Go Away With … KEEHO of P1Harmony

By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Tribune and other outlets
February 20, 2024

After spending most of 2023 and this past January on a world tour that took them across five continents, P1Harmony leader Keeho said he is already looking forward to hitting the road again. “When we first started touring, I was a little scared that I would get tired of it,” the bilingual Korean-Canadian singer said in a Zoom interview from Seoul. “But to my surprise, that never happened. I feel like just being able to really experience different cultures and see different people and trying new foods made the touring experience so much more fun.” After six EPs, the group recently released their first full-length album “때깔 (Killin‘ It).” The band will announce their North American tour, which will include dates in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, on Feb. 20. Check their Instagram and X accounts for updates.

Q: Can you tell me about a city from your last tour and what you remember about it?
A: My fans know that I love Chicago. It’s such a beautiful city, except it gets really, really cold. But other than that, we love Chicago, so we’re dying to go back.

Q: But you’re from Canada. Aren’t you used to the cold?
A: [Laughs] I don’t know why, but I feel like when I’m in Chicago, it feels so much colder than home. I remember when we went in the middle of winter and it was so completely cold that we weren’t able to go out.

Q: Most of your family lives in Canada. When’s the last time you saw them?
A: My mom currently lives in Korea, so I get to see her pretty often. The last time I went to Toronto was for a tour in July 2023. It was so much fun to see my whole family and my friends. We did a show [and I invited about] 50 people. I cried on stage because it was overwhelming for me. But just being able to go back home and experience it – it felt very surreal.

Q: Where did touring take you that you hadn’t been to before?
A: I had never been to South America before, so being in Brazil, [Ecuador] and Colombia and all these places was just so fun. The energy that these fans gave us was so crazy to feel in real time.

Q: Did you travel a lot as a child?
A: Yes. While other kids went to summer school or summer camp, my mom thought it was so important to travel and go to different countries and really experience new things with our own eyes and eat new things and hear the languages we didn’t speak and just know that we’re not in this world alone. People need to coexist in order to survive. It’s so important to really respect and love different cultures and experience it instead of just [reading about it]. We did our fair share of trips to America. We went to Austria, Czech Republic, Japan, Cuba … I feel like those are the kind of memories you can never replace. When I look back at the pictures and videos I took, I remember how much fun it was back then. That’s what my mom really wanted us to experience at a young age.

Q: Did your family trips to different countries help you adapt when you moved from Canada to South Korea for your career?
A: I never really thought about it. But now that you’ve asked, I think it definitely helped me. When you’re in a new country by yourself, there’s nothing greater for character development than putting yourself out there. Having traveled so much as a kid helped me adapt to new environments. Honestly, it was not difficult for me when I moved to Korea. There was some culture shock, but it was overall just fun for me.

Q: Had you been to Korea before you moved there?
A: Yes. When I was younger, we used to go every other year. And then we stopped going for about four or five years. When I went back in 11th grade, it wasn’t like I didn’t know what the country was going to look like. But I remember it being completely different than what I remembered as a younger kid.

Q: Which destinations stand out for you?
A: We’ve been to so many different places. Singapore was such a beautiful place to go. I wish we had more time to look around because Singapore was amazing. It was very humid and super hot, though. New Zealand was amazing, as well. We had so much fun there. I love Europe – London, Paris, Madrid.

Q: Is there a downside to traveling so much?
A: I ran out of pages on my passport and had to get a new one. [Laughs] But I remember looking through all the pages [of where I had been] and thinking that I could not be more thankful to have had all these experiences.

Q: What would you say to encourage people to visit another part of the world?
A: I would say the same thing that I did to my friends in Canada. It’s so important to explore the world at this age. Just travel and live somewhere for even a month. Put yourself out there. Overcoming difficulties really develops you as a person.

© 2024 JAE-HA KIM
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