The Old in the New

‘ Kkonip /A Petal’ was a 1996 film directed by Jang Sun Woo that won the Grand Bell award. It told, from the perspective of a 15-year-old girl, of the brutal suppression of the 1980 civilian uprising in Kwangju. The theme song begins with string pizzicato chords and a single ching hand-held large gong, damped after each note in deference to shaman gongs. Above this, the haegŭm two-stringed fiddle joins. The fiddle has a peculiarly nasal quality, pleading for attention from the living and the dead. Next, a female voice, singing lexically meaningless phrases much as in the kuŭm of shamans and others, echoes the fiddle. The theme will return at the end, sung by the young heroine to an accompaniment of electric guitars, synthesizers and high-hat cymbal. Thus is the world of Korean tradition transformed into something both Korean and Western.