More than K-Pop
K-pop—the sound produced by manufactured boy and girl “idol” groups working for South Korea’s three major record labels, SM, YG, and JYP Entertainment—has enjoyed a boom in recent years. K-pop songs are popular both in Korea and throughout East Asia, in countries like Japan, Thailand, and China, and they are beginning to attract small followings farther afield.
In Korea, K-pop groups battle for chart supremacy with singers of romantic ballads. While the word ballad in English can mean any soft, emotional song, it has more specific connotations in Korea. Ballad singers are trained to produce a distinct warble, which, when combined with piano and over-wrought orchestral arrangements, produces saccharine, clichéd songs. It is common to hear even Koreans say, “All ballads sound the same.”
Mainstream Korean pop music lacks variety, but it was not always this way. In the late 1960s and 1970s, pioneers like Shin Joong-hyun—Korea’s first real rock star—made music that was creative as well as commercial. There have also been genuine maverick outliers, like rock-meets-dance-meets-rap star Seo Tai-ji, who dominated the Korean music scene in the 1990s. Today, the best music is in the clubs around the student district of Hongdae. Hongdae bands are rarely found on TV or radio, but are gaining increasing popularity through live shows and the Internet.
Park Chung-hee, Yet Again
No individual comes even remotely close to matching President Park Chung-hee’s influence over modern South Korean society. This holds true not only for the economy and the fierce work ethic of the South Korean people, which he kick-started following his 1961 coup. His influence also extends to pop music. During the 1970s, as President Park’s regime grew more authoritarian, it banned any song deemed to “disturb social morals.” Musicians were required to include a geonjeon gayo (wholesome song) on every album. This generally meant something with lyrical content that praised the Park administration or exhorted the people to work hard to help build Park’s new nation. Before any record could be released, it had to have the approval of government censors. The result was the development of a popular music culture devoid of imagination, which featured jolly, empty pop songs or lachrymose love ballads, since very little else was deemed acceptable.
Those who defied the censors met with severe restrictions. Korea’s “rock daebu” (godfather of rock), Shin Joong-hyun, was asked to write a song praising the administration in 1972. He declined, saying, “I don’t know how to do that. Ask someone else.” Following that demurral, he became a target for police harassment, and many of his records were banned, including his single “Mi-in” (“Beautiful Girl”), his most popular hit. Mi-in was deemed “noisy and degenerate” by authorities, according to Mr. Shin, a problem made worse by the way young people liked to twist its lyrics: the English translation of the song’s first line would be “I look at her once, I look at her twice, I want to keep on looking,” but kids at the time liked to sing “I screw her once, I screw her twice, I want to keep on screwing.”
In 1975, he was arrested for marijuana use (some hippie fans of his had given the marijuana to him) and jailed. He was also tortured at an infamous detention facility near Namsan in central Seoul and forcibly committed to a mental institution for several months as part of his punishment. Journalists came to take pictures of him and paraded him through the papers as a crazed drug addict. Following the completion of his sentence, he was prohibited from releasing music or performing publicly, a ban that continued until Park was assassinated.
Shin Joong-hyun
Despite his almost five-year-long enforced hiatus, Mr. Shin is regarded as the fountainhead of rock music in Korea. Having lost his parents to the Korean war of 1950–1953, he “strayed around” for a few years, working as a servant in people’s houses and learning guitar in his spare time. Eventually, he decided to take his guitar along to one of the U.S. Army’s open auditions, announcing himself as “Jackie Shin.” The Eighth U.S. Army took entertainment for its personnel very seriously. Officers flew in from the United States to hear each crop of would-be base musicians and divided them into four groups according to ability. Mr. Shin, who had been listening to Armed Forces Korea Network (AFKN) radio for years, was already well versed in country, rock n’ roll, blues, and jazz standards and thus was given the top grade. He proved popular with the servicemen of the late 1950s: “The Americans would shout, ‘We want Jackie! We want Jackie!’” he recalls. Following that, he created Korea’s first proper rock band, Add 4, with fellow base performers.
In those days, young Koreans would go to live music cafes such as C’est Si Bon in Mugyo-dong, downtown Seoul, or gather with friends in special music rooms, where they would go to hear a DJ play records rather than dance to a live band. According to Mr. Shin, sophisticated urbanites favored Western pop sung by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, while everyone else listened to a form known as trot, a “residue of Japanese colonialism” in that it was a style of music derived from the Japanese enka tradition. In contrast, the U.S. Army stage and AFKN Radio were cutting-edge and served as conduits through which the music of Korea’s future entered the country. Other well-known Korean singers such as Patti Kim, who only retired in 2012 after 54 years in the business, got their first breaks on a U.S. base, all the while absorbing the influence of American music.
Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Shin continued to perform on base, while recording for Korean audiences as well. In those days, there were just two recording studios in Seoul, one of which “was in someone’s house,” he recalls. There were no multi-track recorders back then, so “we all just gathered around one microphone in the middle of the room.” In 1968, he wrote and recorded an album with a female duo named the Pearl Sisters. They too performed on the American base and were due to go off with Mr. Shin to entertain the troops serving in Vietnam. However, when one of their songs, “Nima,” became a hit, record companies offered to buy them out of their contract with the US Army. They stayed behind in Seoul and had further success with the single “Coffee Han-jan” (“A Cup of Coffee”).
Because of this, Shin Joong-hyun gained a reputation as someone who could produce hits for others, and a stable of young hopefuls gathered around him. Many went on to become major stars in Korean pop music. Kim Chu-ja, for instance, was a university student who hung around Mr. Shin’s office day in, day out, until he finally gave her an audition. His style of guitar music—increasingly influenced by psychedelic bands like Jefferson Airplane, but with a certain Korean melodic sensibility—suited her smoky, expressive voice perfectly, and together they made an album titled Neutgi-jeone (Before It’s Too Late). Today, original vinyl copies of this record are highly sought-after by collectors. Those who are interested though can purchase the album on CD, as well as the Shin Joong-hyun Anthology, which gathers the best of his solo work, as well as songs he made with Kim Chu-ja, the Pearl Sisters, Add 4, and Kim Jung-mi, with whom he made a wonderful folk-meets-psychedelic album titled Now in 1973.
Though Shin Joong-hyun’s career was curtailed in 1975 following his incarceration for marijuana use (he claims he used it only one time because it “just made my head hurt and stopped me from concentrating on my music”), his consistent influence and brilliance displayed during the 1960s and early 1970s make him the most legendary popular Korean musician. In a survey in 2010, 7 percent of Koreans picked him as the modern cultural figure who best represents their country. He was the top-ranked musician in that poll.
Meanwhile trot, the music Shin Joong-hyun helped to marginalize in the 1960s and 1970s, is still with us. This style, also sometimes known as bbongjjak (an onomatopoeic word derived from its oom-pah rhythm), is popular among old people and can be heard at country festivals and dances held in public parks. Though not respected by music lovers, trot has been undergoing something of a renaissance, with current stars like Jang Yoon-jung choosing to take on the genre. Trot singers make music that is unashamedly fun and over-the-top in its lyrical sensibilities, appealing in particular to people looking for a touch of escapism and something to dance to.
From Folk to Ballad
The 1970s saw the rise of the protest folk song in the Bob Dylan mode. The best-loved creator of protest songs is probably Kim Min-gi, who wrote “Achim Iseul” (“Morning Dew”), a big hit sung by Yang Hee-eun (another one-time Shin Joong-hyun protégé). The song became an anthem for the democratization movement, and Kim, like Shin Joong-hyun, attracted the wrath of the government. He recorded an album in 1971 that contained “Achim Iseul,” and soon after the record was banned and all known copies were recalled and burned. That song in particular was subjected to the severest of restrictions, with cover versions by other artists deemed illegal as well. Nevertheless, dedicated activists, particularly in the universities, always found ways of obtaining underground copies of this and other banned records and distributing them to like-minded friends.
Officially banned from appearing on stage or recording, Kim continued to work, writing plays and musicals that would eventually see the light of day following democratization in 1987. One of his musicals, Line One, had a run of thirteen years in Seoul, such was its popularity. Kim also worked as a producer, helping the likes of Kim Kwang-seok to record his first album. Kim Kwang-seok, whose plaintive voice spoke to people’s real emotions, sadly died by his own hand at the age of thirty-one. Having sold five million records, an extraordinary number for a Korean artist, he remains a presence, and his status will never be in doubt.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, probably the biggest star was a singer named Cho Yong-pil, who played pop, rock, and old-fashioned trot style music. Like Shin Joong-hyun, he also got his start playing for the US Army, before becoming a mainstream Korean success. At the height of his fame, he played a show in front of one million people in the city of Busan. The 1980s was also a time in which the electric guitar returned to the fore in rock groups such as Deulgukhwa and Sanullim. So-called big hair rock, influenced by kitschy Western acts like Poison and Whitesnake, made inroads too, as did proper metal bands like Sinawe.
However, the 1980s also saw the rise of the saccharine love ballad. The ballad format in some ways grew out of the acoustic folk song but had a very different kind of spirit and lyrical content. Taking on pop gloss and elements of R&B, it evolved into a distinct sound. Ballad songs today are almost always sung by vocalists trained to be technically flawless but with a cynically over-emotional warble designed to push the right buttons. In each song, the phrase “sarang-hae” (“I love you”) crooned at least once is virtually compulsory, particularly at the end of the chorus. Ballads may reflect Korea’s tendency towards han culture and emotionalism, but they lack depth, which may be attributable to the environment of censorship that prevailed during the genesis of the genre. Shin Joong-hyun complains that the Park and Chun administrations “didn’t like people who think,” and so encouraged a music culture with no imagination or artistic value. “This culture has prevailed and is still going on even now,” he says.
Seo Tai-ji
The year 1992 saw the arrival of Seo Tai-ji, a one-man revolution in dance, rock, and hip-hop. Extraordinarily for a South Korean, he had dropped out of school because, in his view, it did nothing but destroy creativity. He wrote songs indicting the education system, such as the controversial “Gyoshil Idea” (“Classroom Idea”), which laments the standardization of “the minds of nine million children across the country.” Young people loved him, of course, and he quickly earned a status far beyond that of an ordinary pop star as the so-called President of Culture.
Musically, he was something of a magpie, picking up on new trends in Western music (rap, metal, electronic dance, drum n’ bass, and so on) and introducing them to Korean audiences for the first time. His real achievement was to do this in a way that was creative rather than imitative and to move from genre to genre without alienating his enormous fan base. He remains virtually the only artist in South Korea to be both experimental and a consistent chart-topper. If one hears unusual or defiantly un-poppy music in an ordinary Korean main-street shop or on TV, there is a good chance it will be by Seo Tai-ji.
As the man who first popularized rap in Korea, he opened the door for a whole generation of hip-hop artists, who began to find a large audience in the late 1990s and 2000s. The best of these include Drunken Tiger, Dynamic Duo, MC Sniper, and Epik High. Perhaps surprisingly, South Korea now has a well-developed hip-hop culture that goes beyond music and into fashion and dance. There are around ten Korean break dance groups that are considered world class and regularly compete in international competitions.
Hongdae
The late 1990s also saw the flowering of the Hongdae district indie scene. Hongdae is named after Hongik Daehakgyo (Hongik University, a school famous for its art department), but in fact, there are another three major universities close by: Sogang, Yonsei, and Ehwa Womens’ University. It was therefore natural that a music scene should develop there. Unfortunately, the milieu of artists that sprang up from Hongdae has had difficulty establishing its music among ordinary Koreans. The average person still listens mostly to pop songs or over-emotive ballads, making the delineation between the mainstream and the underground very sharp in South Korea.
Consequently, it is relatively rare to see Hongdae bands on TV or mentioned in the press. This is unfortunate, because several of the best acts would probably attract a big following and become genuine stars if they came from London or New York and sang in English. With the exception of punk band Crying Nut, and perhaps three or four others, no musicians from the scene are able to survive without day jobs. This is in contrast to the British music scene, in which a great many popular bands have graduated from playing small clubs to touring the stadiums of the world.
Thankfully, the scene mentality in Hongdae being what it is—music for music’s sake—this does not stop the performers. There are many great acts working in all manner of styles. Among the best are Windy City (a funk/reggae outfit led by hyper-talented singer-drummer Kim Ban-jang), Nastyona (a quirky grunge-meets-piano group), Galaxy Express (highly energetic garage rock), The Black Skirts (tuneful pop-rock), and Heureun (“Flowing”) a solo singer who combines electronic beats with folk.
The pick of the crop is Third Line Butterfly, a group that sometimes combines noisy experimentalism with a grunge sensibility and at other times offers the listener a gentle ballad or a standout song like “Gipeun Bam Angae-sok” (“In a Deep Night Fog”) that starts out simply but builds into a towering crescendo, driven by one of the most powerful voices you can hear in Korea or anywhere else.
The owner of that voice is Nam Sang-ah, now a veteran of the Hongdae scene. She and fellow bandleader Sung Ki-wan met in 1999: “I was a member of [indie band] Huckleberry Finn, and his group was on the same label as us. He asked me to add vocals to one of his songs, and we just clicked,” she recounts. Since then, they have recorded three full-length albums and an EP, and, having been consistently excellent for over a decade, are spoken of in reverential terms by newer Hongdae acts.
Sadly, such appreciation does not extend very far beyond the bounds of the university district. “About once a year, someone recognizes me in the supermarket, when I’m wearing shorts and my hair is a mess —but that’s about it,” says Ms. Nam. Most people in the Korean indie scene accept this lack of recognition as is their lot, but given the outsize talent of some of them, it is still a pity.
The Corporate Era
At the other end of the spectrum lies the “K-pop” of hugely successful girl and boy groups assembled by companies like SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment. Since the 1990s, these companies have been recruiting sometimes alarmingly young adolescents and putting them through years of training in dancing, singing, and foreign languages in preparation for a future career as teen idols. When deemed ready, the young performers are assembled into groups like 2NE1, the Wondergirls, or 2AM. They are then ready to step out onto the stage in front of hordes of screaming teenage girls.
Some of the songs produced by these labels are extraordinarily catchy. Park Jin-young—for whom JYP Entertainment is named—in particular is a master of melodies that stick in people’s heads. Certainly, the increasing enthusiasm for K-pop from all over the world is testament to its charms. Pop star Rain, for example, has played at New York’s Madison Square Garden and is huge all across Asia. In Time magazine’s online poll of the “World’s Most Influential Person,” obsessed fans have clicked and reclicked votes for him so often that they put him implausibly ahead of the likes of Barack Obama and Hu Jintao.
K-pop is becoming a big business. In 2010, SM Entertainment recorded revenues of 86.4 billion won (around US$80m). Clearly, SM is not in the same league as Samsung, but revenue has been doubling every two years recently, putting the firm at the center of a growth industry. The market capitalization (total company value) of SM on the Korean stock market is almost a billion U.S. dollars. Competitor YG Entertainment is worth US$250 million. Their performers not only sing but promote all manner of products, from mobile phones to soft drinks. Journalists often get invited to events to celebrate the launch of a new cell phone or television, with special guest performances from the latest boy or girl band. Many of these “idol stars” also cross over into television or film. Lee Hyo-ri for instance, who was a member of a girl band named FinKL, went on to have a solo singing career, before appearing in TV dramas, panel shows, and working as the advertising model for a seemingly infinite list of products from soju and electronic gadgets to Korean beef. This combined music, TV, and sponsorship revenue strategy—which all takes place under the watchful gaze of Svengali-managers who have no interest in producing music of genuine emotion—is reminiscent of the Japanese J-pop industry.
Enormous investments of time and money go into creating teen idol bands, so nothing is left to chance: the life and image of each performer is very strictly controlled. Furthermore, the band members’ cut of the profits is extremely small. This has led to several high-profile legal showdowns between members of groups such as Dongbangshingi (TVXQ to non-Korean fans) and their creators. The young singers and their parents are nonetheless fully aware of what lies in store when they sign up: years of hard training in dancing, singing, and foreign languages; endless media appearances and commercial recordings from early morning to late night; no private life; and, a poor deal financially at the end of it all. The would-be star’s hope is for longevity and the eventual lucrative solo career, as experienced by Lee Hyo-ri among others. For the majority, this remains a distant dream.
Reportedly, revenues from recorded music have declined by 90 percent from their peak in the late 1990s, mostly as the result of illegal downloading. Where once there were thousands of small record shops across the country, now there are just a handful, usually catering to music-obsessive university students in places like Hongdae and Sinchon (Purple Record and Hyang Music are among the best-known survivors.) The likes of SM Entertainment, whose average listener is a teenage girl, are under pressure to find other sources of revenue. Besides sponsorship, the big labels are now heavily involved in concert promotion and are seeking out new audiences overseas.
Meanwhile, Koreans over the age of thirty complain that “there’s nothing for me to listen to.” Pop music in Korea is almost entirely aimed at teenagers, and with a few exceptions—such as the more mature, soulful pop of bands like Clazziquai or Rollercoaster—it is artistically disappointing. Older listeners are just ignored by the industry. Shin Joong-hyun says, “In England, bands can be influenced by old music. But in Korea there’s no connection between the music of the old and the young. And young people seem to think music just comes from MP3 players. They never heard real live music coming out of big speakers,” he laments.