2011, Vol.19, No.2

Journal of the Korean Society for Musicology 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.64

eISSN : 3092-2410
https://journal.kci.go.kr/musicology

Since the end of the World War 2, Koreans have long neglected their Asian neighboring countries. They concentrated their attention to America or Western developed countries as their model for modernization. Due to the historical memories of Japanese colonial rule, Koreans never wanted to have amicable relationship with Japan. This collective antipathy of Koreans toward Japan made Korean government have long maintained the policy forbidding the import of Japanese popular culture. As for China, its communist political system made most Koreans think that China is no less antagonistic country than North Korea. However, the world situation since the 1990s has gradually changed Koreans’ points of view on Asia. ‘The fall of the Berlin Wall” and deconstruction of the Cold War system was a major motive for this change. Since then so called ‘globalization’ has come into realization on its two axes of transnational electronic media and migration, as Arjun Appadurai(1996) suggested. In this trend of world historical change, Korea established new diplomatic relations with China in 1992, and opened a door to Japanese popular culture in 1998. In short, it was not until the political, economical, and cultural barriers were demolished that ‘Asia’ started to be reexamined as a World historical block by Koreans. ‘Asia’ could not be understood just as a geographical area. Now what can be called ‘Asian sympathy’ is being emerging on the cultural levels of Korea and Asian countries. In this context, however, it is necessary that we consider ‘Asia’ not as a geographical area nor as a conceptual entity, but as method in which we can see the world differently. In order to take a closer look at this topic, I suggest, in this paper, a level of identity politics focusing on Korean musicologists.

This paper explores educational situations in 1930s colonial Seoul through the Anthology of Yuhui-Changga published by Ewha kindergarten. First, I examine the historical and cultural background of kindergarten education in colonial Korea and Anthology of Yuhui-Changga edited by Charlotte G. Brownlee, a missionary professor of Ewha kindergarten and kindergarten training school. Then, I compare the anthology with two other anthologies: Anthology of Yuhui-Changga (1933) edited by Park Bongae and Anthology of Pyojeong-Yuhui-Changga (1936) edited by Cha Sabaek & Lee Bohyung. The two books are differentiated from Brownlee’s for physical characteristics and musical character. While Brownlee’s book includes many Mother Goose rhymes and European traditional children’s songs, Korean writers’ books contain lots of songs characterized by the style of songs found in the Japanese army. The former excludes Korean and Japanese composers’ songs, but the latter includes some of them. Korean writers’ books share some common traits with the music textbooks and anthologies of Changga distributed in the same period. Thus, Brownlee’s book shows uniqueness. Therefore, it’s possible to conclude that the education of Ewha is located in different context from the general educational situation in 1930s colonial Seoul. The exclusiveness of missionary society and the specialty of Ewha, which was established by women missionaries, are important factors to which the differences may be attributed.

“Hook song,” a newly coined word that is frequently cited these days in Korea’s pop music industry, passes as commercial pop music that hooks a person’s ears. It is difficult, however, to find systematic analysis or discussion on the “hook” itself, which is the essence of the newly coined word. Hook, as has been defined thus far, is mostly used to mean repeated chorus and has been in the same line of criticism as “hook song.” Yet, the concept of hook is not that simple, and thus we should not limit hooks to a narrow meaning. Recently, we have been witnessing the hooks in popular music developing into more diverse forms, not just limited to a certain category. This means that the range of hooks in music is flexible, and the flexibility affects their various definitions and differences. All music has hooks. Yet, the hooks that can be seen in the so-called art music or classical music and the ones in popular music are different in nature. Hooks in pop music have a differentiated characteristic to some degree, which is completely commercial. The reason hooks are given such significance here is hooks are perceived as the essence of the recent modern pop music. Each hook has organic quality and composes mélange, which is popular music. These hooks change the style and contents of music either visibly or invisibly. In this paper, I will focus on the characteristics of hooks used in pop music highlighting the concept of hooks, which has been defined by many researchers so far. In this way pop music will be seen from a new perspective. The concept of hook can be applied to various phenomena that appear in the pop music arena. Yet, it is also possible to pont out hooks' negative functions. Therefore, hook should be reevaluated as another yardstick by which pop music can be analyzed.