I will soon be taking my IB’s and start to search for colleges and universities, but I was really hoping to work as a doctor in Korea. My plan was to go to King’s College or Imperial College in the UK, and then as I get my degrees and stuff, apply as a doctor in Korea. I am not really good in korean, but I am willing to try my best to learn it as soon as possible. Do you think my goal will succeed ? In Korean hospitals, do they accept foreigners as doctors? What if I will not be able to master my korean? That will be a problem right? Valentina
TK cannot believe that he is writing a post about this question. But he must, because this question comes in with shocking frequency. Apparently, there is a sizable population of people around the world who really want to be a doctor in Korea. If only Korean hospitals accepted foreigners! Then these people can just pursue the dream, the dream! Of being a doctor in Korea!
Here is the simple answer: if you have to ask this question, you are not going to be a doctor in Korea. How does TK know this? Simple. In any given country, around 95 percent of the students will not be able to become doctors no matter how hard they try, because the material is too difficult, the requisite test scores are too high and the smarter students will crush them. Are you a top five percent student in your country? If you are, can you do the same in a completely different language? (And yes, if you want to be a doctor in Korea but can't master your Korean, it will be a fucking problem.)
A quick perspective on how hard it is to get into a medical school in Korea. Seoul National University is widely considered the best university in Korea. In 2014, to make it into most majors offered by SNU, the student had to score between 370 and 380 out of 400 in the College Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT). But to get into SNU as a medicine major? The student had to score 400 out of 400. Seriously. You could not get a single question wrong in an exam with nearly 200 questions that takes more than seven hours.
And this is even before getting into the fact that Korea's CSAT is probably a harder exam than anything that a typical non-Korean 17-year-old has ever seen in her life. Don't believe me? Here is a scale model of the 2010 CSAT that TK translated into English. Remember, if you want to be a doctor in Korea, you cannot get a single question wrong. And you would be taking this exam in Korean.
(A step back: in Korea, each major of a college administers the admission for itself. For medicine majors, each school uses a different proportion of CSAT--that is to say, in addition to CSAT scores, some colleges give their own exams and/or conduct an interview.)
Sure, there will always be special cases. Some of you guys will be hyper-geniuses who pick up foreign languages and medical school-level knowledge like we mortals eat a muffin. Some of you will have a family history that puts you close to Korea, such that you can compete on equal footing with other Korean students--like, for example, Dr. John Linton at the Yonsei Severance Hospital, who was born in Korea because his great grandfather Eugene Bell came to Korea as a missionary in 1895. (To be sure, Dr. Linton is a Korean citizen. But he was not one when he became a doctor, as he naturalized just three years ago.)
These folks can be a doctor in Korea although they are not Koreans. But they don't need to ask an anonymous Internet stranger to figure out how to become a doctor in Korea. You, on the other hand, sent TK an email with this question because you can't speak Korean well enough to figure out this information on your own. So I can say this with confidence: you're not going to be a doctor in Korea. Stop clogging my inbox with your stupidity.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
The question of authenticity may pop up in any given genre of Korean pop music, because every genre of K-pop is an import. Yet the question of authenticity is particularly pressing in hip hop, because no other genre of pop music cares so much about "being real," to a point that authenticity is the genre's raison d'etre, as hip hop does. Indeed, even in the birthplace of hip hop, the quest for authenticity is elusive. (Is Jay-Z still real, even though he went corporate?) When hip hop is exported to a different cultural sphere, the hurdle of authenticity becomes ever higher.
Parker's article did a great job in identifying the elements of what is considered "real" in Korean hip hop. Consider this post a companion piece, about how the idea of authenticity evolved in Korean hip hop. This inquiry is necessarily a historical one. So let's jump right into history of Korean hip hop, and start with the pioneers.
I. Pre-History: Early 1990s
The very first piece of K-pop that may be considered "hip hop" appeared in 1989. Hong Seo-beom [홍서범], a moderately popular rock musician, recorded a song called Kim Satgat [김삿갓].
Even by today's standards, Kim Satgat's rapping, overlaid on funk beat, has held up surprisingly well. But Hong's attempt was clearly an experimental one. Hong never aspired to be a hip hop musician; Kim Satgat was a one-off, avant-garde take at the new form of music that was gaining ground in the U.S. at the time. In the popular recount of Korean hip hop's history, Hong name is rarely mentioned.
Instead, the K-pop artists who came after Hong, such as Seo Taiji [서태지], Hyeon Jin-yeong [현진영] and Lee Hyun-do [이현도] are usually considered the pioneers of Korean hip hop. But even with this corps of artists, the label "hip hop musicians" would be a stretch. Seo Taiji's first album in 1992 , for example, definitely caused a sensation with a historical rap number, I Know [난 알아요]. But hip hop was just one of the many musical styles that Seo Taiji played with; in his later albums, Seo drifted toward his original love, i.e. rock music. Lee Hyun-do and his group Deux showed more dedication to the genre, but Lee's creativity (at least for the music that he himself would perform) was cut short when Kim Seong-jae [김성재], Lee's partner in Deux and the animal spirit of the group, passed away under mysterious circumstances at the tender age of 23.
(More after the jump)
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
It is fairer to think of this era as the pre-history of Korean hip hop, because few K-pop artists considered themselves as a "hip hop artist." In this time period, Hip hop was a device, not an end to itself. Even at the time, music of Seo Taiji and Lee Hyun-do was not referred to as "hip hop", but "rap dance"--dance pop with some rap sprinkled on. In fact, the tradition of rap dance is very much alive in today's K-pop, as it is almost a K-pop cliche to insert a rap bridge in a dance number.
II. Anchored Realness: Late 1990s to Early 2000s
It was not until late 1990s that K-pop artists who dedicated their career to hip hop began to emerge. For the first time, it made sense to refer to a proper "rapper" in Korean pop music scene. Korean hip hop in this time period brewed in two levels, which largely kept away from each other at first. Roughly speaking, the levels may be referred to "overground" and "underground." The former appeared on television and sold albums by hundreds of thousands; the latter put together mix tape-quality albums and performed in basement clubs.
1997 was a watershed year. A sizable crop of K-pop artists who may be considered proper rappers debuted through large production companies. (I add the "may be onsidered" because Korea's hip hop purists would vigorously disagree with my assessment.) Jinusean, Uptown, JP (Kim Jin-pyo [김진표]) and Yoo Seung-jun [유승준] all debuted in 1997. During this period, the idea of "realness" in Korean hip hop had a clear orientation: across the Pacific, toward America. Hip hop was the latest genre that was imported into K-pop, as all pop music genres were previously. The logical conclusion was clear: real hip hop was American. Realness was anchored outside of Korea.
To be real was to look like America hip hop artists. So at the time, Korean hip hop appealed its American-ness in many different ways. Virtually all significant (overground) Korean hip hop artists in this period flaunted their American connection. Both members of Jinusean (Jinu and Sean--yes, seriously) were Korean Americans. So were all three members of Uptown; the crown jewel of Uptown, a promising female rapper who went by "T", was half African American. (T stands for Tasha; she is now better known as her real name Yoon Mi-rae [윤미래], and as the wife of Tiger JK.)
Cover for Jinusean's 2001 album, The Reign.
Jinusean still holds the record as the most copies of album sold among Korean hip hop artists. (source)
Not only were Korean rappers kind of American, they (almost) looked and sounded like Americans. Much of their songs had a generous helping of English lyrics and rap. (Tiger JK and DJ Shine of Drunken Tiger, who debuted in 1999, could barely speak any Korean in the early stages of their career. JP wrote much of Drunken Tiger's Korean rap in their first album.) Korean rappers' fashion and choreography, ahem, "emulated" the prevailing black music trends in America. Their music videos were shot in locations that evoked the milieu of American inner cities--a sight that simply did not exist in Korea.
In this cohort, Jinusean enjoyed the most popularity, owing greatly to the two major figures in the pre-history of Korean hip hop: YG (Yang Hyeon-seok [양현석]) of Seo Taiji and Boys, and Lee Hyun-do, who produced the group. But for our purpose, Yoo Seung-jun is probably the most significant, as Yoo was the one who pushed the "anchored realness" logic to its breaking point. Yoo Seung-jun did not simply import the music or the fashion of hip hop. Yoo sought to import the soul, the swagga of hip hop--the aggressive, authority-defying, rule-breaking "thug life" kind of rap.
Yoo's music video for his hit song Nanana, linked above, is in some sense historical. Yoo's first hit song, Saranghae Nuna [사랑해 누나] was about dating older women, already indicating his willingness to break the rules. (By the way: that's not really considered breaking the rules in Korea anymore. Korea changes quickly.) In Nanana's music video, Yoo Seung-jun achieves peak thug life, Korea circa 1998. The music video for Nanana displays Yoo in all possible variations of thug-life style power play in Korea--most daring motorcycle rider, best fighter in class, blatant disregard of school's hair regulations, romantic liaison with a young, hot female teacher, and so on. For some time in Korea, Yoo Seung-jun occupied the same space that James Dean occupied in his life: a rebellious, heartthrob bad boy.**
Let's take a step back, and make one thing clear: in hindsight, Korean hip hop of the 1990s was cringe-inducing. The cringe does not simply come from the fact that most things, 20 years later, are tacky. It also comes from the fact that Korean hip hop of the 1990s was clearly an exercise in exoticism and cultural expropriation. To put it bluntly: these were a bunch of Koreans trying to be black--so much so that JP, in 1998, dropped this infamous diss that will forever remain in the annals of Korea's hip hop history:
혹시 그거 아냐? 여기는 미국 아냐
You know something? This isn't America.
얼어죽을 East Side, West Side 외치지만 말고
Stop saying freakin' "East Side, West Side"
제대로 좀 해봐 몇 년 후에 깡통 매봐
And do something real. Or wear a can a few years later. [="go bankrupt and become a beggar."]
그럼 두고두고 땅을 치고 후회할 테니 그럴 테니 하하하하
Then you will regret it for the rest of your life, that's right, hahahaha.
"Anchored realness" is a misnomer, if one takes the definition of "real" seriously. Any attempt to locate the source of authenticity in a culture that is not one's own would always look ridiculous--at first, at least. Korea's hip hop artists themselves were aware of this, and endeavored to make hip hop their own skin rather than an ill-fitting suit. And the breakthrough would soon come--from the underground.
III. Inner Authenticity: Early 2000s to Present
While Korea's overground hip hop artists were engaged in a wholesale air-lifting of hip hop from America, Korea's underground hip hop artists were attempting to grow the foreign seed of hip hop out of Korean soil. The early attempts were crude and grotesque, no better than the cringe-inducing replicas that their overground peers created. But it was from the underground that Korean hip hop found the new path forward.
No K-pop genre owed its existence to the Internet as much as Korean hip hop. Hip hop in America arose organically within the African American communities, which were (for better or worse; mostly for worse) segregated into ghettos. In Korea, it was impossible for a similar community to form, until the Internet appeared.
Korea was always ahead of the curve when it came to the Internet. Already by mid-1990s, the Internet was fairly common in Korea. Although the Internet at the time were not much more than collections of low-tech message boards, the message boards were quite enough to bring together Korea's emerging hip hop minds. Old rap heads of Korea are familiar with names like Blex, Camp Groove and Dope Soundz--the names of the early online hip hop communities that served as the breeding ground for truly localized hip hop.
Member of these communities met offline regularly. They would listen together and discuss the latest rap albums from America. Later, they graduated into creating their own music. Blex, for example, released an album called BLEX: Black Sounds, the First Sounds [BLEX: 검은 소리, 첫 번째 소리] in 1997, making history as Korea's first independent hip hop album. Early pioneers of underground Korean hip hop--such as MC Meta for the group Garion or DJ Wreckx, Korea's first hip hop DJ--were raised through these online communities. While most overground rappers were occupied with looking and sounding black, Korea's underground rappers explored ways to make hip hop Korean, trying to jump over the linguistic and cultural barriers.
And finally, the breakthrough came--from one of Korean hip hop's true geniuses, Verbal Jint.
One comparison* is sufficient to establish the revolutionary character of Verbal Jint's rhyme and flow. Below is the rhyme structure of G.O.D.'s 1999 song, To Mother [어머님께]. The letters in red rhyme:
어려서부터 우리 집은 가난했었고 남들 다 하는 외식 몇 번 한 적이 없었고 일터에 나가신 어머니 집에 없으면 언제나 혼자서 끓여먹었던 라면
Now, compare the above to Verbal Jint's 2001 song, Overclass. The rhyming phrases are color-coded and underlined:
90년대 말을 잘 기억해 난 힙합을 말하던 대다수가 거센 말투와 어색한 허우대만 찾으려하던 때 한 명의 팬으로서 제발 어서 그 저개발 상태를 벗어나서 크기를 바랬어 그러나 이 문화는 덧없는 언쟁과 함께 무너져 갔어 우리들 안에서 분명히 누군가는 선구자가 되어야만 했어
The difference should be obvious. G.O.D.'s rhyme is forced and mechanical. Other than the final syllable of each sentence, nothing rhymes, and no sentence pairs organically. In contrast, Verbal Jint's rhyme is three-dimensional and progressive. Verbal Jint changes speed and emphases of his lyrics to create parallel structures with clauses of different lengths. Each clause-pair evolves into the next set of rhymes, with the previous pair implying the next. Truly, it is not an exaggeration to say that Verbal Jint is the one who unlocked the true potential of Korean language within the logic of hip hop.
That Korea's hip hop artists were finally able to speak hip hop in their own language had massive implications for Korean hip hop's quest for authenticity. The ability to rap organically in Korean language, by its very nature, projected far more authenticity then any imitation of American rap. The heavy anchor of authenticity was gone. Through the medium of hip hop, Korean artists were finally able to speak in their own voice and tell their own stories.
This breakthrough allowed Korea's underground hip hop musicians to cross over into the mainstream. CB Mass, for example, became a mainstream sensation as they were able to combine their superb Korean rap with compelling story-telling. As the wall between overground and underground hip hop eroded, the mature Korean language rap began to infiltrate all the way to the ranks of Korea's idol pop. Not even the most "produced" boy band in today's K-pop raps like G.O.D. did in 1999.
As Korean hip hop artists tamed and domesticated the foreign genre, the question of authenticity became more internal. "Realness" in Korean hip hop became the question of expressing authentic experience and emotions--as it should be. Since the early 2000s, Korean hip hop as a whole has showcased the full range of pain, rejection, anger, joy, party, love, finally becoming true to the artist's inner self.
IV. What's Korean about Korean Hip Hop?
Can Korean hip hop ever be "real"? Many American hip hop aficionados, who zealously guard their own ideal of "real," may scoff at the idea. And they are not without a point. Clearly, hip hop is not of Korea. It is a cultural artifact that Korea imported. And surely, hip hop in Korea is still in the process of becoming localized. Although Korean hip hop has come a long way in the last two decades, there is still no stand-alone "hip hop culture" as one exists in America. Idol groups that use hip hop as a mere device significantly outnumber those who pursue hip hop as a craft. So--if the definition of authenticity is narrow enough, it would preclude Korean hip hop from being real.
But what would be the point of that definition? Find me a part of the world that American pop culture has not touched. Is it not enough to say realness only requires the expression of true inner self? If the artist can successfully operate the vehicle to her desired destination, does it "really" matter where the vehicle comes from?
To hell with the snobs, I say. True authenticity requires no justification, because it justifies itself. Today, Korea's foremost rappers express their genuine selves through intricate rhyme and flow. Listen for yourself, and tell me it's all a lie. I dare you.
-End Notes-
* This comparison comes from 한국 힙합: 열정의 발자취 [Korean Hip Hop: Footsteps of Passion] by Kim Yeong-dae [김영대] et al. (2008).
** In fact, being too American became Yoo Seung-jun's downfall, as he used his U.S. citizenship to avoid Korea's military draft. The public backlash was severe, and his career was over. More background here.
*** The last piece is Poison [독] by Primary, featuring E-Sens of the group Supreme Team, from 2012.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
TK lied--sort of. The best essay to read about Fresh Off the Boat is indeed the essay by Clarissa Wei. But the best piece to read overall is Constance Wu's interview with the Time magazine regarding the show.
TK made it his practice to share links and short thoughts on his Facebook. But the interview with Wu, who plays Jessica on the show, has such great insights that it deserves a post.
Below, for example, is pure gold:
I think the reason people have been quick to throw the stereotype criticism on us is because there will always be people who are laughing at the wrong thing. Some people are like, “Oh, stereotypical accent!” An accent is an accent. If there were jokes written about the accent, then that would certainly be harmful. But there aren’t jokes written about it. It’s not even talked about. It’s just a fact of life: immigrants have accents. Making the choice to have that is a way of not watering down the character and making it politically correct. It’s choosing authenticity over safety, and I think that’s bold.
This is such an incredible point. From the beginning of this blog, TK has been trying to figure out how to approach the distinctiveness of Asian Americans. (For example, this post. Reading this again after seven years, I have many regrets.) Plainly, Asian Americans are different. Then how should Asian Americans, and the mainstream society, talk about this difference?
Some Asian Americans have carried on as if we should never talk about this difference. TK thinks this is a mistake, and Wu explains why: the difference is real, and pretending that the difference does not exist is to lie about ourselves. This is who we are, and we should not be embarrassed about it.
Wu makes this point a bit more specific to her character Jessica, which makes her perhaps the most compelling character on the show:
She’s aware of her difference, yet she doesn’t think that’s any reason for her to not have a voice. It doesn’t elicit shame in her. She doesn’t become a shrinking violet. And instead of that being something that Asians should be embarrassed of, I think that’s something that we should be proud of—the types of characters who know they don’t speak perfect English, who know they have different customs, who don’t think that that’s any reason for them to not have a voice.
The difference does not elicit shame in Jessica. This is perhaps the most important lesson that Fresh Off the Boat could impart to young Asian Americans: our difference is what we are, and it should not be a source of shame. We are who we are; don't apologize.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
We are four episodes in with the historic television show, Fresh Off the Boat. Among the many reviews and essays that revolved around the show, the best read in TK's mind was this piece by Clarissa Wei:
I grew up resenting my parents for all of the above because it was far different from the childhoods I saw and devoured on television. I thought my parents were crazy; that my mom was neurotic and my dad was overly obsessed with American symbolism. And while I had a vague sense that other Asian-American families had similar experiences, I had no idea just how similar the experiences were. There were no reference points.
. . .
Yes, every Asian-American childhood is different, and Fresh Off the Boat is only based off of one Asian-American family. But I relate to it far more than any other television show I have ever seen in my life. For once I have something to identity with.
Asian-American kids desperately need shows like Fresh Off the Boat as reference points. The small details matter. Watching Jessica eat an apple off of her knife, seeing Louis hire white actors for a commercial, seeing Eddie being taunted for eating noodles in school, and watching the Huang family encounter casually racist remarks by folks in the community — all this was like watching a montage of my own childhood.
This observation dovetails into a topic that TK has been mulling over for some time: growing up as an Asian American. This topic is interesting partly because it is an experience that TK has never fully had, because he immigrated to the U.S. as a 16 year old. Yet sooner or later, TK and TKWife will have their very own TKDaughter or TKSon, which adds urgency to this topic.
Having spent a lot of time studying and listening to stories of many different Asian Americans, one conclusion I made is: it is critical for an Asian American child to grow up feeling normal. Children may not be able to verbalize everything they sense, but they nonetheless keenly sense whether they are different from other children, and whether their family is different from other family. If everyone a child sees is different from her, she ends up defining herself through the difference rather than through who she is.
Of course, this is not always the case. Even under adverse situations, certain people with extra special mental strength manage to imbue their own agency in their identity. (One such example could be Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank. Growing up in rural Iowa where he belonged to one of two Asian families in the town, Kim graduated his high school as the valedictorian, class president and the quarterback for the football team.) But with most children, being surrounded completely by people who are different from them is a difficult challenge in the course of identity formation. It is hard not to let the difference define you. You become the shadow, rather than the thing itself.
Although TK cannot exactly prove this empirically, he is certain that this is the ultimate cause of the subtle difference in attitude between the Asian Americans in/from the West Coast versus Asian Americans elsewhere. There is no good way to characterize a large group of people in a very fine-tuned manner, so I will state it crudely: West Coast Asians, on the whole, exhibit significantly less angst about their Asian-ness. Having been surrounded by enough Asians throughout their lives, they never had the need to justify their Asian-ness. Not so with Asian Americans from elsewhere, like young Eddie Huang from Orlando. There is a reason why Huang so loudly proclaims his ethnic identity, while Roy Choi--a chef like Huang, but from Los Angeles--quietly, but confidently, mixes Korean and Mexican.
West Coast Asian Americans certainly live as racial minority in America. But in their day-to-day lives, they do not constantly experience that minority-ness. The minority experience is an unending, tiresome struggle to justify one's being. And there is only one way to prevent this struggle from being the essence of your identity: around a child, there needs to be a critical mass of Asian American families that serve as a reliable sample of the humanity, such that the child's family is not the only example of what being an Asian means. Without the critical mass that demonstrates Asian Americans' essential humanity, the Asian American identity will always be a kind of an add-on that is grafted onto what is "normal," i.e. white.
As Wei's essay ably shows, it is difficult for a child not to be shamed by the difference. Some children respond to this by pretending that the add-on does not exist; some respond by feeling excess shame or excess pride on this add-on. (Thus creating the three archetypes: "twinkie," "self-loather" and "AZN Pride".) But as long as the Asian American identity is considered an add-on rather than an integrated part of normalcy, an Asian American child is never at ease.
(I cannot even begin the grasp the experience of Asian American adoptees, most of whom experience the difference within the family, as they are growing up. I have quite a distance to cover, and I am not far enough along my journey to talk about that topic just yet.)
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
I recently read an article that stated the S. Korean economy only expanded 0.4 percent in 4th quarter 2014. This was the slowest growth in more than two years. The article attributed this slow down to leap month and Korean superstition. What exactly is leap month? And what are the Korean superstitions surrounding it?
Kirston
Traditionally, Korea has used a luni-solar calendar. In a lunar calendar, one moon cycle equals a month. Because each moon cycle is between 29 and 30 days, one lunar year is 354 days rather than 365 days in a solar calendar. Islamic calendar, for example, uses what might be considered a "pure" lunar calendar--that is, there is no adjustment made with the lunar calendar to make it fit with the seasons. Thus, in the Islamic calendar, over time, each month does not strictly correspond with the seasons.
Not so with Korea's traditional calendar, which is luni-solar. Traditional Korean calendar also uses the moon cycle to measure a month--but it also makes adjustments such that the calendar does not drift away from the seasons. Compared to the solar calendar, lunar calendar is short by 11 days every year. To make up for the difference, a "leap month" (called 윤달 in Korea) is inserted every so often. (There are seven leap months in every 19 years.) That is to say: in traditional Korean calendar, a year with a leap month has 13 months, not 12 months.
Because the 13th month is considered an extra, superstitions developed around it. Koreans traditionally believed that good and evil spirits were present all around the world, helping or hampering the people's affairs. In a leap month, however, Koreans believed that the spirits could not affect the real world--because it is an extra month that the spirits were not aware of. And the presence of spirits was a big deal when it comes to the big events of the family, like weddings and funerals. The superstition goes that in a leap month, it is best not to get married, because there are no good spirits in the world to look after the newlywed. On the other hand, leap year is a good time to have either a funeral, or a moving of a tomb, because the evil spirits were not around to harm the dead as s/he was passing to the netherworld.
(One might ask: couldn't it be the other way around also? Wouldn't it be good to marry in a leap month because there are no evil spirits, and bad to have a funeral because there are no good spirits? If you are thinking this, you are thinking too hard. There is a reason why this is called a superstition.)
Did the leap year superstition hurt Korea's economy in Q4 2014? Maybe a little. In 2014, the leap month fell in September in the solar calendar--a prime wedding month. There is enough data to indicate that not-insignificant number of people consciously avoided getting married in September, such that all the related industries--wedding halls, jewelry, honeymoon travel, etc.-- suffered from reduced demand.
But make no mistake: it is not as if the wedding industry is one of the major drivers of Korean economy. The leap month superstition may have played a role, but not a big one in the context of the overall economy. Korea is in fact suffering from a long-term decline of domestic consumer demand--which is a much more serious problem that deserves more attention than the silly idea that superstition caused the slowdown in economic growth.
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Years of Activity: 1985-present (most recent album in 2013)
Members (Current):
Jeon In-kwon [전인권]: Vocal, guitar
Choi Seong-won [최성원]: Vocal, bass, synthesizer
Members (Former):
Heo Seong-uk [허성욱]: Keyboard
Jo Deok-hwan [조덕환]: Guitar
Ju Chan-kwon [주찬권]: Drum
Kwon In-ha [권인하]: Vocal
Discography: Deulgukhwa (1985)
Deulgukhwa II (1986)
Deulgukhwa 3 (1995)
Deulgukhwa (2013)
Representative Song: Only That is My World [그것만이 내 세상] from Deulgukhwa (1985)
그것만이 내 세상 Only That is My World
세상을 너무나 모른다고 You know so little of the world 나보고 그대는 얘기하지 That's what you tell me 조금은 걱정된 눈빛으로 With eyes shrouded a bit with concern 조금은 미안한 웃음으로 With a smile shaded a bit with apologies 그래 아마 난 세상을 모르나봐 Yes, perhaps I don't know the world 혼자 이렇게 먼 길을 떠났나봐 Perhaps I started this long journey all by myself
하지만 후횐 없지 But I have no regrets 울며 웃던 모든 꿈 All the dreams through which I cried and laughed 그것만이 내 세상 Only that is my world 하지만 후횐 없어 But I have no regrets 찾아 헤맨 모든 꿈 All the dreams that I have searched for 그것만이 내 세상 Only that is my world 그것만이 내 세상 Only that is my world
세상을 너무나 모른다고 I know so little of the world 나 또한 너에게 얘기하지 That's what I tell you, too 조금은 걱정된 눈빛으로 With eyes shrouded a bit with concern 조금은 미안한 웃음으로 With a smile shaded a bit with apologies 그래 아마 난 세상을 모르나봐 Yes, perhaps I don't know the world 혼자 그렇게 그 길에 남았나봐 Perhaps I stayed on that road all by myself
하지만 후횐 없지 But I have no regrets 울며 웃던 모든 꿈 All the dreams through which I cried and laughed 그것만이 내 세상 Only that is my world 하지만 후횐 없어 But I have no regrets 가꿔왔던 모든 꿈 All the dreams that I have grown 그것만이 내 세상 Only that is my world 그것만이 내 세상 Only that is my world
Translation note: The switch in subject between the first line of the first verse and the first line of the second verse is my own interpretation. In the actual song, the subject is not clear, because the sentence does not contain a subject--as is common with Korean language construction.
Maybe they should have been ranked higher because... Deulgukhwa's first album is widely considered the greatest album in K-pop history.
Maybe they should have been ranked lower because... They can't go lower. But they probably can't go higher either. Only the best artists of the genre are above them at this point.
Why is this band important?
In the late 1970s, Korean pop music suffered through a catastrophic dark age. The Park Chung-hee dictatorship, growing ever more authoritarian, decided that pop culture was harming the national discipline. Many pop musicians found themselves in jail for trumped-up drug charges. All albums required governmental approval before they were released. Park was later assassinated, but his replacement--General Chun Doo-hwan--was hardly any better. K-pop, which was at the forefront of world pop music trend in the early 1970s, regressed for nearly a decade.
Deulgukhwa was the ray of sunlight that broke through the dark ages. The band's first album is widely considered the greatest rock album in K-pop history, and with good reason. The album is a historical breakthrough that rebooted the progress of Korean pop music. In fact, Deukgukhwa kickstarted the golden age of Korean rock. It may seem unthinkable today, but in the mid- to late 1980s, Korean TV's pop music ranking shows would be routinely topped with rock bands, with Deulgukhwa being a routine presence. Although it is once again driven underground today, Korean rock music owes a great deal of its current sophistication to Deulgukhwa and the rock band of the 80s.
Interesting trivia: Choi Seong-won also had a successful career as a producer. His most famous product is Panic, ranked 25th in this list.
Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.
