Who Is Forestella? Meet Korea’s Vocal Group With a Bass, a Soprano-Like Voice — and Almost No Musical Limits
One member has a bass voice so deep that Korean listeners often describe it as sounding like it comes from a cave.
He also happens to be married to South Korea’s Olympic figure skating legend Yuna Kim.
Another member once worked at a petrochemical company as a researcher.
He wasn’t even a classical vocal major.
Then he appeared on television and shocked viewers by switching between male and female parts of “The Phantom of the Opera” — by himself.
The other two came with completely different musical backgrounds: classical vocal music and musical theater.
Put those four men together and something strange happens.
They don’t sound like four singers competing for attention.
They sound like one enormous instrument.
This is Forestella.
And if you’re discovering them for the first time, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually ask the same question many listeners have asked before:
How did I not know about these guys?
Forestella Wasn’t Created Like a Normal K-Pop Group
Forestella was formed through JTBC’s “Phantom Singer 2,” a Korean competition designed to create a crossover vocal quartet.
The four members eventually won the entire competition in 2017 and officially debuted with the album “Evolution” in 2018.
But calling Forestella an “idol group” doesn’t really explain them.
Calling them a classical quartet doesn’t work either.
And calling them a pop vocal group still misses something.
Forestella lives somewhere between those worlds.
Classical music, rock, musical theater and pop can all appear inside the same performance.
The reason becomes obvious when you meet the four voices.
Ko Woo-rim: The Voice From the Bottom of the Earth
If you hear Forestella before seeing them, Ko Woo-rim may be the first member who makes you stop.
His voice goes down.
And then it seems to keep going.
Woo-rim is a classical bass, specifically associated with the extremely low basso profondo range.
His dark voice gives Forestella something most pop vocal groups simply don’t have.
When the other members climb upward, Woo-rim can stay underneath them, creating the bottom of the harmony.
In Korea, however, many people also know him for another reason.
He married Yuna Kim in 2022.
Kim isn’t simply a famous Korean athlete.
The 2010 Olympic champion is one of the most recognizable figures in the history of Korean sports.
The couple first met after Forestella performed at an ice show in 2018.
For some Koreans who didn’t follow crossover music, the marriage suddenly made them ask:
Who exactly is Ko Woo-rim?
But listen to Forestella and the celebrity connection quickly becomes secondary.
That bass is difficult to ignore.
Kang Hyung-ho: From Chemical Researcher to a Voice Nobody Expected
Then there is Kang Hyung-ho.
His story sounds almost fictional.
Before becoming a professional singer, Hyung-ho worked as a researcher at a petrochemical company.
He studied chemical engineering rather than classical vocal performance and sang in a workplace band while continuing his regular job.
Then he entered “Phantom Singer 2.”
His audition song was “The Phantom of the Opera.”
Normally, the song is a duet.
Hyung-ho performed both sides.
The man who walked onto the show as a company employee suddenly revealed a voice capable of moving from powerful rock singing into an extraordinarily high register.
Today, Forestella’s official profile describes him as a tenor/soprano and rock vocalist.
He also performs solo under the name PITTA.
His existence creates one of Forestella’s most dramatic contrasts.
At the bottom, Woo-rim.
At the top, Hyung-ho.
The distance between those two voices alone can make Forestella sound much larger than four people.
Cho Min-gyu: The Classical Architect
But extreme high and low notes aren’t enough to create great harmony.
Someone has to connect them.
Cho Min-gyu is Forestella’s leader and one of its strongest classical foundations.
He trained in classical music from childhood, studied vocal music and developed as a leggiero tenor — a lighter tenor voice suited to an agile, bright upper register.
That becomes important inside Forestella.
When Woo-rim’s bass creates the floor and Hyung-ho’s unusual range opens the ceiling, Min-gyu’s classical tone can help build the structure between them.
Forestella’s music depends on contrast.
But contrast without balance would simply become noise.
Min-gyu is one of the reasons those differences can become harmony.
Bae Doo-hoon: The Man Who Connects the Stage to the Song
And then there is Bae Doo-hoon.
Doo-hoon brings another musical language into the group.
Musical theater.
Before Forestella, he had already worked as a musical actor and as a vocalist in fusion music projects.
His official Forestella profile describes him as a tenor with pop and musical-theater vocals.
That background matters.
Musical theater isn’t only about producing a beautiful note.
The singer has to communicate a character, a story and an emotion.
Inside Forestella, Doo-hoon can move between the more classical voices and the group’s pop and theatrical side.
Four Singers Who Shouldn’t Fit Together
Look at the combination again.
A deep classical bass.
A light classical tenor.
A musical-theater and pop vocalist.
And a former chemical researcher who can sing rock and climb into a soprano-like register.
On paper, this sounds less like a group and more like four people who accidentally walked into the same audition room.
And that’s essentially what makes Forestella fascinating.
Their differences are the point.
Instead of forcing four voices to sound similar, Forestella repeatedly builds arrangements around how different they are.
A song can begin with one musical identity and transform into another.
A bass line can suddenly open beneath the harmony.
A rock vocal can appear inside a classical arrangement.
A voice can climb far higher than a first-time listener expects from a male singer.
Then all four voices meet.
That’s the Forestella moment.
And Then They Started Covering Songs Everyone Knows
This is where things become even more interesting for international listeners.
Forestella didn’t limit themselves to traditional classical repertoire.
They performed songs people already had strong emotional attachments to.
“Bohemian Rhapsody.”
“Champions.”
“Nella Fantasia.”
“Despacito.”
That is dangerous territory.
Especially “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Queen’s original isn’t simply a famous song.
For many listeners, it is untouchable.
Cover it badly and people immediately compare you with Freddie Mercury.
But Forestella’s approach wasn’t simply to find someone who could imitate Freddie.
They had four completely different voices.
So they rebuilt the song around those voices.
The reaction became one of the defining moments in Forestella’s rise.
Years later, listeners still discover that performance and leave comments wondering how they had never heard of the group before.
And “Bohemian Rhapsody” isn’t the only performance that keeps attracting viewers.
Their performances of “Champions,” “Nella Fantasia,” “Despacito” and other songs have accumulated millions of views across Korean broadcast channels and online clips.
The pattern is remarkably consistent.
Someone clicks because they recognize the song.
Then they hear the bass.
Then they hear the high voice.
Then the four-part harmony arrives.
And suddenly the song they thought they knew sounds different.
So What Exactly Is Forestella?
Maybe that’s why describing Forestella is surprisingly difficult.
They aren’t K-pop in the conventional idol sense.
They aren’t an opera quartet.
They aren’t a rock band.
They aren’t simply four men singing classical crossover songs.
They can move between all of those spaces.
And that may explain why new listeners often react so strongly when they discover them.
Forestella doesn’t require you to understand Korean.
Sometimes they don’t even require you to know their original music.
You can begin with Queen.
Or Ennio Morricone.
Or a song you’ve heard hundreds of times.
Forestella provides the surprise.
A bass singer married to Korea’s figure skating legend.
A former chemical researcher singing notes you never expected to hear from him.
A classical tenor.
A musical actor.
Four completely different musical lives that somehow ended up in one group.
And once you’ve heard what those four voices can do together, another question becomes difficult to avoid:
If Forestella can sing like this, why aren’t they much bigger around the world?
That’s the question we’ll explore next.