KJCKorea
Journal Central

The Music Yearbook (1966) marked the first comprehensive effort in postwar Korea to document the nations’ musical activities of 1965 while presenting a condensed historical account of the previous seventy years. Beyond a mere compilation of statistics or lists, the yearbook reflects the editors’ contemporary awareness and offers insight into the cultural and institutional framework of the Korean music scenes in the mid-1960s. This study examines and annotates the Music Yearbook (1966) to reconstruct the landscape of postwar Korean music culture. It outlines the yearbook’s structure and editorial organization, and analyzes its major contents in historical context — including the seventy-year history of Western music in Korea, the trends of 1965, listings of musical institutions and individuals, and advertisements that illuminate the musical environment of the period. Through this examination, the study explores the social, educational, and industrial dynamics that shaped Korea’s mid-1960s music scene. Although the Music Yearbook (1966) contains certain biases and factual inaccuracies, it offers meaningful clues for reconstructing modern Korean music history. Its 960 biographical entries reveal the regional, educational, and professional distribution of musicians, while the advertisements demonstrate the actual conditions and structure of Korean musical life in the 1960s. As a comprehensive document of the postwar music scene, the Music Yearbook (1966) deserves continued attention as an essential reference for research on modern Korean music history.

This article aimed to analyze music concerts and performance programs broadcasted through Kyungseong Broadcasting Station in order to understand the impact of music performance broadcasts during the Japanese colonial period on contemporary music culture and public perception. For this purpose, I've classified the music performance broadcasts into four types; broadcasts of Japanese concerts, broadcasts of domestic concerts, broadcasts of stage plays, and exchange broadcasts. Then I've traced the characteristics and changes in performance broadcasts for each type. The Japanese concert programs broadcast from the Kyungseong Broadcasting Station not only demonstrated an enlightening intention of the subjects of broadcast programming to provide Korean audiences with better classical music but also led to the internalization of Japanese cultural power by projecting the admiration for European music onto Japan, which had a more advanced musical culture than Korea. Meanwhile, domestic concert programs broadcast by Kyungseong Broadcasting also showed an intention to enlighten the Korean music scene by prominently featuring school concerts and competitions of students who would lead the next generation of music. In addition, the exchange broadcasts transmitted from Kyungseong Broadcasting Station can be divided into two types; international exchange broadcasts between Japan and Europe, and exchange broadcasts between Korea and Manchukuo. The exchange broadcasts between Japan and Europe reinforced admiration for the Japanese music scene by highlighting the image of Japan as the country that could musically interact with the admired Europe. On the other hand, the Korea-Manchukuo exchange broadcasts revealed Japan's intention to implement its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Plan through the broadcast network. In this way, the envy for European music and enlightenment intentions inherent in Kyungseong Broadcasting Station's music performance broadcasts were appropriated as part of propaganda and also contributed to sensually imprinting Japan's superiority on the Korean audience. This mechanism operated in the same way in the admiration for the American music scene of the post-liberation era and in Cold War propaganda, reinforcing hierarchical perceptions of music.

Beethoven X: The AI Project uses artificial intelligence (AI) to elaborate Beethoven’s surviving sketch fragments in order to complete the third and fourth movements of his Symphony No. 10. This paper explored the interaction between generative AI and humans during the creative process of the Beethoven X project from the perspective of co-creativity. The creative process proceeded in three stages: musicological expositions, computational methods (data-driven development), and compositional recapitulations. In the musicological explorations stage, Beethoven’s sketches were deciphered and digitized to create seed material, and the sketch fragments were then appropriately arranged. In the computational methods (data-driven development) stage, multiple machine learning architectures were expanded were built. Contextually relevant data were selected and used for training, and short sketch fragments were expanded and extended in various ways. In the compositional recapitulations stage, the work was completed by combining and regenerating the most effective outputs. The Beethoven X project is the result of ‘co-creativity’ between artificial intelligence and humans. The AI recombines vast amounts of data to generate new music at remarkable speed. Humans also actively intervene at every stage of the project’s creative process, producing a collaborative work between AI and humans. From the perspective of ‘co-creativity,’ it is necessary to move beyond understanding artificial intelligence merely as a tool for creation. Genuinely creative outcomes can emerge when two systems with distinct characteristics—humans and computers—interact. Co-creativity between artificial intelligence and humans could open a pathway to overcoming existing limitations and entering new realms in the arts.