Before K-Pop: A new book takes you into the long history of Korean popular music

The mammoth popularity of songs like “Tears of Mokpo” by the singer Lee Nan-young—which made the 19-year-old a superstar overnight in 1935 Korea—was evidence of trot’s wild appeal to Korean teenagers at the time. 

It’s an inescapable fact that trends in music, then as now, are defined by the young. The older generations, even those once removed, could not stand trot initially. Criticism ran rife in newspaper editorials, which Young-mee Lee has collected and sampled in this book. Derogatorily referred to as “yuhaengga” or “trendy music”, trot was dismissed for being too cheesy, decried for being base mimicry of a foreign import, and for its lack of “Joseon feeling”. To older people, thus far attuned to the court and folk music of Korea, it sounded completely, offensively alien. And yet, by the 1950s, trot was the most mainstream form of popular music in Korea. 

You Call That Music?! is a brief and fascinating history of popular music in Korea of the past century, and an investigation of the “generational conflict” that always accompanies new cultural trends. Looking at the social and political circumstances that accompanied new waves of music, she argues that it is during periods of aggressive culture clash between generations that popular music was (and continues to be) pushed to new heights and breakthroughs. 

Starting with trot, Young-mee Lee also considers the rise of “yangpung” music in the mid- to late-1950s: a hybrid style of swing jazz and Latin music brought in with the US military occupation of Korea after its liberation, and the subsequent Korean War. This was “music meant to move the body, express the soul, create joy”, and heavily featured mambo. It gave rise to the “apres-girl” or the bold young woman who didn’t care for the purity and passivity that was prescribed behaviour for women in Korea at the time. 

With the Civil revolution of April 1960 and the military coup thereafter, Korean music moved on from the dance craze of the 1950s and leaned heavier towards vanilla American pop. Young-mee Lee finds this to be a period of amity between generations, because there was a certain wholesomeness (or, in other words, a mass appeal that doesn’t challenge anyone’s sensibilities or provoke thought) to the standard pop produced by legends like Sohn Seok-woo.

And then came the youth culture of the 1970s: A time of wild generational rebellion brought on by the Baby Boomers who had had no experience of the Japanese Occupation or the Korean War. Free from the burden of witnessing periods of extreme destitution, violence, poverty; they had ambitions and opinions of their own, and aspired to a more democratic society. The boys wore their hair long and the girls took to mini skirts, and the police was out on the streets with scissors and decrees. Like on the other side of the planet, where Woodstock had recently taken place in 1969, the anti-war sentiment was strong. The olds could not tolerate it.

It was the time that “cheongnyeon” culture came to be recognised: A specific period between youth and adulthood, what we would now equate to young adulthood, a demographic unto itself across all popular culture today. And from it rose a new battery of Korean musical stars, with songs like “Wearing a Flower Ring” and “I Love You” getting permanent place in Korea’s musical hall of fame. 

The 1980s, writes Young-mee Lee, brought a period of fertile cross-pollination and fusion of forms, and the rise of Korea’s modern national superstar who appealed across ages, the great Cho Yong-pil, author of songs like “Bob Cut” and albums that held trot, rock, standard pop and more in a single album.  

And then things got exciting again in the 1990s, when Seo Taiji & Boys, the hip-hop crew that is credited with bringing back the era of dance music and heralding this ongoing wave of K-Pop, became instant superstars with their self-titled debut album. The generation that took the ex-Sinawe frontman to new heights of fame was derogatorily called “Orange Youth”: affluent, promiscuous, club- and rock cafe-hopping teenagers of Apgujeong, a district of Gangnam, Seoul. 

Young-mee Lee, now over 60 and considered to be among Korea’s foremost pop-culture critics, pays great attention to the minutiae of Korea’s musical history, but writes in an anecdotal, conversational, accessible style. It makes You Call That Music?! essential reading for anyone who considers themselves a K-Pop fan.

In the story of Korea’s musical evolution, and the generational and political conflicts that have accompanied it, there are some universal truths, and interesting parallels with music cultures elsewhere. To wit, do you remember how your parents reacted to watching Britney Spears gyrating to “Hit Me Baby One More Time” on MTV in 1998? If you’re above the age of 40, can you really cop to understanding why K-Pop is such a big deal? Or, indeed, what makes Gen Z tick?

“An era whose music appeals to the sensitivities and tolerance of its grownups is probably not going to be an era of sweeping social change,” notes Young-mee Lee. And this particular moment, of K-Pop’s ubiquitous popularity in the world, and especially in Korea—perhaps based on an unprecedented amalgamation of styles, genres and forms into this slick, shiny, awesome, universally appealing thing—is not that era for her. PSY’s global popularity has earned him fans in their 60s and 70s. Talent shows like Mr Trot—which actually birthed the star that is Lim Young-woong—appeal to multiple generations. “Auntie fans” and “Uncle fans” are now legit terms in Korea.

“I do think that ground-breaking young energy still exists; there has to be those incomprehensible songs that represent youth culture to provoke the adults to say 'You call that music, what the kids are listening to these days?' in order for Korean popular music to take that next leap forward,” the author writes. “This will be the sustenance and energy for Korean popular music to go on for the next twenty years.” In other words, the hallyu couldn’t—and shouldn’t—go on forever.