IU Photographed a Phone Screen to Save 15-Year Friendship Memories

The answer turned out to be simpler than anyone expected. During a Melon Music Wave chat event, IU explained why the European travel photos in her recent friendship video with Yoo In Na appeared noticeably blurry: the originals were saved on Yoo In Na's old phone, which could not transfer files to a newer device. Rather than leave them out, IU photographed the screen directly and used those screen captures in the video.

"Those photos are on Unnie's phone, but she couldn't transfer them to her new phone, so I just took a photo of the screen," IU said, using the Korean honorific for an older female friend.

The video behind the question

On the 15th, IU posted a video to her official account with the caption "Sure YOO IN NA we best soulmate" and "Dear my crazy soulmate." The clip compiled photos and footage from 15 years of friendship, set to her new song Dear my crazy soulmate, and ran through moments from their earliest days together to recent appearances at each other's events. Among the most-noticed segments were photos from a European trip roughly a decade ago, where a noticeably younger IU and Yoo In Na pose against city backdrops with the unguarded ease of people who are not performing for an audience.

The softer resolution of those particular shots caught fans' attention immediately. Speculation about filters, restoration effects, or stylistic choices circulated until IU addressed it directly at the Melon event.

The low-tech workaround ends up fitting the video's whole register. A photo-of-a-screen is not a clean archival solution, but it preserves something that would otherwise stay locked away, and that friction is visible in the grain. For a video built around the texture of a long friendship, the imperfect images read as more honest than a restored high-resolution version ever could.

Fifteen years, one song

IU and Yoo In Na first met in 2010 on the SBS variety program Young Heroes and have been among the entertainment industry's most visible close friendships ever since. They appeared together in the 2013 KBS2 drama The Best Lee Soon-shin as sisters, and at the 2017 Melon Music Awards, IU publicly called Yoo In Na her "number one fan" and her muse.

Dear my crazy soulmate is a track on IU's digital single From This Star, released on the 10th. The release is a double-title single, with both the title track and Dear my crazy soulmate carrying IU's writing credit. IU noted "For Yoo In Na" in the music video description, making the dedication explicit. The video itself features veteran actresses Kim Young-ok and Na Moon-hee portraying a friendship that endures well into old age, which frames the song's emotional argument without IU having to state it.

Whether fans ever see a high-resolution version of those European photos depends on Yoo In Na solving a data-transfer problem. Given that the screen-shot workaround already made it into a music video, the originals are probably not going anywhere soon.