어느날 아침에 샤워를 하는데 불현듯 ‘발해를 꿈꾸며’가 떠오르는 겁니다. 초등학교 시절에 테이프가 늘어질 때까지 듣고 나서는 한번도 직접 찾아들은 적이 없습니다. 수많은 음악들을 찾아 들으면서 서태지에 대한 인식이 점점 나빠진 것도 한 이유였습니다.
거의 20년만에 직접 찾아 노래를 들어보니 또 이런 감동이 찾아올 줄은 미처 몰랐지 뭐에요. 그러다가 문득, 그러고보면 옛날에는 통일을 소재로 한 가요들도 꽤나 많았는데… 하는 생각이 들었습니다. 그 이야기를 마눌님과 하다가 아예 통일을 소재로 한 한국 가요들을 소개하는 피쳐를 써보는 건 어떨까 하는 생각을 했습니다.
처음에는 여러 곡을 다루어 볼 생각이었는데 의의가 충분한 곡은 아무리 생각해봐도 ‘발해를 꿈꾸며’와 ‘그들만의 슬픔’ 외에는 떠오르지가 않더라구요. 그래서 두 곡에 대해서만 자세히 다루고 막판에 ‘통일소녀’를 잠깐 소개했습니다.
Long before Psy became a national culture hero with “Gangnam Style” and boy bands with bling attracted enormous crowds, the originators of K-pop sang about something that seemed a lot more important decades ago: unification.
In fact, foreign North Korea watchers and K-pop enthusiasts may be surprised to know that some of the masterpieces of early K-pop had unification, not love or dancing, as their theme.
When South Korea’s first pop idol, considered to have set up the wireframe for modern K-pop dance music, was finally given freedom of choice of what he wanted to sing about other than love, he chose reunification.
In fact, singers didn’t always have to choose between the two themes: The grief of parted lovers – a timeless theme in music around the world – has similarities with the grief of dispersed families separated by the Korean War and its aftermath. A master of the power ballad format succeeded in seamlessly weaving the two themes into one of the best rock epics K-pop has ever produced.
SING WHAT YOU WANT
After losing his job in a heavy metal band, a high school dropout in his late teens tried his hardest to bring a new sound to the Korean pop scene, which was then isolated from global pop trends. While receiving a poor reception from critics at first, his new rap/dance group’s debut album in 1992 ultimately changed the future of Korean pop music forever.
His band, Seo Taiji & Boys, set up the K-pop archetype that remains intact more than two decades later. After huge successes with two albums in a row, Seo Taiji in 1994 returned to his roots – heavy metal.
But the most interesting aspect of the album Dreaming of Balhae was not the sound; it was that the band sang about something other than romantic love in the title track.
“Balhae” refers to an ancient empire, coming into existence after the fall of the Goguryeo kingdom, stretching from the northern half of Korea into Manchuria. So what was the title track about? Unification, of course.
“I have one thing only in my heart indeed / When would we be able to see friends over the divided land / We’re losing ourselves while we hesitate,” he sings.
“It was a peace declaration which opened the eyes of the younger generation, who didn’t experience the war, to the importance of peace,” philosopher Kang Shin-joo wrote 17 years after Dreaming of Balhae‘s release. Though it is now more than 20 years old, the music video still retains its cool (not to mention that it was filmed at the old Korean Workers’ Party HQ in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province in the South).
A number of critics and fans consider the band’s third album its best work. Not only because of its quality but also due to its social criticism, as the song “Classroom Idea” took on South Korea’s educational system. It was very rare for a Korean pop star to raise social issues with his music.
The album also made a vivid impression on the mind of a politician, who had just made his comeback from political hiatus following his defeat in the presidential election of 1992.
“The lyrics were good… (It) made the national sentiment (regarding unification) realized within the new generation’s mind, which had felt distant from it,” Kim Dae-jung, who would finally become president of South Korea in 1998, recalled in a 1997 essay.
As the head of the opposition, Kim helped Seo out when his fourth album faced censorship issues with the authorities, which eventually led to the end of the pre-censorship of pop music in South Korea. About a decade later, Seo gave the former President Kim his new album and he was one of the few musicians who sent condolence flowers when Kim passed away in 2009.
A BALLAD FOR DISPERSED FAMILIES
Even before Seo Taiji’s reign, rock ballads were one of K-pop’s strongest points. South Korean heavy metal bands made good use of rock ballads for their own publicity. You can still easily find South Korean guys belting out rock ballads in the karaoke bars – anytime, anywhere.
Kim Sung-myun was one of the successful Korean rockers who wrote some of the immortal rock ballads that still haunt karaoke bars around the peninsula, with the creaking voices of Korean guys who’ve had too much to drink.
After a successful career as the front man for several rock bands, Kim sought to pursue his own vision with his one-man band K2. Well, it was at first meant to be a duo with a thrash metal guitarist, but it turned out that a master of catchy rock balladry and a guitar shredder couldn’t get along long enough to maintain a band.
The band’s second album, released in 1997, was essentially his first solo work after the guitarist’s departure. Kim concentrated his musical talent into this album, which is still considered his best by many fans.
The opening track of the album, “A Grief of Their Own” is about reunification, but with a South Korean rock ballad’s twist.
At a glimpse, it is hard to see what in particular in this song is about uniting the two Koreas. The lyrics appear to be about lovers missing each other, which South Korean rock ballads had been singing of for decades.
However, this is actually what makes the song a masterpiece. When the listener focuses on the lyrics with the theme of unification in mind, he or she would find little difference between broken hearts and the grief of dispersed families around the peninsula.
It took about three years after the song’s release for dispersed families to be allowed to reunite for the first time since 1985.
THE SUDDEN SILENCE
Even North Korean pop songs became popular among South Korean audiences with the breakthrough in inter-Korean relations after the Kim Dae-jung administration launched the Sunshine Policy in late 1990s.
Under the stage name Unification Girl, 19-year-old would-be actress Gil Jung-hwa released her first album in 2000. Produced by a defector, the album contained top North Korean pop songs, including ever-famous “Whistle.”
Gil imitated the way North Korean singers sing, dress and even talk so convincingly that many in her South Korean audiences confused her for a defector. No wonder she had great success after the historic first inter-Korean summit in 2000.
This now all seems very much a part of a distant past. Before the 21st century, it wasn’t impossible to find songs with a unification theme, but this essentially ran dry in the 21st century.
A pop music critic explains that the public’s interest in unification is dying away.
“As the sense of difference and repulsion towards the North grows, those who long for unification…have shrunk in number,” Seo Jeong Min-gap told NK News.
In fact, the downward trend could already be seen when Seo Taiji released Dreaming of Balhae. In the aforementioned essay, Kim Dae-jung recalled getting to know why Seo decided to wrote a song about unification:
“Mr. Seo Taiji said in an interview, after learning from an article that youths had less interest in unification and don’t even want unification, he thought he had to do something, so he wrote Dreaming of Balhae,” Kim wrote.
At the time there were at least advocates for reunification among artists who could provide reminders of the national longing. Now they have gone away with the passage of time and today’s young performers, whom the early heroes of K-pop tried to edify, have grown even more indifferent.
Picture: Seo Taiji & Boys footage
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