knock”, another standout from their discography, was the sweet love song that emphasized the group’s image as a boyfriend figure. At their best, ASTRO was sweet without being cheesy; comforting without ever devolving into pastiche. 

Yet there were signs that ASTRO was near the end of their time as a group. A few months prior to Moonbin’s death, Rocky, the group’s lead rapper, had left to pursue a solo career. MJ, the group’s oldest member, enlisted in the military. Moonbin and Sanha, the macknae, kept busy with a subunit. JinJin, the leader, focused on songwriting and expanding his base to studios like DIVE. 

Eun-Woo continued to find his best success as an actor. When he starred in the K-Drama “True Beauty” in 2020, his portrayal of Lee Su-ho, the wealthy, troubled boy whose bandmate and best friend killed himself, won him legions of new fans. 

Recently, too, he had begun uploading vlogs on his YouTube channel where he took viewers to Egypt as he attended a fashion show, and met with American musicians who inspired him. It was easy to imagine, as I did, that Coachella was another carefully curated moment intended to introduce him to an American public. 

Three days later though, after news of Moonbin’s death broke, Eun-Woo was on a plane back to Korea for his funeral. According to a statement from the group’s label fantiago, the boys were at the funeral home with Moonbin’s family. The cause, it would later be revealed, was what most already suspected. Moonbin had killed himself. 

"People tend to forget too easily,” Eun-Woo said in an interview this year. “That's just really upsetting to think about.” 

After Moonbin’s death, Eun-Woo never took a break. Instead, he continued to work “so that my world wouldn’t collapse.” One week later, he was in Thailand attending a KonneThai event intending to promote collaboration between the Thai and Korean entertainment industry. At the event he signed photos and gave brief interviews, but he looked bewildered. His wide eyes gave way to an underlying anxiety; his lips never forming into a smile. On stage, he silently wiped away tears. 

In the coming months, Eun-Woo also began to work on music again, albeit a very different album than you might have expected from him. “ENTITY”, as Eun-Woo named it, was not a star vehicle, perfectly engineered for mainstream success. Instead, “ENTITY” is an often quiet, startling piece of work. He explores grief in stark colors and grapples with regret. Often, his lyrics write about the aftermath of death; the way one hollows out and eventually is wholly remade by pain.

“I wrote the lyrics for this album,” he said in the same interview, “because I desperately wanted to express what was honestly on my mind.” 

Eun-Woo chose to not go the traditional route of promoting on variety shows for “ENTITY”. "I didn’t want this album to be all about sales or rankings,” he told Lee Hyori on Season’s Red Carpet. “So, I told the management I didn’t want to schedule activities that could become too commercial or promotional.” 

Eunwoo’s only interview directly addressing “ENTITY”, and Moonbin’s death, occurred almost off-handedly three months after its release with Yu Jae Seok on YOU QUIZ ON BLOCK. “I felt that by writing about him I could keep his memory alive,” he told Yu, often wiping away tears.  

The biggest moments of “ENTITY” come in the songs Eun-Woo wrote for Moonbin. “WHERE AM I”, the most searing track on the EP, untangles the disbelief he felt after Moon’bins death: “The sky was as clear as glass when I drove to see you/ Though I hoped the sun wouldn’t rise/ The time we spent together, it all felt like a lie.” 

What I’m most struck by, though, is “STAY” where Eun-Woo writes about how difficult it is to hide his suffering and guilt. “Yeah I’m still there/ Hiding the sighs and regrets/ Behind the smiles/ And being pathetic,” he sings in the first verse. “Heart is full of gray ash/ No such thing as a beautiful farewell.”  

Even among the best and most long-running idols, Eun-Woo has been remarkably compliant. He has never been caught in a scandal, nor has he ever said anything even remotely controversial. He has kept his profile low; his looks top-notch. But in doing so, he has also never really shown his real thoughts. 

What makes songs like “ENTITY” so jarring, then, is how - for the first time - we are hearing directly from Eun-Woo. The lyrics handle grief and depression with a striking amount of straightforwardness. On the opening track “U & I”, he recalls his friendship with Moon: “Alone with you/ We share dizzying stories/ Throughout the night/ We were happy.” Everything, Eun-Woo writes, reminds him of his friend. “I just can’t sleep/ I grab a star in the night sky/ To light up the streets in the night sky since you might come.” 

Even when Eun-Woo looks to distraction, as he does on “Fucking great time”, the lyrics are more revealing than anything we’ve heard from the idol. “You can leave without a word,” he sings about a one night stand, “the afterglow will still linger.” What Eun-Woo is searching for ultimately is a place to not think so much. “One day/ You came into my place and let me find peace,” he sings in the outro. “You said tonight is over, so don’t look back.” 

Today, Eun-Woo is in a small but miserable club of active idols who have lost a team member to suicide. Only six months after Jonghyun’s death in 2018, SHINee were back on stage promoting “The Story of Light” with “Our Page”, a track dedicated to their friend. To this day as I watch their performance M COUNTDOWN, I don’t know how they held it together without crying. “We raise our voices high/ Knowing that it’ll reach up to where you are/ When the stars fade, will it all be forgotten?” As Onew looked up towards the sky and mouthed, “I miss you”, you could sense a real shift begin in K-Pop. Two years ago, when KARA reunited without GU HARA, the women cried as they remembered their friend. This comeback, they often said, didn’t feel right without her. 

Eun-Woo was left with no guide for how to move forward after Moonbin’s death. Every idol who lost a team member experienced a particularly harsh trauma, but they all chose to keep working. Part of this is due to Korean culture, which prioritizes work and logic over emotions. So, though he tried his best to move forward, occasionally, the emotions would swing around like a pendulum being rattled by an external force. 

One place where Eun-Woo did perform the EP in its entirety was at the “Just One 10 Minute Mystery Elevator” Fancon. Held just one week after the EP’s release, the most emotional moment came as he performed “WHERE AM I?” On stage, Eun-Woo started out solemnly as he sang with his eyes closed, his head bowed. But as the chorus began to swell, he stopped singing and took a deep breath. 

Eun-Woo glanced out the arena full of his fans, called AROHAs, briefly as he wiped away a tear. He attempted to sing again, but each time, was stopped by the swell of emotions. Eventually, he gave in, hung his head low and sobbed. Before him a sea of fandom purple lights reflected back at him, each fan quietly holding their breath as they commemorated the the member who had passed on and Eun-Woo, the friend, who was left behind.