Chapter 04
Records, Trot, Bases, Folk, Rock and Songs Under Pressure
7 min
Recording did not merely preserve Korean music. It selected voices, shortened forms, created stars and made repetition available without a performer in the room. The earliest recorded Korean voices belong to the history of the peninsula before either modern Korean state. In 1896, three Korean students in Washington sang into a cylinder machine. Commercial discs followed in the early twentieth century, including sessions in Osaka and Seoul.
What to listen for
Under Japanese colonial rule, Japanese companies controlled much of the pressing, studio and distribution system. Korean singers, lyricists, composers, actors and listeners still made an active vernacular market inside that unequal structure. Records circulated alongside theatre, touring variety companies, film and Gyeongseong radio, which opened in 1927. The available styles included adapted foreign songs, newly composed popular song, sinminyo, jazz song, children's music and recorded traditional repertory.
Yun Sim-deok's 1926 “In Praise of Death” captures this layered modernity. She was born in Pyongyang, studied Western singing in Tokyo and recorded the song in Osaka for Nitto. Her Korean text sits on the melody of Romanian composer Ion Ivanovici's “Waves of the Danube.” The record's waltz motion, trained projection and horn-era acoustic limits belong together. Her death with playwright Kim U-jin made sales surge, but the work deserves to be heard beyond the sensational story attached to it.
Lee Nan-young's 1935 “Tears of Mokpo” joins another woman, another technology and a more local address. Mun Il-seok's lyric emerged from a regional-song competition, Son Mok-in composed the music, and OK Records released it. Lee's focused, slightly nasal tone carries port separation over a minor popular melody. Mokpo is not an interchangeable symbol: ferries, Yudalsan, harbour labour and outward movement made the city legible to listeners.
Colonial popular song cannot be divided neatly into pure resistance and foreign imitation. Musicians worked under censorship and corporate control while building Korean-language careers. Japanese popular styles, Western dances, theatre melody and regional vocal habits met in records. Some artists later faced scrutiny for songs serving imperial mobilization; other records accumulated resistant interpretations. Credits and dates hold this conflict better than a single moral label.
Trot keeps changing its historical work
The word trot now covers a family of ornamented popular song associated with a steady duple pulse and recurring melodic habits. Some of its colonial predecessors were called yuhaengga. Japanese enka and ryukoka mattered, as did Korean vocal practice, Western ballroom rhythm and recording technology. The style was assembled through circulation.
After liberation, division and war gave separation songs new weight. “Go Away, 38th Parallel,” “Farewell Busan Station” and Hyun In's “Stand Strong, Geum-sun” addressed borders, evacuation and missing family through melodies audiences already understood. A voice could lean into a note, turn around it and release late against the beat. That timing made private grief public without requiring experimental form.
Trot later moved through television, highway cassettes, local festivals and new competition programmes. Singers such as Lee Mi-ja, Na Hoon-a, Joo Hyun-mi and Song Ga-in represent different eras and vocal approaches. The style's persistence defeats the claim that modernity simply replaced it. Its audience, orchestration, beat and image continue to change.
US military stages became demanding musical workplaces
After the Korean War, stages serving the US Eighth Army and USO offered paid work in a devastated economy. Performers had to learn current American records, arrange for available bands, pass auditions and satisfy different venue expectations. Jazz standards, country, Latin dance, rhythm and blues and rock and roll entered working repertoires. Electric guitar, bass, drum kit, microphones and ensemble charts became everyday tools.
These were unequal spaces organized around a foreign military presence. The musicians' achievement lies in what they did under those conditions. They listened closely, copied difficult parts, developed show discipline and moved their knowledge into Korean radio, records and theatres. The domestic market did not receive a sealed package called American music; working players translated sound through their own bands and voices.
Han Myeong-suk's “The Boy in the Yellow Shirt,” written by Son Seok-u in 1961, opens a window onto standard pop. Its light country bounce and compact hook sound different from a heavily ornamented trot ballad. Han's clear delivery lets rhythmic charm carry the song. Patti Kim and Hyun Mee brought large-stage vocal confidence into recordings, while the Kim Sisters built an American career through exacting harmony, instrumental versatility and showcraft.
Electric guitar changed the size of a Korean song
Shin Joong Hyun learned guitar in the base circuit, led bands, wrote songs and produced women singers including the Pearl Sisters and Kim Choo-ja. His work moved psychedelic guitar, soul rhythm and terse riff into Korean-language pop. This was not a solitary hero story. Singers, bassists, drummers, arrangers and the live circuit made the sound possible.
“Beautiful Woman,” recorded with the Yup Juns in 1974, begins with a guitar-and-bass figure that functions like a public invitation. Voice and instruments trade short phrases; the chorus enlarges a simple declaration through repetition. The groove links rock to familiar call and response without dressing a folk tune in electric costume. In 1975 the song was prohibited during a broad state campaign against popular music. Removing it from legal broadcast changed what listeners could hear, but the riff survived.
Authoritarian censorship worked through lyric review, broadcast bans, record control, morality policing and pressure on performers. A song might be rejected for political risk, alleged Japanese colour, pessimism, indecency or an artist's conduct. These categories shifted with state priorities. The audible result was a narrowed broadcast repertory, altered words, stalled careers and a growing value for unofficial memory.
Folk song became a vehicle people could repurpose
University youth culture and acoustic music expanded around 1970. Some performers translated American folk; others increasingly wrote new Korean songs. Han Dae-soo brought a raw singer-songwriter attack shaped partly by his years abroad. Song Chang-sik developed dramatic vocal phrasing. Yang Hee-eun became a defining interpreter of Kim Min-ki's compositions.
“Morning Dew,” first released by Yang in 1971, begins with restraint. Its melody passes through carefully balanced sections, briefly darkens, then rises toward a cadence with the breadth of a hymn. Kim Min-ki wrote words and music, but listeners changed the song's social function. Authorities suppressed it and formally prohibited it in 1975. Students and demonstrators continued to sing it, so commercial popular song became minjung song through collective use.
Minjung gayo describes a culture of people's song that developed outside the dominant commercial system during democratization movements. Campus groups, churches, theatre companies, cassettes, printed songbooks and gatherings carried repertory. Some songs were newly written for the movement; others came from hymns, folk song or banned pop. Collective singing mattered because it reduced the distance between artist and audience. The group made the sound and accepted the risk together.
Rock found room beyond television
Sanullim's 1977 debut begins with “Already Now,” a startling rush of fuzzy guitar, organ, bass and drums. The band's texture feels homemade and expansive at once. Their songs could be whimsical, heavy, psychedelic or childlike. They opened space for the idea that a Korean rock band could sound personal without perfecting a foreign model.
By the mid-1980s, hard rock and heavy metal had strong university and live audiences. Sinawe's “Turn Up the Radio” places Kim Jong-seo's high, driven voice over Shin Dae-chul's guitar and a fast rhythm section. Baekdoosan and Boohwal pursued other forms of metal and melodic rock. Limited broadcast access pushed these groups toward records, concerts and peer networks, which helped create an underground identity.
The end of formal pre-release record censorship in 1996 widened expression. Hongdae clubs and small labels supported punk, alternative rock and indie production. Crying Nut's speed, Jaurim's theatrical songs, 3rd Line Butterfly's atmosphere, Mid-Air Thief's dense home-studio folk electronics and Silica Gel's processed band sound do not form one genre. They share an infrastructure in which a small stage or self-directed recording can matter without an idol agency.
