Lim Young-woong Fans Fill Hero Garden With Spring Flowers

Every spring since 2022, members of Yeongwoong-sidae — the official fan club of Korean singer Lim Young-woong — have returned to a garden they built with their own funds at Seoul Grand Park in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. This year, on April 2, a group from the club's Gyeonggi Region 2 chapter gathered once again to plant spring flowers at the space, known simply as Hero Garden (히어로 가든).

The event is part of an ongoing tradition that stretches back to the garden's founding. More than just a fan celebration, it has become a seasonal ritual — a way for Lim Young-woong's fandom to channel devotion into something that benefits the wider public. The Hero Garden is open to all visitors of Seoul Grand Park, not exclusively to fans of the singer.

How Hero Garden Came to Be

Hero Garden was not built overnight, and it was not funded by a corporation or a city initiative. It was the result of Yeongwoong-sidae members pooling their own money, raising enough to commission the construction of a dedicated garden space within Seoul Grand Park — one of the largest public parks in South Korea, located on the grounds of a former zoo site in Gwacheon, just south of Seoul.

Construction was completed and the space was officially opened in April 2022. Shinsegae Construction's landscaping division handled the physical build, but the funding came entirely from the fan community. The garden is part of a broader "Flower Forest Project" that Seoul Grand Park has supported, which encourages community groups to take ownership of designated green spaces within the park.

Since its opening, Hero Garden has been maintained by Yeongwoong-sidae members who return periodically to tend the space — planting new flowers seasonally, clearing weeds, and keeping the surrounding area tidy. The April 2 event this year focused on spring planting, with members placing hundreds of flower seedlings into the garden beds and carrying out environmental cleanup of the surrounding walkways.

The Gyeonggi Region 2 chapter covers members from Anyang, Gunpo, Uiwang, and Gwacheon — cities in the southern part of Gyeonggi Province. Their proximity to Seoul Grand Park makes them natural stewards of the Hero Garden specifically, though chapters from across the country participate in events and maintenance activities throughout the year.

Who Is Lim Young-woong?

Lim Young-woong rose to national prominence after winning the first season of TV CHOSUN's "Mr. Trot" in 2020 — a competition series that turned the traditional Korean musical genre of trot into a mainstream sensation, particularly among audiences who had long felt overlooked by the idol-dominated K-entertainment industry. Trot is a style of Korean pop music with roots stretching back to the Japanese occupation era; it fell out of mainstream fashion during the 1990s K-pop boom but has experienced a sustained revival since the late 2010s.

Lim Young-woong's combination of powerful vocals, warm stage presence, and genuine emotional connection with older audiences made him one of the most unexpected breakout stars in recent Korean entertainment history. His fanbase — nicknamed "Yeongwoong-sidae" (영웅시대), meaning "Age of Heroes" or "Heroic Age" — grew rapidly after his Mr. Trot win and has remained unusually active and organized by any standard.

Unlike many idol fan communities that skew toward teenagers and young adults, Yeongwoong-sidae's membership is heavily composed of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. This demographic, sometimes called "mom fans" in Korean media, has attracted considerable attention for the scale and sophistication of their organized activities — from coordinated streaming campaigns and concert logistics to long-term civic projects like Hero Garden.

A Fandom Known for Giving Back

Hero Garden is one of the most visible expressions of a fan community that has made charitable giving a central part of its identity. In October 2024, Yeongwoong-sidae members donated more than 12.27 million Korean won (approximately $9,000 USD) to the Community Chest of Korea, the country's leading social welfare fundraising organization. That contribution followed a fan community athletics event held to raise the funds — a format the club has used before to combine internal celebration with external giving.

Beyond Hero Garden at Seoul Grand Park, the club has also developed a second dedicated green space: the "Lim Young-woong Star Garden" (임영웅 별빛정원) at Seoul Forest, a major urban park in Seoul's Seongdong district. Together, the two gardens stand as rare examples of a fan community leaving a lasting, publicly accessible mark on its city's landscape — spaces that remain open and available to anyone who visits, regardless of their connection to the artist.

Lim Young-woong himself has long encouraged his fans to direct their energy outward. He has donated to the Community Chest of Korea personally since 2021, and the fan club has frequently cited his example as inspiration for their own giving campaigns. The result has been a feedback loop between the artist and his community that has produced a consistent pattern of public-benefit activity.

What the Garden Means to the Community

One member who participated in the April 2 planting event described the group's motivation simply: conveying warmth and rest to fellow citizens through a space that outlasts any single fan event or concert. "This garden belongs to everyone who walks through the park," she said. "We just happen to be the ones taking care of it."

That framing — fan love expressed not as personal decoration but as civic contribution — has become something of a signature for the Yeongwoong-sidae community. It is an approach that has drawn respectful coverage in Korean media and occasional curiosity from observers wondering how a fan club came to have its name on a public park in one of the country's most-visited recreation areas.

The spring planting event, modest in scale, fits into a larger picture: a community that measures its devotion not by the loudest display but by what it leaves behind. Hero Garden will be in bloom this spring, as it has been every spring since the fans who built it first put their hands in the soil.

What Comes Next for Hero Garden

The Gyeonggi Region 2 chapter has indicated that maintenance of Hero Garden will continue through the coming seasons. Planned activities include weeding, environmental cleanup of surrounding paths, and additional planting as the year progresses. The longer-term goal, as members have stated, is to help develop Hero Garden into one of Seoul Grand Park's recognized landmark spaces — a place people come to visit for its own beauty, regardless of their connection to any particular artist.

Whether that ambition is fully achieved or not, the garden already represents something unusual in the world of K-entertainment fandom: a fan project that requires no ticket purchase or streaming count, and that will still be there long after any tour or album cycle has run its course.

Spring flowers are now in the ground at Hero Garden. The group will return when the next season demands it.