The Room in the Recording: One Acoustic Guitar Carries My Dear Ocean by Minhye J
A South Korean Singer-Songwriter Writes a Butterfly’s Farewell to the Sea
One acoustic guitar carries My Dear Ocean from its first bar to its last. It is soft in touch but strong enough to hold the whole song up. Minhye J, a singer-songwriter from Seoul, South Korea, released the single on 18 November 2025. Its Korean title, 나비와 바다, means The Butterfly and the Sea. The song is a farewell from one to the other.
Minhye J’s My Dear Ocean sits in our Acoustic Rock, Fingerstyle Guitar, Unplugged playlist below. The full run of her coverage is on Minhye J’s artist profile. The single came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Play it there first, then read on for what the lyric says.
The Hook of My Dear Ocean by Minhye J Is a Butterfly Writing to the Sea
That guitar is the floor the story stands on. Minhye J wrote the song about independence after a long depression. That means stepping out alone into a harsh world and leaving the safety of a parent’s care. In the lyric she speaks as a butterfly, and the one she is leaving is the sea.
So the hook is a letter rather than a riff. Her own upload of the video opens with a short dedication to her beloved sea. Every chorus comes back to one image. If she tires and falls while crossing, she will sink softly into the sea that is you (그대란 바다 위로 / 포근히 잠기겠지요). Then, when a great wave rises beneath her poor wings, she will come back. The chorus turns the danger of the journey into a comfort. After all, the place she might fall is also the one that will catch her.
Minhye J sings it in Korean and keeps her voice light. Her phrasing still leans on the R&B her music grew from. That has shaped her songs since her debut single, Blue, in 2020.
What the Butterfly Tells the Sea in the Lyric of My Dear Ocean
The words carry the rest of the story, and the first verse sets the scene in three lines: 넓고 푸른 바다 같은 그대여 / 꽃이 피는 정원을 뒤로하고 / 난 이곳을 떠나려 해. You, like the wide blue sea: I am leaving the garden where flowers bloom, and going away from here. The world ahead is a place of big, rough waves. Still, she says she will fly into it and leave her worries behind.
The second verse turns that first line around. 바다 같은 그대 (you, like the sea) becomes 그대 같은 바다 (the sea, like you). Now she asks the sea for help: raise more waves and add your wind, so I can fly far.
The butterfly did not start here. In July 2025, four months earlier, Minhye J released 난 또 넌 (Like a Butterfly). Its video description holds a short scene. A butterfly the colour of a deep sunset announces that it will cross the sea to a new place. A watcher doubts that its scratched and torn wings could even clear a wall. My Dear Ocean picks up that story from the butterfly’s side.
Korean listeners may also hear an older echo. The Korean title reverses that of Kim Ki-rim’s modernist poem 바다와 나비 (The Sea and the Butterfly). The poem also named his 1946 collection. In the poem, no one has told a white butterfly how deep the water is. So it flies down to the sea, taking it for a field of green radishes. It comes back exhausted, its young wings soaked by the waves. Minhye J’s butterfly knows it may fall, and goes anyway.
How Minhye J Rebuilds the Last Chorus of My Dear Ocean Around Going Back
Then the structure does the rest. The song runs four minutes and one second. The release pairs it with an instrumental version of the same length, so the guitar part can also be heard alone. Each verse leads into the same falling lines, then the chorus. The second time, two new lines follow. Going on is not the end, she sings, and it is fine even if she falls gladly.
Then comes a short call to fly, and a promise to come back before it is too late. After that, the last chorus changes four things. I would sink becomes I want to sink. Beneath my poor wings becomes over poor you. When a great wave rises becomes raise a bigger wind. And I will come back becomes I will go back. By the end, the butterfly speaks from the far shore, and the pity has turned towards the sea.
Minhye J wrote the words and the music and sings the song, and YEONSOO arranged it. Heo Se-gwa (허세과) plays the guitar. The room in the recording is small’s studio. There Kwak Dong-jun (곽동준) mixed and mastered the track, with Lim Woo-seok (임우석) assisting on the mix.
The video carries the same story, and its director, 75, also animated it and made the cover art. It follows a young traveller, played by Caspar, from a busy railway station onto a train. Then he walks out to open grass above the sea. There an animated butterfly, glowing orange, rests in his hands and then flies off.
Tracy Chapman, Cat Stevens and the Acoustic Song About Leaving Home
Songs have staged this farewell before, and Cat Stevens wrote the best-known version as a conversation. His Father and Son comes from the 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman. In it, a father cannot understand his son’s need to break away, while the son knows it is time to go. Stevens sings the father in a deeper register and the son in a higher one. My Dear Ocean gives the voice only to the one leaving, and lets the sea answer in waves and wind.
Tracy Chapman showed how far a single acoustic guitar can carry a song about leaving. In June 1988, at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute, she went back onstage with only her guitar and a microphone. She played Fast Car, a song about trying to escape poverty and make a life. That performance helped take it to number six on the Billboard Hot 100. Minhye J works on a far smaller scale, and her single also puts an acoustic guitar at the centre.
Who My Dear Ocean Is For
The single suits listeners of K-indie, soft rock and introspective singer-songwriter music. It also suits anyone who has left home and wondered if they would make it across. So does any curator building a quiet acoustic playlist that still carries a story.
Listen for the guitar in the first bar. Then wait for the last chorus, where the butterfly that promised to come back says it will go back.
From the AcousticMusic.News curator team: “We added My Dear Ocean to our acoustic rock playlist for the way one guitar carries the whole song. Then the last chorus turns the story around, and that is the moment to wait for.”
Stream My Dear Ocean and Follow Minhye J on Spotify, Instagram and YouTube
Stream My Dear Ocean on Apple Music, or find every platform on Linktree. Then follow Minhye J on Spotify, Deezer, Instagram and YouTube.
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