Kim Yon-ja left for Japan in 1988 and there became a star in a pop music genre known as Enka. But now she is busy recording for her first album in Korea in 22 years, which is due to be released in December. "I thought if I don't do it now, I'll be forever forgotten among Korean fans. From now on, I will split my time between Korea and Japan," she says.  

Kim topped the Japanese Oricon Chart 15 times. "I got noticed thanks to the uniqueness of Korean voices, which the Japanese don't have," she says. Yet it wasn't easy. She went to Japan all alone at the age of 18 in the late 1970s, but it ended in utter failure. Then she met her lifetime partner, a second-generation Korean-Japanese 18 years her senior who was a member of a famous jazz orchestra. The two married in 1982.

The key to her eventual success in 1988 was the stability and security that her family gave her. "But it was very difficult in the beginning. When I sing overseas, I have to be aware of many things because I'm no longer just the singer Kim Yon-ja, but a 'Korean' singer.'"

Kim undertook numerous overseas tours, the most memorable being concerts she gave in North Korea in 2001 and 2002, when she met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. "Originally, I went to North Korea to do three concerts in Pyongyang in 2001. But after the first concert, some officials abruptly came to our hotel and told us to pack. They told us not to ask any questions and get on the train," she recalls. "I think that was a train exclusively for Kim Jong-il. It had very fancy bed and other facilities. We were on the train overnight, and arrived in Hamhung. Then we boarded a car, and arrived at a house with huge gate near the shore. The gate was open, and there was Kim Jong-il."

The North Korean leader told her she combined the strengths of Lee Mi-ja, Patti Kim, and Hibari Misori and commented on her medley album of old Korean classic songs. He said he has special memory of the album because he listened to it with his father Kim Il-sung sometime in 1982. "He told me to come back often, but I couldn't because there was opposition in Japan due to strong anti-North Korean sentiment there, and I was being portrayed as a North Korean singer," she says.

Thanks to her extraordinary singing voice, Kim started her career in adolescence. "It's a pity that I didn't have a normal youth, but I'm grateful that I've been able to live my life as a singer."