Cheer UP, Spring — four nights

Mention cancer and the conversation stops. So we decided to have it with music playing.

Why a concert

There are fewer places than you would think for a survivor to tell their own story. A counselling room is too heavy; a night out is too light. Cheer UP, Spring aims at the gap between them — a talk concert with performances folded in, two hours of laughing, crying, and laughing again.

What matters is the audience. This is not a room only for people who have had cancer. When someone who hasn’t sits in the same room and hears the same story, the stigma comes apart without anyone arguing about it.

The four nights

First · Party

January 2023, Jung-gu, Seoul. It started as a concert and a party at once — music, food, and one line: spring is coming. A room full of people calling spring early, in the middle of winter.

Second

October 2023, a rooftop in Mapo. This is where the talk-and-sing format settled: performances alternating with survivors’ stories, doors open half an hour early so people had time to say hello.

Third

December 2024. From this edition it became an annual year-end event — a night for confirming to each other that we got through another year.

Fourth

12 December 2025, Jade409 in Seolleung, supported by a pharmaceutical company. Survivors and citizens gathered to talk and to sing.