The podcast can be found here.
One topic I focused on is the importance of the novel, film, and soundtrack of 별들의 고향 (literally "stars' hometown" but known as "Heavenly Homecoming to Stars"). The serialized novel was written by Choi In-ho and completed in September 1973, the film directed by his high school friend (and Sinchon drinking buddy) Lee Jang-ho, and the soundtrack was made by Lee Jang-hui, who also attended Seoul High School (though was two years behind them), and Gang Geun-sik (who never gets enough credit for the soundtrack).
Choi In-ho appeared in the 'Hope' feature (which usually featured someone gaining attention in the cultural or sports world) of the April 8, 1973 issue of the Weekly Kyonghyang. His novel 별들의 고향 had begun its year-long serialization in in the Chosun Ilbo in September 1972 and was a hugely popular. (One of his early stories is translated by Brother Anthony here.)
Choi had wanted to tell the story of a woman who was "killed by a city," namely Seoul, which was then daily drawing hundreds of people, particularly young women, from the countryside. Below is a photo of two new arrivals carrying bundles at Seoul Station from an April 2, 1972 Weekly Joongang article criticizing these young women who "thoughtlessly" followed a "spring wind" to cities and ended up being tricked into working in red light districts.
Another photo of Choi from Weekly Kyonghyang, November 18, 1973.
Sunday Seoul published this photo of Choi and director Lee Jang-ho working on the film adaptation of 별들의 고향 in its February 3, 1974 issue. It was a high-profile project, and there was some grumbling over the fact that Lee, a first-time director who had worked under Shin Sang-ok, had gotten the opportunity to make it.
The March 24, 1974 issue of Weekly Joongang reported that a trailer had been released a week earlier (at four minutes long, longer than this one) that featured the Lee Jang-hui song below, a 'hard rock' song that made older audience members turn away wondering 'what kind of song is that?' but which brought a smile to young people's faces. Near the film's beginning, the main male character gets an antibiotic shot and is told to stay away from booze and women for awhile, leaving him bored out of his mind. What follows is set to Lee Jang-hui's aforementioned 'hard rock' song:
The music video-like quality of those scenes made the film stand out as something new for young audiences, while its traditional melodrama tropes drew in older audiences, making it the biggest film in Korean history at that point, selling over 450,000 tickets, which shocked director Lee. Lee also immortalized his friend in the film. The man on the swing with a toddler in the clip above is none other than Choi In-ho:
The aforementioned March 24, 1974 issue of Weekly Joongang also stated that the film featured Korea's first 'original soundtrack disc,' which isn't true - off the top of my head, Shin Joong-hyun made soundtracks for the films 'Green Apple' in 1968 and 'Mabu' in 1971, though perhaps not every song was used in the film. The 별들의 고향 soundtrack was released a few weeks before the film to draw more attention, and was described by the Weekly Joongang as 'avant garde.' (When, in 2015, I interviewed director Park Kwang-su, who had worked as an assistant director under Lee Jang-ho in the mid-1980s, he told me that what he learned from director Lee was how to promote a film as part of a package before its release; I can't help but wonder if Lee was already pursuing this strategy with his first film.) While I'd heard some songs from the soundtrack before, I'd never listened to it in its entirety. A few weeks ago I found the soundtrack to 1975's March of Fools (another film based on a Choi In-ho book) and the record shop owner suggested the 별들의 고향 soundtrack as well, so I decided to pick it up. This was a wise decision. After the ballad that opens the soundtrack, the following tracks are indeed more experimental, mixing in synthesizers with the guitars and beats. The song I linked to above was briefly in the top 10 chart, while 한 잔의 추억 (track 6) remained on the charts from June to October 1974 and hit number one for three weeks.
The day before the film was released on April 25, 1975, Choi In-ho also published a 'Declaration of Youth Culture' in the Hankook Ilbo. Whether this contributed to the appeal of the film I don't know, but after the film's success 'youth culture' became a hot topic in the media. Numerous weeklies published one-off articles or series on youth culture, while the monthly Shin Donga spent over 50 pages discussing the topic in its July 1974 issue.
There had been earlier media 'gusts' on this topic starting in 1969 and coming to the fore in 1970. This peaked with the first crackdown on youth culture in late August 1970 which was best known for its forced haircuts of those with 'hippie' hair, as well as some arrests for too-short miniskirts. These continued throughout the early 1970s but peaked in 1975 after Emergency Measure 9 (May 13, 1975) and the bans on songs that followed. 1970 also saw the criminalization of marijuana at the behest of USFK, which was turned against youth culture and the folk and rock music scene in late 1975.
Among those who were arrested and banned from working for years?
Singer Lee Jang-hui and director Lee Jang-ho.
The arrests and bans on recording and performing put the careers of some of the top talent of the day on hold. While Shin Joong-hyun was the best known target, by 1974 the torch for innovative music had been passed from the rock'n'rollers who cut their teeth playing for US troops to the university students who were increasingly mixing folk music with other genres, including rock and funk, and who were also mixing synthesizers into their music (as heard on the above soundtrack). So much musical and cultural - and political - energy was emanating from the universities, and though the music often was not overtly political, the government spent the latter half of 1975 hacking off the various heads of what they perceived as a hydra coming from the universities. Emergency Measure 7 closed Korea University (others followed), EM 9 criminalized all dissent, all student clubs were banned and all students were enrolled in the Student Defense Corps, songs 'threatening morals' - many of the favorites of the young - were banned, and finally, in a wave of arrests as the government abruptly began enforcing the habit-forming drug control law, many of that generation's top musicians were tarred as drug addicts and banned from recording or performing.
If we look at this picture of Lee Jang-hui's wedding in July 1974 (published in the Weekly Kyonghyang), everyone to the left of the bride in the front row (l-r: Kim Se-hwan, Yun Hyeong-ju, and Lee Jang-hui) were all arrested and faced performance bans.
In the middle of the back row is Song Chang-sik (standing next to Lee Seong-ae), who, along with Yun, formed Korea's first folk duo, Twin Folio, in 1967. He went on to record songs for the the next movie made from a Choi In-ho novel, 'March of Fools,' released in May 1975, though I think I'll save that story for another post.
Once again, the Korea File podcast can be found here.
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