Old School Korean New Wave

Now, that's a lotta stuff crammed into a title.

It's like New Wave, but it's not the 80's and it's Korea, but I felt the "Korean Wave" before it had propagated anywhere outside of Korea, when pop was certainly "old school."

And for my money, I thought Korean pop music to be more fun back then. Of course, me being younger had something to do with it, but I think the fact that it wasn't hyped, it wasn't linked to notions of national cultural conquest, on top of feeling somehow shinier and newer (it hadn't been too long since mass consumer culture had even existed on this scale) – it just felt much more like a party.

Check out Park Jin Young (I laud him in previous post here), producer extraordinaire (he made "Bi", after all), when he was fresh. This was the middle of my first stay in Korea, and his video and his feeling himself up before periodically slapping his own ass was the talk of the town.

And this song, even alongside the new influence of "gangsta rap" brought in my Seo Taiji and the Boys, still was fun as hell, even and especially with the plain silly-ass shit that Jin Young would wear – cut-off tops, biker shorts, crap like that. And this was when having "yellow hair" (the sign of the peroxified "bad kid") was not at all an accepted thing for people trying to keep a clean-cut reputation.

Oh, and people still didn't kiss on TV.

That should give you an idea of what Jin Young was coming into when he was prancing around with yellow hair, biker shorts, and slapping his ass.

Back when the "Korean Wave" was still limited to the little pool of the peninsula, I was having a blast here, learning a lot, dancing a lot, living it up.

Here's to youth.

Comments

[seouldout]

I remember when Seo Taiji and the Boys hit the airwaves in '92. The building tremors of an impending seismic event. Almost everything else was (and still is) this carefully packaged saccharine tripe. Even this debut was a bit too cautious, but check out the judges, and you'll see why. Hell, Noh Tae Woo was still the Prez and music would be heavily controlled for several more years. Then, in 1993, Hayoga was released...friggin' excellent.

The joy of ROK 'n roll is at Skunk Hell. Links there to sites such as http://www.daehanmindecline.com/. Well worth frequent visits.

[Frank]

I appreciate your edited version of SeoulCast #3.
I have a question about this video- specifically what year was it?

[ShenYue]

ehem could you give a little credit!!!!
I don’t suppose you spend your time surfing the youtube to find this video!!

[The Metropolitician]

Actually, I did surf YouTube to find this video. I was watching "그녀는 너무 예뻤다" through some links (I had written about Park Jin Young several days ago), and had come to a link that brought me to there. After watching that video, I typed "날떠나지마" into the YouTube search engine, since I didn't see it listed in the related videos section.

As it happens, "날떠나지만" was one of my favorite songs from 1995, and is still the one song I sing every time I go to a noraebang today.

I always give credit when I base a post off of someone else's, but in this case, I got to Jin Young's "Don't Leave Me" all by myself. It's not a surprise, is it, that since he's in the news so much again lately, that someone might have thought of looking for his most famous song on YouTube?

Trust me – I was hip on Park Jin Young way back in the day, in 1995, and my nostalgic motivation to look up that song and post about him is all my own.

And they only have one, single video listed for "날떠나지마", anyway – so of course I linked to the same video. It's the only one there.

[The Metropolitician]

Ah - I see where this is coming from – your post on Park Jin Young with the music video in it.

Well, I am just seeing that post for the first time, although I did visit that page before – I just didn't scroll all the way down, as it was a quick skim.

Trust me, I was DOING the Park Jin Young dances in the "나이트" in 1995, when you were probably in middle school? Elementary school?

The fact that I stumbled across the same video on YouTube is a mere result of the fact that we've both been talking about JY recently (although for totally different reasons – here's my post of a few days ago), and we both ended up linking to the same, single video of that song on YouTube.

Sorry – me and JY go back waaaay farther than your post on him.

[Iceberg]

Another fun part of that era was that every song was packaged with its own dance which everyone followed in the rock cafes. I'll have to try to dig up some old videos that I shot back then.

Ah...feeling nostalgic.

[Iceberg]

Yikes...I just noticed that you sort of mentioned that in your previous comment. I'd better get myself another cup of coffee.