열린 게시판
밑에 '영' 님이 찾으신 한국가요에 관한 논문이 pdf 파일이라 못 읽으시는 분들이 계실것 같아 text로 올립니다.
저도 아직 다 읽어보지는 않았지만 한국의 연세대에서 공부하다간 영국인이 썼네요. 나름대로 이것저것 연구해서 조용필, 이선희, 변진섭, 서태지 등등에 관해 논하구요. 작년에 뉴질랜드에서 있었던 '한국대중문화' 세미나에서 발표한것 같습니다.
내용이 수긍 안 가는 부분도 있으니까.. 걍 이런 것도 있구나 하고 알아만 두세요 ^^
고럼
== (논문 전문)
KOREAN POPULAR CULTURE
6 - 7 April 2000 Auckland, New Zealand
Korean Studies Centre
New Zealand Asia Institute
The University of Auckland
EXPLODING BALLADS
KOREAN POP MUSIC AND THE ARRIVAL OF RAP
Keith Howard
School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, United Kingdom
The study of Korean pop music is in its infancy, not helped by the entry by Hideo Kawakami
and Paul Fisher in World Music: The Rough Guide: “The country has developed
economically at a staggering pace, but in terms of popular music there is nothing to match the
remarkable contemporary sounds of Indonesia, Okinawa, or Japan” (1994: 470). I suspect
that no Korean, and certainly no Korean teenager or recent university graduate, would agree.
In their defence, Kawakami and Fisher describe popular music before 1992. Here, I will take
two snapshots: one, at the end of the 1980s, focuses on three singers who epitomise the
conservative ballad tradition of the time; the other introduces 1992, the time when rap
arrived, followed, biting at its heals, by all manner of contemporary pop musics.
In 1980s Korea, censorship remained in place, ordered through a legislative sequence that
included the Umbane kwanhan pomnyul (Law on Recordings; 1971) and the Kongnyonbop
(Public Performance Law; 1971), and controlled by the Kongnyonyulli wiwonhoe (Ethics
Committee for Public Performance). Lyricists and composers had a vested interest in
maintaining a comfortable status quo, normally through anodyne images of the romantic
ideology of love ? the subject of the vast majority of pop songs throughout the world.1 To
paraphrase Peter Etzkorn writing in the early 1960s about pop in the United States, creators
of pop music seem to have respected the arbitrary judgements of media and record label
bureaucrats.2 They were writing music for TV and radio consumption, and the media was
state owned and state controlled.
I am, nonetheless, reluctant to accept the comment from The Rough Guide. It raises heckles,
because it wants to judge Korean pop in terms of Western hegemony, to reject what C. J.
Hamelink called ‘cultural synchronisation’ (1983: 3) or what Stuart Hall once referred to as
the ‘global postmodern’ (but he has since retracted the gloss; Hall 1993: 105). To Theodor
Adorno, the triumph of corporate greed, what he calls the mechanism of distribution, creates
homogeneous products for homogeneous audiences (1976: 34). In the light of this, but fusing
the vested interests of producers to state demands, we might expect all Korean pop music to
sound the same. I suspect that Kawakami and Fisher wanted to find music that was different,
and so rejected local hybridity. Orientalism is surely at work; we want to find something
distinctive, not the hybrids created by what John Lent refers to in another context as “Anglo-
American trade routes” (1995; 4), hybrids that force localised acceptance of Western pop
music, but reduce the components to simplified elements, a sort of pop amalgam comparable
to pidgin English.3 I should note here a partial inversion of this perspective in ‘world music’
and ‘world beat’, as developed since 1987 as a marketing tool by independent record labels.
‘World music’ trumpets difference, but it does so by harnessing familiar elements. Hence,
Africans such as Ali Farke Toure use guitars to add harmonic textures, and hence, too, the
success of WOMAD and Peter Gabriel’s Real World label.4 After the stratospheric success of
The Lion (Gaiende), Youssou N’Dour was required to accept the mixes Virgin’s English
sound engineers decided were appropriate. He returned to Dakar, and from there issued a
rejoinder that is equally relevant in our discussion of Korean pop: “When people say my
music is too Western, they must remember that we, too, hear [Western] music [in Dakar]. We
hear the African with the modern” (quoted in Wentz 1994: 39, and Taylor 1997: 201).
The challenge is not to judge any non-Western pop music in Western terms, but to
extrapolate the reasons why it is the way it is. So, to return to Korea, let me illustrate with a
celebrated example of overt media manipulation: Huimang sahang, a title which could be
glossed ‘The Object I Want’.5 This was associated with the singer Byeon Jin Seop. In
February 1990, on the basis of this song, Byeon was nominated by MBC TV in its weekly
chart show as the most popular singer amongst middle and high school students.6 The song
was repeatedly given airplay, but this did not translate into stratospheric sales of the
recording: it only reached the fifth spot in the charts issued on 9 February 1990.7
‘The Object I Want’ is about an ideal woman. She has clean glossy hair, uses little make-up,
and doesn't click her tongue as she chews gum. The opening stanzas set the scene:
The woman who looks good in blue jeans,
The woman who, although she eats lots of food, never gets a stomach that sticks out,
The woman who laughs at all my stories even when she's not interested in them,
That's the woman who is good for me...
The woman who makes great kimch'i pokkumbap,
The woman who doesn't show her tonsils when she sweetly laughs,
The woman who takes it easy and can make do without complaining when I don't have
any money.
Kimch'i pokkumbap, fried rice combined with that essential part of every Korean diet, pickled
cabbage, typically ripe cabbage rapidly passing its sell-by date, is a popular student meal. In
Korea, it is the text that is remembered for, in terms of musical structure, the song is banal,
employing regular four-line stanzas set to a simple single melody underpinned by a basic
foxtrot rhythm. The harmony is equally simple, consisting of I-IV-I-V and I-V-II-V-I
progressions. The song has two interludes, both repeating the four-line melody, the first
whistled and the second sung to ‘la’. After Byeon sings his final verse, the woman of his
dreams is heard, echoing his lines:
Hello! Just for a second look at me.
Could I really and truly be the object you want?
A woman like me would be very good to be seen with, but
Only if I am with a man like the object you describe!
The band cadences, leaving just a solo piano to slowly intone a couple of well-known phrases
lifted from Gershwin's ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. The lyrics demonstrate a further aspect of the
ideology of love, one which is unthreatening, one which Peter Manuel would argue maintains
a “depoliticised passivity” which “obscures, distracts, and anaesthetises”.8
In Korea, the 1980s was the era of TV. A national electricity grid was virtually in place and,
in contrast to the former regime of Park Chung Hee, radios ceased to be the major mechanism
for the promotion of national campaigns. After Chun Doo Hwan had staged a coup in
December 1979, and as he established himself as head of state, so he moved to control the
media. Commercial stations were closed, to leave just two state TV channels, KBS and MBC.
Both carried advertising,9 but since domestic markets remained tightly controlled, the desires
of manufacturers (who might normally be expected to influence programming) were
subjugated to the notion of broadcasting as public service.10
Music culture was a virtual monopoly of the media. The reason for this stretches back several
decades, to a time when poverty restricted access to phonographs. We might note that
Japanese record companies set up facilities in Seoul during the 1920s, and that in Korea as
elsewhere, recordings commodified popular music styles; they objectified the concept of
songs, determining their length and medium. As objects, songs needed accompaniments:
Western harmonic textures were the inevitable result, with myriad sentimental and lyrical
yuhaengga?‘popular songs’?, descending from Japanese enka, appearing. 11 Singers, too,
were part of the commodification; one curious result of this remains to this day, for if rural
Koreans are asked to sing minyo?folksongs?they will invariably respond not with local
work or entertainment songs, but with excerpts from a professional repertory promoted by the
early record companies.12 With liberation, Japanese record companies were effectively
banished; the Korean companies that replaced them were destined to remain small for more
than four decades. The widespread distribution of radios then made music more utilitarian;
there was no need to buy recordings. Through the 1980s, although local companies were
allowed to license foreign recordings, but with all production subject to censorship,13 the six
companies who today control some 80% of global recordings ?BMG EMI, PolyGram, Sony,
UNI, and WEA? were still prohibited from operating in Korea.
In Korea, then, the media, rather than record companies, have exerted considerable influence
on which singers punters would recognise. In the 1980s, this was done partly by establishing
a ‘star system’. A separation of work was normal, so songs were commonly written by three
people ? a lyricist, a composer, and an arranger. In the case of ‘The Object I Want’, only
two additional people were involved: the lyricist and composer was No Yongjun and the
arranger Pyon Songnyong. Byeon, of course, was the ‘star’. Further, both KBS and MBC
employed resident backing bands, music arrangers and conductors, dance groups and
choreographers. Singers were required to perform with studio bands. The ‘star’ was, in effect,
put on stage but then marginalised; hence, covers of popular songs were common. Covers can
be interpreted as necessary in a media culture where song arrangements were to be adapted to
suit available studio backing bands. Covers also, however, reflected a lack of copyright
control: Korea only signed international copyright conventions in 1985.
The media annexed a song’s identity in one additional way. This was through countless live
TV ‘talent shows’, the staple diet of weekends and holidays. . Yi Uyong, who has worked
since 1981 as a radio producer for MBC, and who was responsible for ‘talent shows’ such as
Women’s Salon (Yosong sallong), Song Sports (Kayo sup’och’u), My Friends (Nae ch’in’gu)
and 100 Minutes’ Show (100 pun syo), has since published a frank debunking of the system
(1996: 247-253 and 269-286). For ‘talent shows’, any association with specific singers was
removed. These shows predated the arrival of karaoke in Korea. They encouraged the public
to demonstrate their skills. Today, karaoke bars in every Korean town, known as ‘song
rooms’ (norae pang), continue the tradition. In one way, Korea anticipated an international
trend in which the profits made by pop songs would come from karaoke as much as live
performances and record sales. Hence, after noting that Japan now has greater control over
major record companies than ever before, Timothy Taylor cites the Asia regional managing
director of EMI: “If you can’t sing it in karaoke, it won’t be a hit”.14 To me, on a personal
level, ‘The Object I Want’ fits nicely here: I was taught it as part of a Korean language course
at Yonsei University.
Arjun Appadurai has described five spheres of influence in the flow of communications:
ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes (1990: 6-7). These can
be useful in our consideration of Korean pop music. During the 1980s, the Korean media
restricted technical evolution (technoscapes) because of the need to support in-house bands
and arrangers. Not surprisingly, we can juxtapose a contemporaneous 1980s underground
heavy metal scene, represented by Shinawe, Sanullim and Baekdoosan, all of which closely
tracked American and Japanese developments.15 In the 1990s, this evolved as alternative
punk, fusion, and so on, notably in a number of small establishments in Shinch’on to the west
of the centre of Seoul, in an area bounded by four universities?Yonsei, Ewha, Hongik,
Sogang.16
The media, as a modernising force, wherein modernisation equated with Westernisation, had
little place for ethnicity (ethnoscapes), while state censorship restricted personal identity
(ideoscapes). These, though, are the very elements that tend to be of concern to outside critics
such as Kawakami and Fisher in The Rough Guide.17
The Korean ‘star’ system did have the ability to generate ideoscapes, to develop a close
association between a singer and a song. This, though, was anathema to studio-bound TV
shows (?the contrast here is with the widespread use of pop videos in the 1990s). To
generate association, song lyrics must tell a story in which the singer is the central character,
caught up, intimately, in the situation. I assume duplicity as a given here, for the audience
surely knows what is invented, and looks for the reinforcement of favourite ‘stars’ in the
form of suitable biographical accounts. During the 1980s, two ballad singers epitomised the
emerging tension. Both were ‘stars’, but both attached personal lives to their songs: Cho
Yong Pil and Lee Sun-hee.
Cho was a teeny-bop idol, mobbed by screaming fans wherever he went. He was admired
across the water in Japan, and he recorded Japanese-language and Korean-language versions
of some songs. His lyrics fit the standard romantic themes,18 hence the first three and final
two tracks on the album Cho Yong Pil Best Vol.219 are simple love songs, the titles of which
go some way to explaining his fan’s adulation: ‘The Magnetism of Love’ (Sarang ui
chajangga), ‘Lover’ (Chong), ‘I Love You’ (Sarang haeyo), ‘Because I am in Love’
(Saranghagi ttaemune), and ‘I Love Suzy’. The album also contains ‘Red Dragonfly’
(Koch’u chamjari), on the surface somewhat different. This, with music by Cho (the lyricist
is Shin Kwangch’ol), is a take on Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, particularly in the use of
contrasting melodic ideas, one rhythmic and punchy, one lyrical, and in the person addressed,
‘Mama/Mother’. However, to keep the right side of the Korean censor, Queen’s conceptual
frame?“I just killed a man/Put a gun against his head”, “Easy come/Easy go”?is replaced
by a much more anodyne text:
Maybe I’m still immature. That might be it. Mother! why do I keep waiting? Mother!
why do I suddenly miss them?
Maybe I’m still immature. That might be it. Mother! why do I suddenly feel sad? Mother!
why do I suddenly feel like crying?
The day I fell asleep on the hill?the hill full of the colours of autumn?while picking
wild flowers. Mother! Where do you think I’m going?
When I look at the sky with a heart moist with loneliness I’m dizzy. Dizzy whizzy...
[Like] a red dragonfly flying away.20
The text seems to invite a pop video, but this was not to be. Cho did move beyond a TV
studio, notably singing, static and virtually motionless, in front of the Tour Eiffel and other
Parisian landmarks.
‘Red Dragonfly’, though, is designed for the media. Everything, except for the slightly
extended length, fits media specifications. It has a long instrumental intro and fades at the
end; both allow for the announcements of a broadcaster, the ubiquitous ‘MC’. The structure
divides the two melodic ideas into two vocal segments separated by an interlude. To
summarise:
0" A: Intro, instrumental
27" B: Fast 4/4; short, 3-syllable phrases
1.20" A: Slow 4/4; extended, descending phrases based on I-V7-IVb-V
progression; twice, with echoes
2.13" B
3.05: Instrumental interlude, fast 4/4
3.30" A, twice
4.24" B, fade out from 5.10"
Lee Sun-hee won the grand prize at the First Riverside Song Festival for her song ‘Dear J’ in
1984. This marked the start of a long career, and she began to release one album each year.
There are two distinct strands to her musical identity. One is standard: songs about love, loss
and desertion. Her 1988 release is identified on the cover by the titles of two characteristic
songs: ‘My love grows greater’ (Sarangi chinun ijira), and ‘I always feel that way’ (Na
hangsang kudaerul).21 By her seventh album, released in 1991, little had changed; ‘In that
way I love you’ (Kudaega narul sarang hashindamyon), a ballad with soft guitar and
synthesiser accompaniment built around a repeated line, runs:22
If you really love me,
Only love me like you love me now.
If you really want me,
Only want me with your [whole] heart.
If when you see me I look so hurt,
You come to me to share my hurt.
If you can’t see me you should turn around,
And your ever-fading heart will come to me.
If you really love me,
If you really want me,
If you really love me,
Only love me like you love me now.
If you really want me,
Only want me with your [whole] heart.23
Even here, despite the familiarity of textual associations, Appadurai’s ideoscape is present.
Her voice is very closely miked, and this gives a sense of intimacy; a parallel could be drawn
to Frank Sinatra, who considered the microphone something to be mastered, as his
instrument.24 In performance, she routinely dressed casually, like a university student, and
wore delicate thin-rimmed spectacles; this created an image, not just of Confucian
studiousness, but of a character people wanted to be like. She was, as Kawakami and Fisher
rightly characterise her, “the chaste girl-next-door” (1994: 471).
The second strand of Lee’s identity presents a much stronger ideoscape: social commentary.
Journalists have cited Lee’s childhood as the reason for her concern:25 she is the daughter of a
destitute monk. Her eighth album, released in 1992, took as inspiration the tragedy of comfort
women, the Koreans forced into military sexual slavery by the Japanese before and during the
Pacific War.26 In August 1990, one former comfort woman, Kim Haksun, had come forward
as the first to publicly tell her story; in December 1991, Kim and two other Korean plaintiffs
filed a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, seeking compensation for their suffering.
Censorship rules had by this time been relaxed, and political awareness of the issue was
encouraged by the administration of Roh Tae Woo. Indeed, by the time the album was
released, Lee had moved into politics. She stood as the pro-government candidate in the
Map’o ward to the southwest of Seoul in local elections held on 20 June 1991. She received
considerable support from housewives in their 30s and 40s, but, according to one press
report, she was largely deserted by her younger fans, who still associated the government
with repression.27
Lee’s songs are typical of Asian ballads, at one point common throughout the region and
developed as Cantopop, Singapop, and countless other variants. Not surprisingly, at the end
of the 1980s, as democracy began to replace three decades of military dictatorship in Korea,
and as affluence increased nationalist sentiments, voices urged Korea’s pop singers to more
actively embrace Appadurai’s ethnoscape. In the inaugural edition of the journal Minjok
umak (The People's Music), the composer and critic Yi Konyong sent out the clarion call:
We musicians should create a national music that overcomes foreign influence,
pursues our desire for unification and is relevant to daily life....[Our] pop music has
become distanced from the people because it is of low quality or is an imitation of
Japanese enka....We will, then, overcome conservatism and exclusivity, pursuing
musical democracy by bringing together and unifying all musics...as our national
music.28
In pop music, the reaction was not quite as Yi Konyong anticipated. Suddenly, Seo Taiji
burst forth. The first album, Seo Taiji Boys (Seo Taiji wa aidul) appeared in March 1992,29
and Koreans encountered rap?Korean rap. The group was led by the composer and lyricist,
Seo, with Hyun Seuk and Juno completing a trio of baggy-jeaned teenagers wearing baseball
hats back-to-front.
The performance format chosen by Seo was designed for the stage, and the group danced as
they performed. Seo had no use for studio backing bands or the eponymous arrangers of
songs, and little interest in in-house dance teams. The group effectively abolished the ‘star
system’. Much has been written since their debut, particularly following the announcement
on 31 January 1996 that the group was to disband. In May 1996, a book and tape was
published in commemoration (Yi Kon et al 1996), the text of which starts with the words:
“The friends we love, Seo Taiji and Boys” (Sarang hanun ch’in’gu So taeji wa aidul). In a
survey a few weeks before their break up, five times as many children said their favourite
stars were Seo Taiji and Boys than any other singer or group (Chugan Choson 4-11 January
1996: 75). And, after the break-up, in a 1997 end-of-year survey of the top Korean icons, Seo
Taiji still took first place.30
Seo Taiji Boys used conventional sampling techniques and synthesised accompaniments to
rapped texts, and the electronic means at their disposal provided the title for their second
album, Taiji Boys Live & Techno Mix,31 released in December 1992. Influences include the
eclectic mix of music which characterised the youth of Tokyo as well as the streets of Los
Angeles, places where there were substantial Korean populations. The influences reflect
increasing access: legal restrictions on travel had been lifted, and Koreans could now get
passports freely; at the same time, and as a measure of local affluence, large numbers of
second and third generation Korean-Americans and Korean-Japanese were returning to study
or live in Seoul. Seo Taiji Boys also reflected changes in global media presentation that were
rather belatedly filtering into Korea. Although officially illegal, many Koreans had purchased
satellite dishes, training them to pick up Japanese stations. Elsewhere in Asia, 1990 had seen
the establishment of Star TV, the satellite channel launched by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka
Shung. Rupert Murdoch had soon purchased a controlling interest for $525 million, and in
September 1991 MTV Asia had been started up as a joint venture between Star TV and the
American media empire, Viacom.
In Korea as elsewhere, pop music would, henceforth, be about presentation. Music needed to
be multi-layered, to allow repeated access, encouraging record purchases (and home videos),
and hammering home an identification of specific musicians with specific songs. To Seo Taiji
and Boys, this had as much to do with appearance as with dance and rap. Then were initially
clean cut, but earrings and moussed hair soon appeared; later, in a forced challenge to
convention, they wore dresses on stage. Seo’s first album commenced with a sampled vocal
pattern creating a rhythmic underpinning for a short rap introduction, then progressed through
several tracks, four of which individually pushed into the charts, ensuring that Seo could be
heard virtually everywhere throughout 1992: ‘I Know’ (Nan arayo), ‘Now’ (Ijaenun), ‘You
in Your Dreams’ (Hwansangsok ui kudae), and ‘This night, is deep, but’ (Ibami
kip'ogajiman). Despite musical indications to the contrary, Seo’s lyrics demonstrate that
censorship was still intact. ‘I Know’ is a saga about love:
I know it as a fact that when tonight is over someone has to leave. I’ve come to realise
why this is so.
I didn’t manage to tell her that I loved her. Anyway, it’s too late now. What was I doing?
Her smile was so beautiful.
I only loved you, just you. The only thing you’re leaving me to embrace is sadness. Baby,
please don’t just say ‘goodbye’. Don’t you know that you were my everything?
Oh baby, please don’t go. Are you really leaving me?
Oh baby, please don’t go. I’m crying now, can’t you see?
I know that when tonight is over, Yo! I'll stand away from you?you, the person who will
leave me with a last kiss and a sad heart. Are you really leaving me?
I want to love all of your fragrance, all of your many breaths which are still moist on my
body, that smile, that unfathomable heart, your heart and my heart.
You don’t have to write the letter you said would be difficult to write.
I’m looking at the real you. Am I still within your heart? I am your eternal...[love].
And, ‘You in Your Dreams’ echoes the idealism of Byeon’s ‘The Object I Want’:
Never can time stop for you. Yo!
Why are you hesitating? There is only one right thing! Now is the time, and here is the
only place for you.
Is that the only thing? The only thing that you want? No one will be interested in you
now. One, two, three, Let’s go! You have to change, so make yourself beautiful and let’s
give it a go once more...
The government gradually relinquished control over the next two years. At the same time, rap
and other styles of Western pop music became Korean, ignoring the cultural baggage
identified with each individual style in the home country of its origination. Thereby, new
ideoscapes were invented, then constantly reworked and reinvented. Each style could be
assimmilated; rap, reggae, hip hop, house, and on and on, could all become Korean music. To
demonstrate this, though, must wait for another paper.
* * *
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----------
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* * *
Notes
===
1 This, of course, is nothing unusual. See Frith (1998: 161-3) for an exposition on why love is
such a common theme in British and American pop music.
2 Etzkorn (1963: 103-4).
3 After David Coplan, in his account of Ghanaian highlife (1978: 110).
4 Veit Erlmann has theorised about the overlap (1996); in Music Grooves, Steve Feld notes
that the traffic in appropriation is now two-way, with American music sounding increasingly
like African music (Keil and Feld 1994: 238). And, for an overview of “world music”, see
Ian Anderson, writing in Folkroots (2000: xx).
5 Hyundai, HAL-0085, 1989, track 11.
6 The influence of the media on Korean youth would be the subject of another paper.
Certainly, although in the 1990s the star system has been discarded, the media retains
considerable influence, so in a 1996 magazine survey of middle and high school students
87% of those interviewed said they rated singers on the basis of their TV appearances
(Chugan Choson 4-11 January 1996: 74).
7 There are two weekly chart lists issued in Korea, by Music Box and the record distributor
Synnara. Music Box compiles data from a number of urban record stores, while Synnara uses
its own distribution network and its own chain of stores. Here I cite the Music Box chart.
8 Manuel paints a broad picture of music in the non-Western world. In defense of his
comment here, he cites an oft-quoted remark by Jean-Paul Sartre about Algerian dance
(Manuel 1988: 13; Sartre in Fanon 1963: 19).
9 Except for KBS 3, which functioned mostly as an educational channel.
10 For a discussion of how this bifocal concern played out in early European broadcasting, see
Negus 1996: 74-83.
11 See Kim Ch’angnam (1984: 45-82), Yi Yongmi (1984: 83-119), and Pak Yunu (1984:
120-62), three back-to-back articles which look at Korean yuhaengga from the 1920s to the
Korean War.
12 For a discussion of this, see Howard 1999: 1-37. The annual journal of the Korean
Discology Society, Han’guk umbanhak (1990- ) contains numerous articles analysing the
output of record companies from their foundation onwards.
13 While the primary concern of censors was lyrics, the rules were interpreted in different
ways at different times. Certainly, a dual concern could be considered characteristic: to
uphold morals and to prevent political agitation. In respect to foreign recordings, though,
other concerns were important. In the anti-Communist Republic of Korea, only in the mid-
1980s were symphonies by Russian composers ? Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and so on ?
licensed. Ambient music and most jazz had to wait even longer; Wyndham Hill recordings
were licensed from 1987.
14 Taylor 1997: 200.
15 Shinawe recorded in Japan contracted to Factory Records. They took their name from a
Korean term for shaman music. Baekdoosan [Paektusan] choose as their name a sacred
mountain on the northern border between Korea and China where Tan’gun, the mythical
founder of Korea, was supposedly born. Sanullim produced 13 albums between 1977 and
1997; these are profiled in the Korean magazine Global Music Video (May 1997:162-5).
16 Profiled under the title ‘Independent Rock’ (‘Han’guk indi rok taet’amhom’) in Global
Music Video (April 1998: 146-71).
17 Tony Mitchell accepts, in a consideration of popular music and local identity in Italy,
Central Europe, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, that these are his concerns (1996: 1).
And, since this is my last mention of The Rough Guide, I should note that a new, rewritten
edition is now in press.
18 Cho, incidentally, was not averse to utilizing Korean inspiration, and in the mid 1980s sang
arrangements of several folksongs, including Han obaengnyon.
19 Seoul Records, SRCD-3185, 1992.
20 Translated by Nemo Kim. On the CD sleeve, the text is continuous; I have separated it into
stanzas.
21 Seoul, SPDC-105, 1988 (cassette).
22 Seoul Records, SRCD-3019, 1991, track.2.
23 Lyrics of this and subsequent songs translated by Nemo Kim and Keith Howard.
24 See John Rockwell 1984: 51-2.
25 See, for example, Korea Newsreview, 13 July 1991: 33.
26 The euphemism ‘comfort women’ is taken from the Japanese wianfu. For a discussion of
the tragedy, and the personal accounts of 19 former comfort women, see Howard (1995).
27 Korea Newsreview, 13 July 1991: 33. In 1990, Roh Tae Woo joined with two opposition
parties in what was called a ‘Grand Coalition’; as a result of this, a number of former
opponents joined the government’s ranks.
28 See also Yi Konyong 1987 and Lee Kang-sook 1977 and 1980. Yi was a founder of what
has become known as the “Third Generation” of Korean composers.
29 Bando, BDCD-014, 1992.
30 Reported in Korean community papers published in Britain.
31 Bando, BDCD-015, 1992.
저도 아직 다 읽어보지는 않았지만 한국의 연세대에서 공부하다간 영국인이 썼네요. 나름대로 이것저것 연구해서 조용필, 이선희, 변진섭, 서태지 등등에 관해 논하구요. 작년에 뉴질랜드에서 있었던 '한국대중문화' 세미나에서 발표한것 같습니다.
내용이 수긍 안 가는 부분도 있으니까.. 걍 이런 것도 있구나 하고 알아만 두세요 ^^
고럼
== (논문 전문)
KOREAN POPULAR CULTURE
6 - 7 April 2000 Auckland, New Zealand
Korean Studies Centre
New Zealand Asia Institute
The University of Auckland
EXPLODING BALLADS
KOREAN POP MUSIC AND THE ARRIVAL OF RAP
Keith Howard
School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, United Kingdom
The study of Korean pop music is in its infancy, not helped by the entry by Hideo Kawakami
and Paul Fisher in World Music: The Rough Guide: “The country has developed
economically at a staggering pace, but in terms of popular music there is nothing to match the
remarkable contemporary sounds of Indonesia, Okinawa, or Japan” (1994: 470). I suspect
that no Korean, and certainly no Korean teenager or recent university graduate, would agree.
In their defence, Kawakami and Fisher describe popular music before 1992. Here, I will take
two snapshots: one, at the end of the 1980s, focuses on three singers who epitomise the
conservative ballad tradition of the time; the other introduces 1992, the time when rap
arrived, followed, biting at its heals, by all manner of contemporary pop musics.
In 1980s Korea, censorship remained in place, ordered through a legislative sequence that
included the Umbane kwanhan pomnyul (Law on Recordings; 1971) and the Kongnyonbop
(Public Performance Law; 1971), and controlled by the Kongnyonyulli wiwonhoe (Ethics
Committee for Public Performance). Lyricists and composers had a vested interest in
maintaining a comfortable status quo, normally through anodyne images of the romantic
ideology of love ? the subject of the vast majority of pop songs throughout the world.1 To
paraphrase Peter Etzkorn writing in the early 1960s about pop in the United States, creators
of pop music seem to have respected the arbitrary judgements of media and record label
bureaucrats.2 They were writing music for TV and radio consumption, and the media was
state owned and state controlled.
I am, nonetheless, reluctant to accept the comment from The Rough Guide. It raises heckles,
because it wants to judge Korean pop in terms of Western hegemony, to reject what C. J.
Hamelink called ‘cultural synchronisation’ (1983: 3) or what Stuart Hall once referred to as
the ‘global postmodern’ (but he has since retracted the gloss; Hall 1993: 105). To Theodor
Adorno, the triumph of corporate greed, what he calls the mechanism of distribution, creates
homogeneous products for homogeneous audiences (1976: 34). In the light of this, but fusing
the vested interests of producers to state demands, we might expect all Korean pop music to
sound the same. I suspect that Kawakami and Fisher wanted to find music that was different,
and so rejected local hybridity. Orientalism is surely at work; we want to find something
distinctive, not the hybrids created by what John Lent refers to in another context as “Anglo-
American trade routes” (1995; 4), hybrids that force localised acceptance of Western pop
music, but reduce the components to simplified elements, a sort of pop amalgam comparable
to pidgin English.3 I should note here a partial inversion of this perspective in ‘world music’
and ‘world beat’, as developed since 1987 as a marketing tool by independent record labels.
‘World music’ trumpets difference, but it does so by harnessing familiar elements. Hence,
Africans such as Ali Farke Toure use guitars to add harmonic textures, and hence, too, the
success of WOMAD and Peter Gabriel’s Real World label.4 After the stratospheric success of
The Lion (Gaiende), Youssou N’Dour was required to accept the mixes Virgin’s English
sound engineers decided were appropriate. He returned to Dakar, and from there issued a
rejoinder that is equally relevant in our discussion of Korean pop: “When people say my
music is too Western, they must remember that we, too, hear [Western] music [in Dakar]. We
hear the African with the modern” (quoted in Wentz 1994: 39, and Taylor 1997: 201).
The challenge is not to judge any non-Western pop music in Western terms, but to
extrapolate the reasons why it is the way it is. So, to return to Korea, let me illustrate with a
celebrated example of overt media manipulation: Huimang sahang, a title which could be
glossed ‘The Object I Want’.5 This was associated with the singer Byeon Jin Seop. In
February 1990, on the basis of this song, Byeon was nominated by MBC TV in its weekly
chart show as the most popular singer amongst middle and high school students.6 The song
was repeatedly given airplay, but this did not translate into stratospheric sales of the
recording: it only reached the fifth spot in the charts issued on 9 February 1990.7
‘The Object I Want’ is about an ideal woman. She has clean glossy hair, uses little make-up,
and doesn't click her tongue as she chews gum. The opening stanzas set the scene:
The woman who looks good in blue jeans,
The woman who, although she eats lots of food, never gets a stomach that sticks out,
The woman who laughs at all my stories even when she's not interested in them,
That's the woman who is good for me...
The woman who makes great kimch'i pokkumbap,
The woman who doesn't show her tonsils when she sweetly laughs,
The woman who takes it easy and can make do without complaining when I don't have
any money.
Kimch'i pokkumbap, fried rice combined with that essential part of every Korean diet, pickled
cabbage, typically ripe cabbage rapidly passing its sell-by date, is a popular student meal. In
Korea, it is the text that is remembered for, in terms of musical structure, the song is banal,
employing regular four-line stanzas set to a simple single melody underpinned by a basic
foxtrot rhythm. The harmony is equally simple, consisting of I-IV-I-V and I-V-II-V-I
progressions. The song has two interludes, both repeating the four-line melody, the first
whistled and the second sung to ‘la’. After Byeon sings his final verse, the woman of his
dreams is heard, echoing his lines:
Hello! Just for a second look at me.
Could I really and truly be the object you want?
A woman like me would be very good to be seen with, but
Only if I am with a man like the object you describe!
The band cadences, leaving just a solo piano to slowly intone a couple of well-known phrases
lifted from Gershwin's ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. The lyrics demonstrate a further aspect of the
ideology of love, one which is unthreatening, one which Peter Manuel would argue maintains
a “depoliticised passivity” which “obscures, distracts, and anaesthetises”.8
In Korea, the 1980s was the era of TV. A national electricity grid was virtually in place and,
in contrast to the former regime of Park Chung Hee, radios ceased to be the major mechanism
for the promotion of national campaigns. After Chun Doo Hwan had staged a coup in
December 1979, and as he established himself as head of state, so he moved to control the
media. Commercial stations were closed, to leave just two state TV channels, KBS and MBC.
Both carried advertising,9 but since domestic markets remained tightly controlled, the desires
of manufacturers (who might normally be expected to influence programming) were
subjugated to the notion of broadcasting as public service.10
Music culture was a virtual monopoly of the media. The reason for this stretches back several
decades, to a time when poverty restricted access to phonographs. We might note that
Japanese record companies set up facilities in Seoul during the 1920s, and that in Korea as
elsewhere, recordings commodified popular music styles; they objectified the concept of
songs, determining their length and medium. As objects, songs needed accompaniments:
Western harmonic textures were the inevitable result, with myriad sentimental and lyrical
yuhaengga?‘popular songs’?, descending from Japanese enka, appearing. 11 Singers, too,
were part of the commodification; one curious result of this remains to this day, for if rural
Koreans are asked to sing minyo?folksongs?they will invariably respond not with local
work or entertainment songs, but with excerpts from a professional repertory promoted by the
early record companies.12 With liberation, Japanese record companies were effectively
banished; the Korean companies that replaced them were destined to remain small for more
than four decades. The widespread distribution of radios then made music more utilitarian;
there was no need to buy recordings. Through the 1980s, although local companies were
allowed to license foreign recordings, but with all production subject to censorship,13 the six
companies who today control some 80% of global recordings ?BMG EMI, PolyGram, Sony,
UNI, and WEA? were still prohibited from operating in Korea.
In Korea, then, the media, rather than record companies, have exerted considerable influence
on which singers punters would recognise. In the 1980s, this was done partly by establishing
a ‘star system’. A separation of work was normal, so songs were commonly written by three
people ? a lyricist, a composer, and an arranger. In the case of ‘The Object I Want’, only
two additional people were involved: the lyricist and composer was No Yongjun and the
arranger Pyon Songnyong. Byeon, of course, was the ‘star’. Further, both KBS and MBC
employed resident backing bands, music arrangers and conductors, dance groups and
choreographers. Singers were required to perform with studio bands. The ‘star’ was, in effect,
put on stage but then marginalised; hence, covers of popular songs were common. Covers can
be interpreted as necessary in a media culture where song arrangements were to be adapted to
suit available studio backing bands. Covers also, however, reflected a lack of copyright
control: Korea only signed international copyright conventions in 1985.
The media annexed a song’s identity in one additional way. This was through countless live
TV ‘talent shows’, the staple diet of weekends and holidays. . Yi Uyong, who has worked
since 1981 as a radio producer for MBC, and who was responsible for ‘talent shows’ such as
Women’s Salon (Yosong sallong), Song Sports (Kayo sup’och’u), My Friends (Nae ch’in’gu)
and 100 Minutes’ Show (100 pun syo), has since published a frank debunking of the system
(1996: 247-253 and 269-286). For ‘talent shows’, any association with specific singers was
removed. These shows predated the arrival of karaoke in Korea. They encouraged the public
to demonstrate their skills. Today, karaoke bars in every Korean town, known as ‘song
rooms’ (norae pang), continue the tradition. In one way, Korea anticipated an international
trend in which the profits made by pop songs would come from karaoke as much as live
performances and record sales. Hence, after noting that Japan now has greater control over
major record companies than ever before, Timothy Taylor cites the Asia regional managing
director of EMI: “If you can’t sing it in karaoke, it won’t be a hit”.14 To me, on a personal
level, ‘The Object I Want’ fits nicely here: I was taught it as part of a Korean language course
at Yonsei University.
Arjun Appadurai has described five spheres of influence in the flow of communications:
ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes (1990: 6-7). These can
be useful in our consideration of Korean pop music. During the 1980s, the Korean media
restricted technical evolution (technoscapes) because of the need to support in-house bands
and arrangers. Not surprisingly, we can juxtapose a contemporaneous 1980s underground
heavy metal scene, represented by Shinawe, Sanullim and Baekdoosan, all of which closely
tracked American and Japanese developments.15 In the 1990s, this evolved as alternative
punk, fusion, and so on, notably in a number of small establishments in Shinch’on to the west
of the centre of Seoul, in an area bounded by four universities?Yonsei, Ewha, Hongik,
Sogang.16
The media, as a modernising force, wherein modernisation equated with Westernisation, had
little place for ethnicity (ethnoscapes), while state censorship restricted personal identity
(ideoscapes). These, though, are the very elements that tend to be of concern to outside critics
such as Kawakami and Fisher in The Rough Guide.17
The Korean ‘star’ system did have the ability to generate ideoscapes, to develop a close
association between a singer and a song. This, though, was anathema to studio-bound TV
shows (?the contrast here is with the widespread use of pop videos in the 1990s). To
generate association, song lyrics must tell a story in which the singer is the central character,
caught up, intimately, in the situation. I assume duplicity as a given here, for the audience
surely knows what is invented, and looks for the reinforcement of favourite ‘stars’ in the
form of suitable biographical accounts. During the 1980s, two ballad singers epitomised the
emerging tension. Both were ‘stars’, but both attached personal lives to their songs: Cho
Yong Pil and Lee Sun-hee.
Cho was a teeny-bop idol, mobbed by screaming fans wherever he went. He was admired
across the water in Japan, and he recorded Japanese-language and Korean-language versions
of some songs. His lyrics fit the standard romantic themes,18 hence the first three and final
two tracks on the album Cho Yong Pil Best Vol.219 are simple love songs, the titles of which
go some way to explaining his fan’s adulation: ‘The Magnetism of Love’ (Sarang ui
chajangga), ‘Lover’ (Chong), ‘I Love You’ (Sarang haeyo), ‘Because I am in Love’
(Saranghagi ttaemune), and ‘I Love Suzy’. The album also contains ‘Red Dragonfly’
(Koch’u chamjari), on the surface somewhat different. This, with music by Cho (the lyricist
is Shin Kwangch’ol), is a take on Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, particularly in the use of
contrasting melodic ideas, one rhythmic and punchy, one lyrical, and in the person addressed,
‘Mama/Mother’. However, to keep the right side of the Korean censor, Queen’s conceptual
frame?“I just killed a man/Put a gun against his head”, “Easy come/Easy go”?is replaced
by a much more anodyne text:
Maybe I’m still immature. That might be it. Mother! why do I keep waiting? Mother!
why do I suddenly miss them?
Maybe I’m still immature. That might be it. Mother! why do I suddenly feel sad? Mother!
why do I suddenly feel like crying?
The day I fell asleep on the hill?the hill full of the colours of autumn?while picking
wild flowers. Mother! Where do you think I’m going?
When I look at the sky with a heart moist with loneliness I’m dizzy. Dizzy whizzy...
[Like] a red dragonfly flying away.20
The text seems to invite a pop video, but this was not to be. Cho did move beyond a TV
studio, notably singing, static and virtually motionless, in front of the Tour Eiffel and other
Parisian landmarks.
‘Red Dragonfly’, though, is designed for the media. Everything, except for the slightly
extended length, fits media specifications. It has a long instrumental intro and fades at the
end; both allow for the announcements of a broadcaster, the ubiquitous ‘MC’. The structure
divides the two melodic ideas into two vocal segments separated by an interlude. To
summarise:
0" A: Intro, instrumental
27" B: Fast 4/4; short, 3-syllable phrases
1.20" A: Slow 4/4; extended, descending phrases based on I-V7-IVb-V
progression; twice, with echoes
2.13" B
3.05: Instrumental interlude, fast 4/4
3.30" A, twice
4.24" B, fade out from 5.10"
Lee Sun-hee won the grand prize at the First Riverside Song Festival for her song ‘Dear J’ in
1984. This marked the start of a long career, and she began to release one album each year.
There are two distinct strands to her musical identity. One is standard: songs about love, loss
and desertion. Her 1988 release is identified on the cover by the titles of two characteristic
songs: ‘My love grows greater’ (Sarangi chinun ijira), and ‘I always feel that way’ (Na
hangsang kudaerul).21 By her seventh album, released in 1991, little had changed; ‘In that
way I love you’ (Kudaega narul sarang hashindamyon), a ballad with soft guitar and
synthesiser accompaniment built around a repeated line, runs:22
If you really love me,
Only love me like you love me now.
If you really want me,
Only want me with your [whole] heart.
If when you see me I look so hurt,
You come to me to share my hurt.
If you can’t see me you should turn around,
And your ever-fading heart will come to me.
If you really love me,
If you really want me,
If you really love me,
Only love me like you love me now.
If you really want me,
Only want me with your [whole] heart.23
Even here, despite the familiarity of textual associations, Appadurai’s ideoscape is present.
Her voice is very closely miked, and this gives a sense of intimacy; a parallel could be drawn
to Frank Sinatra, who considered the microphone something to be mastered, as his
instrument.24 In performance, she routinely dressed casually, like a university student, and
wore delicate thin-rimmed spectacles; this created an image, not just of Confucian
studiousness, but of a character people wanted to be like. She was, as Kawakami and Fisher
rightly characterise her, “the chaste girl-next-door” (1994: 471).
The second strand of Lee’s identity presents a much stronger ideoscape: social commentary.
Journalists have cited Lee’s childhood as the reason for her concern:25 she is the daughter of a
destitute monk. Her eighth album, released in 1992, took as inspiration the tragedy of comfort
women, the Koreans forced into military sexual slavery by the Japanese before and during the
Pacific War.26 In August 1990, one former comfort woman, Kim Haksun, had come forward
as the first to publicly tell her story; in December 1991, Kim and two other Korean plaintiffs
filed a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, seeking compensation for their suffering.
Censorship rules had by this time been relaxed, and political awareness of the issue was
encouraged by the administration of Roh Tae Woo. Indeed, by the time the album was
released, Lee had moved into politics. She stood as the pro-government candidate in the
Map’o ward to the southwest of Seoul in local elections held on 20 June 1991. She received
considerable support from housewives in their 30s and 40s, but, according to one press
report, she was largely deserted by her younger fans, who still associated the government
with repression.27
Lee’s songs are typical of Asian ballads, at one point common throughout the region and
developed as Cantopop, Singapop, and countless other variants. Not surprisingly, at the end
of the 1980s, as democracy began to replace three decades of military dictatorship in Korea,
and as affluence increased nationalist sentiments, voices urged Korea’s pop singers to more
actively embrace Appadurai’s ethnoscape. In the inaugural edition of the journal Minjok
umak (The People's Music), the composer and critic Yi Konyong sent out the clarion call:
We musicians should create a national music that overcomes foreign influence,
pursues our desire for unification and is relevant to daily life....[Our] pop music has
become distanced from the people because it is of low quality or is an imitation of
Japanese enka....We will, then, overcome conservatism and exclusivity, pursuing
musical democracy by bringing together and unifying all musics...as our national
music.28
In pop music, the reaction was not quite as Yi Konyong anticipated. Suddenly, Seo Taiji
burst forth. The first album, Seo Taiji Boys (Seo Taiji wa aidul) appeared in March 1992,29
and Koreans encountered rap?Korean rap. The group was led by the composer and lyricist,
Seo, with Hyun Seuk and Juno completing a trio of baggy-jeaned teenagers wearing baseball
hats back-to-front.
The performance format chosen by Seo was designed for the stage, and the group danced as
they performed. Seo had no use for studio backing bands or the eponymous arrangers of
songs, and little interest in in-house dance teams. The group effectively abolished the ‘star
system’. Much has been written since their debut, particularly following the announcement
on 31 January 1996 that the group was to disband. In May 1996, a book and tape was
published in commemoration (Yi Kon et al 1996), the text of which starts with the words:
“The friends we love, Seo Taiji and Boys” (Sarang hanun ch’in’gu So taeji wa aidul). In a
survey a few weeks before their break up, five times as many children said their favourite
stars were Seo Taiji and Boys than any other singer or group (Chugan Choson 4-11 January
1996: 75). And, after the break-up, in a 1997 end-of-year survey of the top Korean icons, Seo
Taiji still took first place.30
Seo Taiji Boys used conventional sampling techniques and synthesised accompaniments to
rapped texts, and the electronic means at their disposal provided the title for their second
album, Taiji Boys Live & Techno Mix,31 released in December 1992. Influences include the
eclectic mix of music which characterised the youth of Tokyo as well as the streets of Los
Angeles, places where there were substantial Korean populations. The influences reflect
increasing access: legal restrictions on travel had been lifted, and Koreans could now get
passports freely; at the same time, and as a measure of local affluence, large numbers of
second and third generation Korean-Americans and Korean-Japanese were returning to study
or live in Seoul. Seo Taiji Boys also reflected changes in global media presentation that were
rather belatedly filtering into Korea. Although officially illegal, many Koreans had purchased
satellite dishes, training them to pick up Japanese stations. Elsewhere in Asia, 1990 had seen
the establishment of Star TV, the satellite channel launched by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka
Shung. Rupert Murdoch had soon purchased a controlling interest for $525 million, and in
September 1991 MTV Asia had been started up as a joint venture between Star TV and the
American media empire, Viacom.
In Korea as elsewhere, pop music would, henceforth, be about presentation. Music needed to
be multi-layered, to allow repeated access, encouraging record purchases (and home videos),
and hammering home an identification of specific musicians with specific songs. To Seo Taiji
and Boys, this had as much to do with appearance as with dance and rap. Then were initially
clean cut, but earrings and moussed hair soon appeared; later, in a forced challenge to
convention, they wore dresses on stage. Seo’s first album commenced with a sampled vocal
pattern creating a rhythmic underpinning for a short rap introduction, then progressed through
several tracks, four of which individually pushed into the charts, ensuring that Seo could be
heard virtually everywhere throughout 1992: ‘I Know’ (Nan arayo), ‘Now’ (Ijaenun), ‘You
in Your Dreams’ (Hwansangsok ui kudae), and ‘This night, is deep, but’ (Ibami
kip'ogajiman). Despite musical indications to the contrary, Seo’s lyrics demonstrate that
censorship was still intact. ‘I Know’ is a saga about love:
I know it as a fact that when tonight is over someone has to leave. I’ve come to realise
why this is so.
I didn’t manage to tell her that I loved her. Anyway, it’s too late now. What was I doing?
Her smile was so beautiful.
I only loved you, just you. The only thing you’re leaving me to embrace is sadness. Baby,
please don’t just say ‘goodbye’. Don’t you know that you were my everything?
Oh baby, please don’t go. Are you really leaving me?
Oh baby, please don’t go. I’m crying now, can’t you see?
I know that when tonight is over, Yo! I'll stand away from you?you, the person who will
leave me with a last kiss and a sad heart. Are you really leaving me?
I want to love all of your fragrance, all of your many breaths which are still moist on my
body, that smile, that unfathomable heart, your heart and my heart.
You don’t have to write the letter you said would be difficult to write.
I’m looking at the real you. Am I still within your heart? I am your eternal...[love].
And, ‘You in Your Dreams’ echoes the idealism of Byeon’s ‘The Object I Want’:
Never can time stop for you. Yo!
Why are you hesitating? There is only one right thing! Now is the time, and here is the
only place for you.
Is that the only thing? The only thing that you want? No one will be interested in you
now. One, two, three, Let’s go! You have to change, so make yourself beautiful and let’s
give it a go once more...
The government gradually relinquished control over the next two years. At the same time, rap
and other styles of Western pop music became Korean, ignoring the cultural baggage
identified with each individual style in the home country of its origination. Thereby, new
ideoscapes were invented, then constantly reworked and reinvented. Each style could be
assimmilated; rap, reggae, hip hop, house, and on and on, could all become Korean music. To
demonstrate this, though, must wait for another paper.
* * *
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* * *
Notes
===
1 This, of course, is nothing unusual. See Frith (1998: 161-3) for an exposition on why love is
such a common theme in British and American pop music.
2 Etzkorn (1963: 103-4).
3 After David Coplan, in his account of Ghanaian highlife (1978: 110).
4 Veit Erlmann has theorised about the overlap (1996); in Music Grooves, Steve Feld notes
that the traffic in appropriation is now two-way, with American music sounding increasingly
like African music (Keil and Feld 1994: 238). And, for an overview of “world music”, see
Ian Anderson, writing in Folkroots (2000: xx).
5 Hyundai, HAL-0085, 1989, track 11.
6 The influence of the media on Korean youth would be the subject of another paper.
Certainly, although in the 1990s the star system has been discarded, the media retains
considerable influence, so in a 1996 magazine survey of middle and high school students
87% of those interviewed said they rated singers on the basis of their TV appearances
(Chugan Choson 4-11 January 1996: 74).
7 There are two weekly chart lists issued in Korea, by Music Box and the record distributor
Synnara. Music Box compiles data from a number of urban record stores, while Synnara uses
its own distribution network and its own chain of stores. Here I cite the Music Box chart.
8 Manuel paints a broad picture of music in the non-Western world. In defense of his
comment here, he cites an oft-quoted remark by Jean-Paul Sartre about Algerian dance
(Manuel 1988: 13; Sartre in Fanon 1963: 19).
9 Except for KBS 3, which functioned mostly as an educational channel.
10 For a discussion of how this bifocal concern played out in early European broadcasting, see
Negus 1996: 74-83.
11 See Kim Ch’angnam (1984: 45-82), Yi Yongmi (1984: 83-119), and Pak Yunu (1984:
120-62), three back-to-back articles which look at Korean yuhaengga from the 1920s to the
Korean War.
12 For a discussion of this, see Howard 1999: 1-37. The annual journal of the Korean
Discology Society, Han’guk umbanhak (1990- ) contains numerous articles analysing the
output of record companies from their foundation onwards.
13 While the primary concern of censors was lyrics, the rules were interpreted in different
ways at different times. Certainly, a dual concern could be considered characteristic: to
uphold morals and to prevent political agitation. In respect to foreign recordings, though,
other concerns were important. In the anti-Communist Republic of Korea, only in the mid-
1980s were symphonies by Russian composers ? Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and so on ?
licensed. Ambient music and most jazz had to wait even longer; Wyndham Hill recordings
were licensed from 1987.
14 Taylor 1997: 200.
15 Shinawe recorded in Japan contracted to Factory Records. They took their name from a
Korean term for shaman music. Baekdoosan [Paektusan] choose as their name a sacred
mountain on the northern border between Korea and China where Tan’gun, the mythical
founder of Korea, was supposedly born. Sanullim produced 13 albums between 1977 and
1997; these are profiled in the Korean magazine Global Music Video (May 1997:162-5).
16 Profiled under the title ‘Independent Rock’ (‘Han’guk indi rok taet’amhom’) in Global
Music Video (April 1998: 146-71).
17 Tony Mitchell accepts, in a consideration of popular music and local identity in Italy,
Central Europe, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, that these are his concerns (1996: 1).
And, since this is my last mention of The Rough Guide, I should note that a new, rewritten
edition is now in press.
18 Cho, incidentally, was not averse to utilizing Korean inspiration, and in the mid 1980s sang
arrangements of several folksongs, including Han obaengnyon.
19 Seoul Records, SRCD-3185, 1992.
20 Translated by Nemo Kim. On the CD sleeve, the text is continuous; I have separated it into
stanzas.
21 Seoul, SPDC-105, 1988 (cassette).
22 Seoul Records, SRCD-3019, 1991, track.2.
23 Lyrics of this and subsequent songs translated by Nemo Kim and Keith Howard.
24 See John Rockwell 1984: 51-2.
25 See, for example, Korea Newsreview, 13 July 1991: 33.
26 The euphemism ‘comfort women’ is taken from the Japanese wianfu. For a discussion of
the tragedy, and the personal accounts of 19 former comfort women, see Howard (1995).
27 Korea Newsreview, 13 July 1991: 33. In 1990, Roh Tae Woo joined with two opposition
parties in what was called a ‘Grand Coalition’; as a result of this, a number of former
opponents joined the government’s ranks.
28 See also Yi Konyong 1987 and Lee Kang-sook 1977 and 1980. Yi was a founder of what
has become known as the “Third Generation” of Korean composers.
29 Bando, BDCD-014, 1992.
30 Reported in Korean community papers published in Britain.
31 Bando, BDCD-015, 1992.
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