K-pop as Korean National Pride

K-pop is the modern way for South Korea to express national pride internationally and domestically, which would not be possible without Korea’s colonial past and the history of the music that came before K-pop. Music has been used in the past to push nationalistic sentiment, especially from the government, which is why the tradition of gaining pride from its popular music continues today in K-pop.

In Maliangkay’s paper, he argues that the Japanese could not fully control the music industry if they wanted Koreans to consume media, so the Japanese produced music that would appeal to both audiences, which allowed Korean artists to record Korean music (2007: 54). This was one place that Koreans could do something that was not totally Japanese because it was Korean music performed by Koreans, but the Japanese began to view Korean traditional music as nationalistic in 1930, and censorship of it became rampant (Maliangkay 2007: 62). Whether or not it was meant to be nationalistic, music during this time connected Koreans to their culture in some way and let Koreans enjoy something that was not 100% Japanese, which was threatening to the Japanese.

After the end of Japanese colonialism in Korea, the Korean leaders wanted to wash away all Japanese influence, and this was done through nationalism. Son discusses how the leaders of South Korea in the 1950’s and 60’s pushed the sentiment that Korea needed a new national identity, they “needed pure Koreanness in their culture,” and one way to get that was by “manipulating popular music production in those years” by banning music with the excuse that a song was not nationalistic, and during that time, some big teuroteu (trot) hits were banned because of similarities to Japanese music, and overtime teuroteu (trot) became seen as something Japanese, not Korean (2006: 58). It was transformed to be more “Korean” like performers wearing traditional hanbok, because music has cultural significance and power to change people’s thoughts and attitudes that making it more Korean was worth the time and effort instead of just going a different route musically.

Even rock became patriotic in the early 2000’s when a rock band played the national anthem; Rock “invoked traditional folk song and even the national anthem—primary music to evoke a collective national spirit” (Son 2012: 60).

A more recent example of Korean popular music being nationalistic is ballads. Ballads and dance music are seen as the mother and father of K-pop, and ballads were the contemporary way for Koreans to express “Koreanness” in the 80’s and 90’s (Jung 2011: 88). Ballads embodied common experiences and feelings of Koreans to an extent that the genre became extremely popular among Koreans in South Korea (Jung 2011: 87-89).

All of this history and nationalism being expressed with or through music in Korea is how K-pop became what it is today. It is the new modern way of expression of “Koreanness” even if the lyrics do not speak on society. K-pop can invoke a sense of common national pride that something done by Koreans is so well loved. K-pop might not seem inherently Korean beyond the lyrics being in Korean, but it could not exist today without the push to have something made by Koreans fully.