Actor Ku Hye-sun reveals she secretly composed 58 new-age songs over 20 years

Actor Ku Hye-sun has revealed that she has spent 20 years working as a composer, registering 58 new-age songs under her name.

A video titled "From Actor to Painter, Film Director to Patent Holder" was published Thursday on the official YouTube channel of the Presidential Council on Intellectual Property.

"Rather than having copyrights as an actor, I hold a lot of music copyrights," Ku said in the video. "I have been working as a composer in secret." She added that she had been composing new-age music for about 20 years and had registered around 58 songs.

Ku said that because her music is background music by nature, her songs are used in TV entertainment programs, cafes, hospitals and other venues. "So the royalties come in steadily, even if not in large amounts," she said, without disclosing specific figures.

Her compositions have been used as background music on MBC's "Infinite Challenge" and KBS's "The Return of Superman," among other programs. Her 2009 track "Rain" also went viral on China's QQ Music in 2015, reaching No. 1.

Asked about her ultimate goal, Ku said it was "to live a comfortable and abundant life in old age." She added that registering her work as intellectual property and having it protected under the system gave her not only financial security but also a sense of mental richness — "the feeling that this is intellectual property I created myself."

Ku graduated from Sungkyunkwan University with a degree in film and media studies before going on to graduate school at KAIST. More recently, she has been expanding her career as a venture entrepreneur, releasing a series of products she developed herself.