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.