AKMU's Chan-hyuk: 'I'll Jump Into the Pit With You'

On the April 3, 2026 episode of Coupang Play's Kang Ho-dong's Neighborhood Bookstore, the sibling duo AKMU sat down and revealed the most honest account of their creative partnership and personal relationship that fans have ever heard. What followed was the kind of television moment that doesn't happen often: raw, specific, and impossible to dismiss as performance.

By the end, the studio audience was quiet, and viewers watching at home were reaching for their phones to screenshot a quote from Lee Chan-hyuk that many are already calling one of the most moving statements they've ever heard from a Korean artist about family.

"I Was Arrogant": Lee Su-hyun's Honest Reckoning With Her Brother's Genius

The conversation started with a question about AKMU's creative process — a subject that had generated considerable speculation among fans for years. Lee Su-hyun, the younger half of the duo, had always been celebrated as an equal partner: her voice, her stage presence, and her perceived songwriting contributions were central to the group's identity.

On this episode, she told a different story.

"I used to think it was fifty-fifty," she said. "But looking back now, I think my brother was doing about ninety percent of the work."

The admission prompted audible surprise from the hosts. Su-hyun did not stop there. "I was arrogant," she said. "I thought I had abilities I didn't actually have. When I tried to work on music alone, I realized very quickly that I didn't have the producing skills I thought I did."

The trigger for this realization was Lee Chan-hyuk's mandatory military service, during which Su-hyun attempted to work on solo music independently. The experience was humbling — and it set off a period of personal crisis that, she revealed, came dangerously close to ending AKMU altogether.

Two Years in the Dark: How Su-hyun Nearly Quit AKMU

What Su-hyun described next surprised even longtime AKMU fans. During the period when Chan-hyuk was serving in the military, she didn't just struggle creatively — she collapsed inward. For approximately two years, she largely withdrew from the world, spending most of her time in her room and disconnecting from the professional life she had built.

She had, at various points, considered whether it was worth continuing as AKMU at all.

"There were times when I thought about whether we should just stop," she admitted. "The slump was something I couldn't get out of on my own."

The confession reframes how fans might look back at AKMU's quieter years — a period that, from the outside, could be attributed to Chan-hyuk's enlistment and the natural pause that comes with it. In reality, Su-hyun was going through something much harder: a reckoning with her own identity as an artist that threatened to end one of Korean music's most distinctive creative partnerships before it had fully reached its potential.

What pulled her out of it was not a management intervention, a new contract, or a professional decision. It was her brother.

The Brother Who Moved In and Refused to Let Go

Lee Chan-hyuk, in the same conversation, described how he had watched his sister's decline and made a choice that was about something far more fundamental than music.

"When I saw how Su-hyun was doing, I felt like it was my fault," he said. "I kept thinking: if I had been there, would this have happened?"

His response was not to offer words of encouragement from a distance. He moved in with his sister and began the slow, quiet work of helping her rebuild a daily life. Exercise routines. Shared meals. Ordinary moments that, strung together over months, gradually changed the rhythm of her days and gave her a structure to hold onto when the music felt out of reach.

When the time felt right, he proposed a project: a reinterpretation of songs from AKMU's first album, the work that had originally brought them both joy. "Let's take the songs you loved from the first album and reinterpret them together," he told her. "Let's try it."

For Su-hyun, it was the beginning of a way back. "My brother kept giving me courage," she said. "Because of that, I found the courage to come back. He's the reason I was able to keep going."

"Even If You Fall Into a Deep Pit, I'll Jump In With You"

The line that will outlast this episode — the one that viewers and fans immediately began sharing — came when Chan-hyuk described, in his own words, what his commitment to his sister actually means.

"Even if you fall into a deep pit," he said, "I'll grab your hand and jump in with you."

The studio fell quiet. It was not a polished speech or a prepared statement. It was a description of a philosophy of loyalty that the past two years had already demonstrated in practice.

Psychiatrist Dr. Seo Cheon-seok, who was also present on the program, responded with rare directness. "What strikes me is the patience," he said. "To wait for that long, with that much breath, and to gently lead someone toward believing in themselves again — that is genuinely remarkable." He praised Chan-hyuk not for dramatic intervention, but for something harder and rarer: the willingness to stay present without rushing the process, to trust that the person would find their way back if given enough time and enough company.

The episode arrives at a significant moment for AKMU. In January 2026, the duo announced the establishment of their own independent label, Fountain of Inspiration — a decision that signals a new level of creative and professional autonomy after years under YG Entertainment. The label represents, in part, the fruit of the work both siblings have put in since Chan-hyuk's return from military service: Su-hyun's rebuilt confidence, Chan-hyuk's deepened commitment, and a partnership that has been tested and proven in ways that most creative collaborations never are.

For fans who have followed AKMU since their debut on K-Pop Star in 2012, the episode offered something that the music itself could only hint at: a direct look at the interior of a creative relationship defined as much by devotion as by talent. The two have always made music that felt emotionally transparent, songs that carried a quality of intimacy unusual for the industry. Now, after hearing what the last few years actually looked like, that quality makes more sense than ever.

The fact that this story came out on Kang Ho-dong's Neighborhood Bookstore — a talk show just weeks old, built around the premise of deep conversation — is itself telling. The format, which pairs Kang Ho-dong with a single guest in an intimate setting structured around books and ideas, seems designed precisely for the kind of reflection that celebrity panel shows rarely allow. AKMU, a duo who have always seemed slightly out of step with the faster-moving parts of the Korean entertainment industry, found in it a space that matched their pace.

Chan-hyuk's promise — to jump into the pit alongside his sister — is not a metaphor. It already happened. And the music that came out the other side of it, and the label they now run together, are what that kind of loyalty looks like when it works.