According to the UK's Planet Radio, a life-size bronze statue of fabled Queen frontman Freddie Mercury was unveiled near the beach at Jeju Island, South Korea on Thursday, April 21st.
The work has been a labour of love for businessman and Queen fan Baek Soon-yeob. The sculptor sought approval from the band before going ahead with his plan, first emailing them in 2014 to ask for the rights to create the statue. With his plea going unanswered, Baek began a ploy to email the rock legends about the project every month for the next 8 years.
His dedication paid off; when the current version of Queen (featuring singer Adam Lambert) played a pair of shows in South Korean capital Seoul in January 2020, Baek was finally able to sit down with the band and outline his idea.
The completed statue is 1.77m tall (approximately 5ft 9in) and cost around $37,000 (£28,750) to create. The likeness captures Freddie in iconic on-stage stance, with right fist raised high. An unveiling ceremony was attended by members of Queen’s South Korean fan club, several of which were pictured waving ‘We Are The Champions’ scarves – others displayed national flags of Ukraine and Great Britain. Brian May also submitted a pre-recorded video message to the assembled fans.
Read the complete report and see more photos of the statue here.
Back in August 2021, Queen guitar legend Brian May recently guested on BBC's Raised On Radio and discussed the band's 50th anniversary, the 30th Anniversary of frontman Freddie Mercury's death, and he offered some insight as to the band's future plans with singer Adam Lambert.
On Freddie Mercury
May: "I'm absolutely sure if he was still here today, we'd still be doing it. The mother ship would still be steaming around the world, and we would be taking time off to do our solo stuff like this, but the Queen would come together and we'd be doing it. He loved it. He lived for music, he lived for the band, it was his family, as it is my family still, although I fought against it, and so is Roger. You can't really get away from the fact that Queen is our family more than anything else, really. He lived to the max every second of the day.
I don't think we even realized that Freddie is a bit of a genius, really; a pretty eccentric kind of genius. And you wouldn't have thought it if you met him in the street or in Kensington market around 1970. You'd just thought, 'A strange guy... obviously thinks he's a rock star.' But he had an incredible belief in himself, incredible drive, and he stood for no-nonsense. Nothing would ever get in his way of achieving what he wanted to achieve. So I take that as an example even now because we're all people-pleasers, aren't we? We think, 'Oh, I like to do this but I don't want to do that because that might upset this person.' Freddie was never like that. He said, 'I want to do this, I'm going to do this. If you don't want me to do it, get out of my way.' And some people might have found him rude, but generally Freddie achieved what he did because he was so focused and had so much belief. Pretty fantastic voice as well. A gift from God, obviously."
