Popular music in Korea

MANUFACTURED Korean pop music, or K-Pop, is riding high on a wave of international hype. The greatest figure in the history of this country’s popular music, however, does not wear high heels, nor miniskirt. Indeed, he does not even dance.

Shin Joong-hyun first learned to play guitar in the 1950s, and soon found a following among the American soldiers stationed here. Jackie Shin, as they knew him, was a master of jazz, rock ’n roll, rhythm-and-blues, and country. He already knew the Americans’ favourite songs, having spent every waking hour listening to Armed Forces Korea Network (AFKN), for many years the sole conduit by which Western music flowed into Korea.

“They would shout, ‘We want Jackie! We want Jackie!’”, he recalls. But soon, Mr Shin’s own countrymen would follow suit. First he wrote and recorded a hit song called “Nima” for The Pearl Sisters; soon offers from record labels came flooding in. Other singers began to seek him out, hoping he could do the same for them. A university student named Kim Chu-ja hung around his office every day until he agreed to give her an audition; luckily for both, she had a voice to match her persistence. With his help she became one of the top stars of the late 1960s and early 70s.

The good times were not to last. In 1972, Mr Shin received a call from the president’s office, asking him to write a song to glorify Park Chung-hee, the former army general who had been ruling South Korea even since staging a coup 11 years earlier. “I don’t know how to do that. Ask someone else”, he replied. Following that, police began to forcibly cut rock-’n-rollers’ hair, and confiscate their guitars. Another song of Mr Shin’s, the Jimi Hendrix-like “Mi-in” (“Beautiful Girl”), was deemed “degenerate” and “noisy” by the authorities, and duly banned.

In 1975, a few stoner-fans gave him marijuana, which he says did nothing more than make his head hurt, and prevent him from concentrating on his music. The police busted him all the same. He was sullied in the press as a drug addict, and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of torture while imprisoned. He was later sent to a mental institution and, upon his release, banned from performing music for life.

Life comes to an end however. When Park Chung-hee was assassinated in 1979, Mr Shin was freed to resume his career. But musical tastes had changed by then, in part, he thinks, as function of the censorship that was characteristic of Park’s rule. The dictatorship “didn’t like people who think”, Mr Shin says, and encouraged a culture of simple, mindless songs that suited the “make money, spend money” ethos of the time.  

Naturally Mr Shin laments having been cut off in his prime. But as it happens his best music is now seeing renewed interest, four decades after its heyday. A musical featuring his songs is in the works. A night at Gopchang Jeongol—an increasingly cool underground den of vinyl records and rice wine, in the student area of Hongdae—is not complete without the DJ spinning a few old Shin Joong-hyun records. And two years ago Fender, a renowned guitar-maker, gave him his own Custom Shop Tribute Guitar, putting him in an exclusive club of six (other members include Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton).

To see why, take a look at this relatively recent performance, in which a 68-year-old Shin Joong-hyun tears up his most famous hit 

(A shame the video is slightly out of sync).

Or for a change of mood, here’s one he wrote for Kim Jung-mi, one of his early-1970s muses