Rebranding Korean Music

In the following pages I first extend Chapter 6 , looking at two senior composers of Western music in Korea. Then, I relate how I have watched the boundaries between West and East be tested, evaded and broken, looking specifically at the so-called ‘Third Generation’ of composers, who rejected adherence to the formal principles of European and American composition in a quest to make Western music Korean. This, of course, ties to the student rallies for democracy and the questioning of Western cultural hegemony that arrived with the minjung movement. My third section unfolds in much the same way as the first, but inverts the discussion by starting from where Chapter 5 ended. I explore how creative traditional music began to free itself from the shackles of tradition, focussing on Young Dong Kim, then ask how sound worlds modelled on tradition can be used within something that began as a foreign import, in this case, Christian worship. A final section considers a specific exercise in restoring tradition, ‘Tea Music’ (Taak). Readers should bear in mind that dividing discussion into discrete sections in this way does not reflect a neat chronological picture, and as my account unfolds it moves back and forwards in time.