Song for the Nation: Popular Music and Cold War Subjectivity in Postcolonial Korea

• In Event: Power and Senses in Imperial Japan and Cold War East Asia

Abstract

This paper examines the discursive and institutional practices of “Song for the Nation,” a national campaign designed to evoke national consciousness and improve the work ethic of the people. In so doing, it elucidates how the national subjectivity of postcolonial Koreans was reconstructed in the early part of the Cold War period. After Korea’s liberation in 1945, popular music became one of the most urgent topics of discussion among intellectuals. They discussed it in relation to the process of nationalization of masses of Koreans, who had undergone Japanese colonialism. Through regulation of popular music, the Korean state sought to produce “wholesome” modern national subjects free of the corrupting desires and mindsets of “premodern” Koreans. In particular, this paper examines the writings of Un-yŏng La, a student of the influential Japanese composer and writer, Moroi Saburo, during the colonial period. After returning from Japan, La would lead the “Song for the Nation Campaign” in the 1950s. In examining the writings of people who had participated in this campaign and songs written by elite composers, this paper highlights the production and reconstruction of globally-inflected discursive and institutional musical practices in the 1950s.

Author

• Jaekyom Shim, Freie Universität Berlin