Mediating Tradition: Issues in the Broadcasting of Korean ÔTraditionalÕ Music 1. Introduction A radio broadcasting station for Korean traditional music, Gugak (literally meaning "national music") FM, was set up and opened in March, last year, in the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. It was one of the wishes of the people working for Korean traditional performing arts. This event motivated me to research the broadcasting of Korean traditional music on radio and TV, and the Korean traditional music reflected in the mass media. As a first step, in the present paper, I will examine what the broadcasting of traditional music has been like in Korea, the background of the setting up of Gugak FM, and its present practice. It will suggest the relevance of broadcasting this music and also raise some important issues in the broadcasting of Korean traditional music such as commercialism vs. nationalism. 2. Broadcasting of Traditional Music in Korea The first Korean radio broadcasting station was established in 1927. Since then, Korean traditional music has been presented through a variety of radio music programs. Some of those programs were made by producers who later became influential scholars of Korean traditional music. The first person I want to mention is Dr. Lee Hye-ku, one of the most highly regarded music scholars of the 20th century. He was born in 1909 and worked at the radio station from 1931 to 1947. It was through working at the radio station for those 16 years that he came to experience Korean traditional music and started to do research on it. Later, in 1959, he established the department of Korean traditional music at Seoul National University. He set up a foundation for Korean music study and, at age 93, is still active as a scholar of Korean traditional music. Other examples of present-day musicologists who worked first for radio are the chair of the Korean national committee of the Internationa! l Council for Traditional Music, Professor Kwon Oh-sung, and the former director general of the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, Professor Hahn Myung-hee. They majored in Korean traditional music in the university, worked as producers at the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and Tongyang Broadcasting Cooperation (TBC) respectively, and became professors. They seem to have taken advantage of musical programming of Korean traditional music for their study. For example, they could bring the best musicians of the time to the studio for a program, listen to their music and talk with them about their music. They could use the occasions for collecting resources of their music study in a transitional period of Korean history when playing Korean traditional music itself was not appreciated by scholars or the learned, and the girl students had to hide their instruments, afraid of being regarded as lowly female entertainers. In return, the scholars' involvement with the broadcasting of Korean traditional music greatly contributed both to the systematic arrangement of programs of Korean traditional music and to the development of Korean musicology. Even today, continuing the tradition of the connection between scholars and broadcasting, though not working as producers in the radio station, many scholars work as D.J.s. In this atmosphere, the broadcasting station played a role as one of the leading groups to collect and preserve materials of Korean traditional music. In 1958, the Gugak library, an archive of Korean traditional music, was established at KBS. MBC radio started a program called Hanguk Minyo Daejeon (Korean folk music collection) in 1989. The initials MBC stand for Munhwa (the Korean word for culture) Broadcasting Corporation. It was intended to let Korean people all over the country hear the indigenous local folk songs, such as work songs and lullabies, that are being forgotten by Koreans. For a period of 7 and a half years, the team led by producer Choi Sang-il collected about 14,300 folksongs and made 103 CDs in total, and donated them to institutes and scholars of Korean music. Now they are used as basic materials for research on Korean folk songs. When the show began, it was a 50-minute program broadcast every Sunday with a folk mu! sic specialist Yi Bo-hyung as a D.J. Through some changes in time arrangement, it is now broadcast for only five minutes, just before the 6 A.M. news, by the producer Choi Sang-il himself, who collected the folksongs. Producer Choi Sang-il was awarded with the Korea Broadcasting Grand prize for this program in the year of 1995. It is not for commercial reasons that the radio stations invested money into some of those projects for Korean traditional music, considering that popular and Western classical music programs enjoy higher ratings and earn more money. I should point out that, compared to the radio stations, the TV broadcasting stations seem to have been inclined more to commercialism in terms of music programming since the first appearance of Korean television in 1956. It doesn't mean that there were no programs with Korean traditional music. Though there were a few programs such as the Beauty of Korea which sometimes dealt with Korean traditional music and musicians, the problem was that the serious programs were hardly shown at times that were convenient for viewers. Consequently, the programs that reached and therefore had the potential to affect the general public the most were not the academic and educational programs but other light programs, ! like comic skits or dramas based on old stories with ghost scenes that employed Korean traditional music and were more easily accessible. Those scenes severely limited the interpretation of Korean traditional music, making it seem inappropriate or unadaptable to scenes of modern life. The programs implanted what I, along with many Korean music lovers, see as a wrong image of Korean traditional music as something strange, --one that is quite far from an art form for cultivating one's mind and enriching one's life. And although historical dramas--which were partly intended to raise historical consciousness among Koreans--have become more and more popular since the 1980s, it is almost always Western style music that has been used as background music to the dramas. A historical drama that began last year, titled Yeoincheonha (literally meaning, women's world), attracted my attention in this regard. It is about a woman who was born as a daughter of a concubine of a nobleman and who lived a difficult life full of ambition and sadness in the 16th century. The drama employs Korean traditional music together with electronic pop music, a genre often called 'fusion techno' in Korea. Anh Sook-seon, the most famous singer of the epic narrative form pansori, sang the title song in a newly made melody with nonsensical words called gueum-chang, literally meaning 'singing in mouth tone,' which is one of the traditional ways of! singing. Anh Sook-seon says that she tried to free herself of traditional musical idiom. Hwang Byung-ki, a master of the 12-string zither (gayageum) composed and performed music for gayageum as a theme music of the heroine, Nanjeong, in this drama. There is a tune played by daegeum (large transverse flute) and sogeum (small transverse flute). According to Hwang Byung-gi, the drama often employed his music in the scene of Nanjeong when it first started, however, it came to incline toward popular music in general as it proceeded. Now it is hardly played maybe considering the harmony with other music. A traditional music called sanjo (instrumental music in solo) on gayageum is played in the scene when a female entertainer plays the instrument, which is cliched and is wrong from the historical point of view: sanjo didn't exist in the 16th century. It must ! have been a meaningful meeting of commercialism and indigenous arts, but it shows, at the same time, the present limit of TV drama in presenting Korean traditional music. 3. Background of the Setting up of Gugak FM What, then, were the main reasons that people related to Korean traditional music wanted to have Gugak FM, a radio broadcasting station exclusively for Korean traditional music? Compared to the programs for popular and Western classical music, most programs of Korean traditional music (radio and TV) were broadcast at inconvenient times for most viewers; very early in the morning and late at night. We might see this as commercialism winning out over nationalism, in so much as commercial concerns severely curtailed presentation of the music generally understood to be most Korean. This is demonstrated in an interview with Song Hye-jin, director of the Gugak FM project team, who was a researcher with the NCKTPA before. She pointed out that when she worked for a children's song festival and asked a TV station to broadcast it, she got only a broadcast time that was inconvenient for most viewers. The traditional music advocates who began to dream about having a broadcasting station exclusively devoted to this music saw it not only as a need, consonant with nationalistic concerns over cultural heritage, but also as fulfilling an interest or desire among a growing portion of the general population. According to a senior researcher at the Minjokmunje-yeonguso (Institute of Nationalism), Pak Han-yong, Nationalism has been a natural belief in Korea where one ethnic group constitutes the nation and people use a single language. All the questions of the intervention in the Korean Peninsula by the nations concerned and of the division of South and North Korea exalt Korean nationalism incessantly. (Pak 1999). In the economic growth and political chaos, the military regime during the 1960s and 70s took advantage of Korean traditional culture to stir up the feeling of national identity among people for the maintenance of the regime, while anti-government students protesting against the authoritarian regime used some of the easily accessible traditional performing arts often "with anti-establishment content." (Lee 1997: 12-13) Minjung (People)'s nationalism, which began in 1970, asserted a nationalism which was based on reason and emphasized the characteristic development of Korean culture. Under the various nationalisms in Korea, some people who used to be familiar more with Western culture than with their own traditional culture began to realize the value of their own music. Seopyeonje, a film depicting a family of pansori (epic narrative song) musicians and which made a new box office record in 1993, was one historical event in turning peop! le's attention to Korean traditional culture. As it became very popular, it spread a renewed appreciation of pansori widely among the general public. It extended to the other genres of Korean folk performing arts. More than in previous years, people recently have been gathering to learn Korean traditional music and dance. Playing or knowing Korean traditional music has begun to be regarded as something to be proud of, at least more so than in the recent past. It was in this context, of growing legitimacy for Korean traditional music among the population but a situation still unfavorable to Korean traditional music in the world of radio and TV broadcasting, that people began to dream about having a broadcasting station exclusively devoted to this music. So, the Former director of NCKTPA, Hahn Myung-hee, who is currently a professor of Korean music at the University of Seoul, made a plan and began the actual preparation of the setting up of Gugak FM in1997, right on the grounds of the NCKTPA, which had the basic equipment, performance halls, and manpower necessary for radio station. 4. Practice of Gugak FM: Continuing Struggle between Commercialism and Nationalism Gugak FM is run with the support of the government and several private funds, such as the Korean Culture and Arts Foundation. The director general of the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts holds the post of the chief director of Gugak FM. It is broadcast around the regions of Gyeonggi, the province centered around Seoul, and those of Jeollabukdo province centered around Namwon, in the south, where a strong musical tradition exists and the where the National Center for Korean Traditional Folk Music is located. It is broadcast for 22 hours per day, from 5 AM to 3 AM on the next day, including 3 hours of rebroadcasting. It is a compact broadcasting station using the digital system, "audio file," and has 14 staff members including technician and 'anaduo' the combination word for someone who is announcer, producer and operator all in one. They broadcast mainly Korean traditional music, along with a little world music and fusion. The music programs of Gugak FM are more diverse than other radio and TV shows, targeting a wide range of audiences, from young to old, with various occupations. For example, one can learn singing and playing and participate in a competition on Saturdays. One can also listen to very young children talking about their learning of music. Other features of this radio broadcasting include live concerts held at the concert hall of the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts almost every day. And many different great musicians affiliated with the Center are rather easily invited because they already work in the same location. Also, one can listen to an entire piece of music that lasts more than one hour on Gugak FM. This is very unusual on other radio stations, where the broadcasting time and programs are too limited. You can also listen to pansori narrative everyday and can hear its complete version, which lasts about 6 hours, over the course of two or three days. Moreover, one is presented with music not just as a separate form of art, but as an integral part of the overall fabric of Korean traditional culture. This is accomplished by several means, primarily through the broadcast of interviews and guest specialists in folklore, travel or literature. Unfortunately, the success of Gugak FM has not come without a price. With this birth of Gugak FM, other programs of Korean traditional music have been cancelled: 3 existing programs on terrestrial (regular) TV, 1 on cable TV, and another 3 programs on other radio stations. Broadcast officials say that now that there is a radio broadcasting station exclusively for Korean music, there is no more obligation for them to broadcast Korean traditional music shows, especially since they are still not profitable. The overall effect could be interpreted as there being less gugak available on radio and TV. Gugak FM tries to compensate for this cancellation of Korean traditional music programs on TV and other radio stations. For promotion, they made CDs of the music they played on the radio shows and freely distributed them to people going home at the Seoul interchange on Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving day. Also, they had an open concert in downtown Seoul and had put up an advertisement on urban bus though we have no accurate measure of their success. One can also listen to Gugak FM on the internet at gugakfm.co.kr. Using an existing business satellite, they want to acquire the world's internet users as an audience, perhaps even outside of Korea, such as Koreans living in Japan, the U.S.A., and elsewhere, and non-Korean audiences, too. Still, in contrast to Western music, Korean traditional music continues to be insufficiently represented in school curricula, despite a recent increase of Korean traditional music coverage in elementary school textbooks up to 40%, with Western music 60%, and also in-service education and training programs of elementary and middle school teachers run by educational institutions, including the NCKTPA. Gugak FM made CDs of the accompaniment of folk songs so that the teachers could use them in the classrooms when they teach singing folk songs. This, it is hoped, will compensate for modest representation of Korean traditional music in school classes for both children and adults. Also, considering that the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts holds the largest number of performance of Korean traditional music, Gugak FM is thought to contribute to the preservation of the music by broadcasting it and producing recordings. There still is an important issue--why so many Korean people don't like Korean traditional music. I think it is at least partially due to the very limited opportunity for people to be exposed to their own traditional culture. The main trend of culture in Korea is the dominance of Western style popular culture that has deluged Korea since the period of Japanese colonization. Broadcasting Western style popular music brought mass media commercial success. In recent years, there has been a strong trend to reevaluate and restore Korean traditional culture in other realms. A recent TV program presented some young people who frequently ate Western style fast-food like hamburger and whose nutritiously unbalanced diet resulted in many different illnesses. Their dietary cure was to adjust them to eating their own traditional food. It took more than one year for them to get back to better physical condition. Might there be a parallel in music? Some people think that Korean music is boring and strange. They have been provided with only a few chances to learn Korean traditional music and they are likely to judge it from their limited experience. There is actually a great variety of music, vocal and instrumental, court and folk, and so forth, that comprises Korean tradition. Maybe it will take more time for them to find the beauty of their own traditional music than the taste of food. 5. Conclusion Recently, Korean mass media are happy to talk about the "Korea syndrome," or "hanryu" (Korean Wave) in pop culture, as it is called by local fans, which is currently sweeping China and some Southeast Asian countries. It is shocking even to Korean people that Korean culture can be exported and earn money. However, short-term monetary gains will be among the last elements to be considered in cultural planning. While working for preservation and promotion of Korean traditional music, Gugak FM works for popular culture at the same time as it imagines a Korean popular culture of the future. Programs such as Yoon Joong-kang's 2030 and Music World at Night introduce popular musics employing Korean traditional musical elements in belief that Gugak FM has a duty to find those kinds of music and spread them to the general public, as most other radio and TV stations do not care. Some Gugak lovers dream of expanding the broadcasting of Gugak FM to become nationwide and to add TV broadcasting. In the struggle between commercialism and nationalism, hopefully, Gugak FM can guide Korean cultural trends towards the production of a Korean mass culture more deeply rooted in Korean tradition and turn the present "Korea syndrome" into an indigenous, long-term condition within Korea itself. It might seem an unrealistic vision at present; but culture, including musical tastes, is always dynamic. As human action and belief, it is responsive to human action and belief--from seemingly chaotic worldwide trends, to the focused efforts of radio programmers staking their claim on the Korean airwaves. References Cited Pak Han-yong. 1999. " Nationalism in Korea: Its Myth and Reality," Jeongsinmunhwa-yeongu[The Academy of Korean Studies Journal]. Seongnam: the Academy of Korean Studies, Vol. 77:3-26. Lee, Byong Won. Styles and Esthetics in Korean Traditional Music. Seoul: the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts.