WOODZ Completes an 8-Month World Tour at KSPO Dome, and Almost Never Sang Drowning

WOODZ (real name Cho Seung-yeon) sat down on the YouTube show Yuri's Forest on the 22nd and dropped a detail that reframes one of the more beloved viral moments in recent K-pop memory: he turned down Drowning twice before finally agreeing to sing it during his military service.

Host Choi Yu-ri brought up the military performance, the one that sent the fancam flying across social media, and asked whether WOODZ could have imagined any of that happening while he was actually on stage. His answer was more candid than fans might have expected.

The song he almost never sang

"I originally didn't want to sing Drowning," he said. "It was too difficult." The first approach came from the music director at his military unit, who suggested the song. WOODZ declined and proposed something else entirely. A few days later, a second request came in. He turned that one down too, explaining that the shoot would run late into the night and the key was simply too high for those conditions.

What changed his mind was a piece of feedback that came back through the team. When he asked why they kept pushing for that specific song, he was told that fans had already been responding to it warmly before he even enlisted. That was enough to shift things.

The performance itself didn't feel like a triumph from where he was standing. "I did the stage right before lights-out," he recalled. "My voice was strained, and the whole time I was thinking, 'My condition is terrible.' I came offstage feeling bad about it." The fancam, of course, had other ideas, it circulated widely and drove a significant reverse-chart run for the track.

Choi Yu-ri called the performance impossible not to love, pointing to how his expression carried the emotional weight of the song, and how the final stretch builds into something close to a raw cry. It's the kind of live moment that's hard to engineer and harder to fake, which is probably why the fancam landed the way it did.

KSPO Dome debut closes an 8-month world tour

The timing of the Yuri's Forest appearance is notable. WOODZ's agency EDAM Entertainment announced on the 18th that he will play two nights at KSPO Dome in Seoul's Olympic Park on October 31 and November 1, wrapping the 2026 WOODZ WORLD TOUR Archive. 1 with an encore run titled Archive. 1 : Completed.

KSPO Dome carries real weight in the Korean concert industry, it's one of the large-scale indoor venues that marks a particular threshold for domestic artists, and this will be WOODZ's first time there. The tour itself launched in Incheon back in March and has since moved through Asia, Europe, Oceania, and North and South America over roughly eight months.

The Seoul dates won't simply replay the existing setlist. EDAM has confirmed that the encore shows will feature a reworked structure, new staging elements from the opening onward, and at least one additional stage prepared specifically for these nights. Fan club presale tickets go live on October 6 at 8 p.m. through Melon Ticket, with general sales opening the following day at the same time.

A duet with Lee Seung Chul

There's also a new release coming before the concerts. Veteran singer Lee Seung Chul, a foundational figure in Korean popular music who debuted 40 years ago, chose WOODZ as the first collaborator for his anniversary tribute duet project. The two have recorded Our Story (우리만의 이야기), a song WOODZ wrote himself as a tribute to Lee's four decades in music. Concept photos shared on the 21st showed the pair in a monochrome, classic-feeling visual.

Reports from inside the recording process suggest Lee was genuinely struck by WOODZ's vocal ability and his instinct for interpreting a song, which, given the Drowning story, feels like a pattern rather than a coincidence. The single and its music video drop on the 30th at 6 p.m. across major streaming platforms. A music video teaser and a special announcement are also scheduled for today.

Lee Seung Chul is separately launching a nationwide 40th-anniversary concert tour, THE VOICE : LEE SEUNG CHUL, beginning in Gwangju on November 14 and moving through Daejeon, Daegu, Incheon, Busan, and Seoul's KSPO Dome.