Dia Frampton, the singer with the sweetly soulful rustic voice who was the season one runner-up of singing audition program “The Voice” in the U.S., is in Seoul to hold her first show in Korea at “Freebird” in Hongdae Saturday night.

This is the first time in nearly 20 years the young Korean American vocalist has been to Seoul and she is hoping to break into the Korean music industry with her folk-inspired songs.

“Honestly, I didn’t before, but I think that the older I get, the more passionate I get about being Korean American,” Frampton said. “I will jump on this. I will go at this until they push me out of the country.”

Frampton states that she is willing to work hard and does not wish to receive any special treatment just because she is half Korean.

“I’m eager to do it the right way. I’m ready to learn the language, immerse myself in the culture because I’m genuinely interested in it,” she said.

Frampton’s love for music started at a young age, thanks to her father who used to be a radio DJ in Korea.

“My career aspirations were always to be a singer,” she said. “It’s something that I always tried to work on and tried to teach myself.”

“But to be honest, I was a very, very bad singer. I definitely wouldn’t say that it was a natural talent,” she laughed. “But I wasn’t deterred by my bad pitch or lack of being able to hear harmonies.”

At the age of 14, Frampton started a five-member band with her older sister Meg. The band was later known as “Meg & Dia.”

“There were years when we did 250-300 shows a year. We were never home, just always touring in a van,” she said. “We really worked very hard at it. I felt like we were always very close, but it never happened for us. I’ve slept in Wal Mart parking lots, waiting to play at the next bar for two people.”

After 10 years of touring, auditioning and releasing five independent albums, nothing seemed to be working for the aspiring band mates.

“I’d been doing stuff with my sister for 10 years, there was literally nothing that we hadn’t tried,” she said. “We released an independent album and we put it up on iTunes ourselves. We barley made back the money it cost to make the album, because we put up the money ourselves.”

Then one day Frampton received a call from a friend telling her that she should audition for “The Voice.”

“I was working at a bakery in New York and honestly, I was at my complete low point, like ready to give up, trying to find a new career, and then I thought, what have I got to lose?”

Little did she know that this program would be the launching point of her music career on an international level, allowing her to be coached and join the tour of one of the biggest stars in the country music scene, Blake Shelton.

“It was probably one of the most incredible experiences in my entire life. We’d do a duet together and he’d call me on stage every night. Being up on stage, those 20 minutes were moments where I just felt like I could do anything.”

However, Frampton’s love of storytelling goes beyond singing and songwriting. At only 25 years old, the young, aspiring artist Frampton is not only working on publishing her next studio album, but her next children’s book and novel as well. She has authored many short stories, children’s books and is currently in the final stages of completing a new novel about a man trying to escape from hell to get to his wife in heaven.

“I have four little sisters so I used to make up stories to tell them when we were young,” she said. “The reason I wrote this novel that I’m working on now is because I felt like I had something to say and I felt like I had a great story to tell.

Frampton will perform live at “Freebird” in Hongdae on Saturday at 10 p.m. Admission is 20,000 won for those who arrive before 10:30 p.m. and 25,000 won for those who arrive later.

By Julie Jackson (juliejackson@heraldcorp.com)