Hanguk Hip Hop: Global Rap in South Korea

By Myoung-Sun Song

How has Hanguk (South Korean) hip hop developed over the last two decades as a musical, cultural, and artistic entity? How is hip hop understood within historical, sociocultural, and economic matrices of Korean society? How is hip hop represented in Korean media and popular culture? This book utilizes ethnographic methods, including fieldwork research and life timeline interviews with fifty-three influential hip hop artists, in order to answer these questions. It explores the nuanced meaning of hip hop in South Korea, outlining the local, global, and (trans)national flows of musical and cultural exchanges.

Throughout the chapters, Korean hip hop is examined through the notion of buran—personal and societal anxiety or uncertainty—and how it manifests in the dimensions of space and place, economy, cultural production, and gender. Ultimately, buran serves as a metaphoric state for Hanguk hip hop in that it continuously evolves within the conditions of Korean society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Apr 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9783030156978

Book preview

© The Author(s) 2019

Myoung-Sun SongHanguk Hip HopEast Asian Popular Culturehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15697-8_1

1. We All Made Us: Historicizing Hanguk Hip Hop

Myoung-Sun Song¹  

(1)

Department of American Culture, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

Myoung-Sun Song

Email: [e-mail]

We had been talking for a little over ninety minutes in a basement cafe in Sangsudong called 100% Original Coffee. Our interview was winding down to the last few questions and rapper Born Kim paused for a brief moment. He looked straight at me and said, Isn’t it amazing? He continued to explain, "It is not like when the missionaries came to Korea with a clear purpose and built churches. It was MTV and a few CDs that made its way to Korea and were passed to someone. That someone listened to it and said ‘This is cool. I want to try it.’ Those someones met together and Hanguk [Korean] hip hop grew this much. It was never about ‘I am doing it to build hip hop culture’ but because of the true joy and pleasure that came from rapping and making music. I did it because I liked black music and from that hip hop gave me the biggest pleasure. I did not know what it was exactly, but hip hop was the best. I think that because I grew up in the 1990s—between the analog and digital eras—I was given the special privilege of knowing hip hop. Had I been born before, it might have been jazz, blues, soul, etc. Or had I been born later and not known the boombap years, I would have thought that only trap music is hip hop" (personal communication, October 8, 2014).

Born Kim, a rapper born in 1981, remembers the first time he fell in love with black music. In 1999, he had taken a Kool & The Gang album from his father’s shelves just out of curiosity. Two years before then, his parents had put in cable television in their home. Calling himself an MTV kid, Born Kim remembers watching Yo! MTV Raps. Before MTV, there was the Armed Forces Korea Network (AFKN), or often referred to as Channel #02 by many of the artists I interviewed for this book, where he remembers watching Soul Train. Born Kim’s consumption of American television and popular music is not unique, in that it represents how American hip hop was largely introduced to Koreans in the 1990s. Various forms of media and technology, including television and particularly the personal computer, play an important role in the making of hip hop in South Korea (henceforth Korea).

The birth and development of Korean hip hop is marked by many travels including (1) tangible forms of music like cassette tapes and CDs from America to Korea, (2) individual bodies to/from America and within Korea, and (3) communities of hip hop listeners. Within the confluence of these travels, there are important shifts and transformations where Korean fans of American hip hop grew into artists who are deeply involved in defining Korean hip hop’s lyrics, sounds, and culture (cf. Appadurai 1996). Just like the name of the cafe Born Kim and I were meeting in, many of my interviews and conversations with hip hop artists ultimately led to a discussion of what was original, real, and authentic (or consequently not original, real, or authentic) about Korean hip hop as music and culture.

In Black noise, Tricia Rose (1994) defines rap as a black cultural expression that prioritizes black voices from the margins of urban America (p. 2). Rap music, as one element or practice within hip hop culture, serves as a public and highly accessible place, where black meanings and perspectives—even as they are manipulated by corporate concerns—can be shared and validated among black people (Rose 1994, p. 17). In the last four decades, what started in the 1970s postindustrial city of New York as a cultural form that attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity, and oppression within the cultural imperatives of African-American and Caribbean history, identity, and community (Rose 1994, p. 21) has become a musical language understood and spoken by the global youth. When the culture of hip hop—DJ, b-boying/b-girling, graffiti and rap—traveled to the East Asian location of Korea, the ideologies and cultures embedded in American hip hop become (re)organized in the Korean language and context.

Korean hip hop has a little over twenty years of history. Within these two decades, it saw birth to three generations of rappers. It is noteworthy that most rappers do not like the dividing of generations because it creates a barrier in communication, especially in Korean society where age creates hierarchy. Nonetheless, there are some constructive aspects to having generations such as offering a sense of belonging. But with belonging, also comes responsibilities (Hash Swan, personal communication, April 20, 2018). Because these generations are only divided into five to eight year periods, many agree that an actual first generation has not ended. Yet, I will use these distinctions for the purposes of this book as they are widely utilized by musicians, fans, and media. I use generation not in its dictionary term of classifying a body of individuals born within a thirty year or so time period, but more so as a group of people who share a similar beginning in their careers.

The first generation fell in love with American hip hop often through an introduction via AFKN and MTV. Many of these fans logged onto personal computer (PC) communities and met in offline places to question and discuss how rap could work in the Korean language. The second generation—who were in their mid to late teens when they saw the first generation perform—turned their stories of youth into relatable lyrics. The third generation includes those whose love for hip hop grew from Korean hip hop. For some third generation rappers, they have never listened to, or to borrow older generations’ words, researched American hip hop. A more in-depth look into the three generations will be provided in the sections below.

In the years of completing this book, I often thought about an anthem song for the project and there is one I replayed in times I needed direction: Jerry.k’s (2012) We All Made Us featuring Paloalto, The Quiett, Deepflow, and Dok2. ¹ The hook of the song is central to this project: "We made a gold mine from a place filled with ‘no’s (we made us) / From a nobody to a cool somebody (we made us) / We built a stadium where there was no game (we made us) / Hanguk hip hop (we made us) / We do it for ourselves, we do it for ourselves / We do it for ourselves, we do it for ourselves / We do it for ourselves (we made us), Hanguk hip hop (we made us)."

While making something from nothing is a common theme in hip hop (cf. Kathleen Knight Abowitz’s (1997) work on the Horatio Alger mythology in American hip hop culture), it is telling of Korean hip hop that "a stadium [was built] where there was no game." Each verse of the song touches on important issues in the discussion of Korean hip hop. What is particularly striking about this hook is the repeated use of the term Hanguk hip hop . In Korea today, American hip hop and Korean hip hop exist as separate categories in music charts and sales: oeguk hipap meaning foreign hip hop and gungnae hipap meaning domestic hip hop. Hanguk hip hop is also widely used to refer to Korean hip hop. The literal translation of Hanguk hip hop is Korean hip hop. Hanguk means both Korea (noun) and Korean (adjective). As will be demonstrated throughout this book, the use of Hanguk offers sociocultural and political dimensions in negotiating Korean hip hop.

In the third verse of the song, Deepflow not only outlines a personal trajectory of Korean hip hop, but its position in Korean society:

We made us, we all resemble our mothers / With yellow skin, hearts are black / We have lost all sense of fear, do not ask us why / We walk the outskirts, it only messes with our pride / Some earn and sweep money, give them a thumbs up / Some walk through the fog, clear the way for them / Who can say that one path is worthier than the other? / We made us, we all carry the stones to build our castle / Master Plan is born, Big Deal, Soul Com / We protected it for ten years, this ball that was shot up by a homunculus / Sun comes up, the light is bright / We saw the future, Illionaire, Hi-Lite / That is right, this is our playground. Sweat splatters each day / A spider’s web that sometimes binds you, let us make a fire right now / Everyone hurdle and pat each other on the back. Let us applaud. / To the phrase, ‘As far as here,’ only lies a question mark.

Deepflow traces Korean hip hop’s history with the birth of Club Master Plan and independent hip hop labels like Big Deal Records and Soul Company to today’s Hi-Lite Records and Illionaire Records. Although this accomplishment is worthy, there are questions to how far hip hop can grow in Korea reflected in the lines as far as here [yeogikkaji]. In the final verse, Jerry.k raps, "Before you become a rapper, do hip hop first / … / It ain’t black, can’t ever be the authorized textbook / Paloalto , Deepflow , The Q and Gonzo and Me, Jerry.k / Listen to us and learn, we made us." It is interesting to note Jerry.k’s use of the word geomjeong gyogwaseo in the song. While geomjeong gyogwaseo refers to government authorized textbooks used in schools, the word geomjeong is a homonym for the color black. Using this meaning, black or blackness can also serve as an authorized textbook in the discussion of hip hop. The questions of racial identity and authenticity will be further explored in the next chapter.

Four research questions guide this project:

1.

How does hip hop—as culture and commodity—travel across local, global, and (trans)national boundaries?

2.

How is hip hop understood within the historical, sociocultural, and economic conditions of Korea?

3.

How does Korean hip hop define, sustain, and expand itself within and against K-pop?

4.

How are race and gender understood and represented within Korean hip hop?

These questions are my own interventions to the existing conversations on popular music and (national) identity, taking into consideration the intricate historical, sociocultural, and economic conditions that underlie the production, circulation, and consumption of music today. By investigating Korean hip hop—particularly through the eyes, ears, and narratives of rap artists—this book contributes to the study of East Asia, popular music, popular culture, media, and identity. Some of the artists I have interviewed use words like mutation, modification, and transformation to describe Korean hip hop. Without being overly romantic, something beautiful can be born from a mutated state.

I look at Hanguk hip hop, not as a proper noun that is tied to one particular set of sound, aesthetic, or sensibility, but more so as a loose grouping of hip hop music made by artists in Korea, primarily using the Korean language. Or as Zico describes, People have different definitions of what Hanguk hip hop is. Each individual wants his/her definition to take importance. It is not that one definition is better or more accurate than others. It is a competition of values and this competition allows Korean hip hop to grow (personal communication, May 4, 2016). Instead of offering one specific definition, I attempt to look at Hanguk hip hop as (1) Korean hip hop and (2) hip hop in Korea. Most importantly, for Hanguk (or Korea), what meaning does hip hop have?

Historicizing Korean Hip Hop

In the global circulation of music, how and why certain sounds, styles, and practices cross national boundaries become important. For Martin Stokes (2004), what is heard implies forms and processes of embodied social interaction (p. 68). This takes into serious consideration the musical, sociopolitical, and economic conditions that underlie the global music order (Stokes 2004). In the modern world, musical styles travel along multiple trajectories including people via aural/oral transmission, with instruments and technologies, and with social institutions that connect people globally—sport, religion, political organizations, and so forth (Stokes 2004, p. 109). In these conditions, every element of hybridized style is itself a hybrid, a bricolage of previous encounters, assimilation and blendings (Stokes 2004, p. 111).

In a globalized world, hybridity not only commodifies what on the surface is a new form of difference, but also reproduces old preconceptions and hegemonies (Taylor 2007, p. 143). For Doobo Shim (2006), cultural hybridization allows the examination of how local cultural agents and actors interact and negotiate with global forms, using them as resources through which Koreans construct their own cultural spaces, as exemplified in the case of rap (p. 38). Therefore, what makes Korean popular music Korean is not an essentialized Koreanness, but rather its appropriation of and negotiation with global forces (Joo 2011, p. 502). Until the mid-1990s, a one-way flow of cultural production from America to Korea was dominant. Since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, Korea emerged as a large exporter of cultural products within Asia. Whilst these changes directed new cultural flows, Korea still remains heavily influenced by the US through the institutionalization of cultural industries (Jin 2007).

In considering Hanguk hip hop as a site of local, global, and (trans)national flows, this book examines the intersections of popular music and (national) identity. Hanguk hip hop is a site of global cultural flows, in that it is continuously influenced by American hip hop, whilst it persists to sustain and evolve itself as Korean hip hop. What is contested through these musical, linguistic, sociocultural, economic, and historical flows is the notion of authenticity. What is real or original about Hanguk hip hop? Is there something fundamentally Korean about Hanguk hip hop? How is hip hop understood in the continued flow of American culture and influence in Korean society? Conversely, how does Korean hip hop flow outside of its local and national boundaries? How do these flows shape the understanding of Korea or Koreanness? When asked what defines the Hanguk in Hanguk hip hop, Deegie, a first generation rapper who debuted in 1998, answers:

For me, it is the philosophy. This is something I said during a lecture I gave: Korean hip hop is music made from buran . That is why kids love Dok2. They want to wear Rolex watches and ride Mercedes Benzes when in reality that cannot be the focus of their lives. If they are at school they get asked, ‘Why aren’t you studying harder?’; When they are about to graduate from school, they get asked ‘Which university are you going to?’; When they go to college, ‘When are you going to the army?’; When they come back from the army, ‘Which company are you going to work for?’; When they get employed, ‘When are you going to get married?’; When they get married, ‘When are you going to have children?’ or ‘When are you buying your apartment?’; When they have children, ‘Do your children do well in school?’ It is a never-ending cycle. What is the message for these kids then? Please tell me a country other than ours where a rapper gets famous for his educational pedigree? Beenzino and Verbal Jint aside, half of the rappers are yuhaksaengs. (personal communication, August 22, 2014) ²

What is most important in Deegie’s answer as to what defines the Hanguk in Hanguk hip hop is the notion of buran . While there is no English word that can provide a direct translation for buran , it is Korean for personal, as well as, societal anxiety or uncertainty that is manifested on many levels, including psychological, sociocultural, and economic dimensions. My study looks at hip hop through the notion of buran. I examine buran in the context of space and place, economy, cultural production, and gender. Each of the following chapters focuses on the aforementioned dimensions to argue that Korean hip hop is ever evolving and changing to reflect the society it is a part of. In doing so, it also demonstrates how notions authenticity are continuously questioned, challenged, and redefined. While hip hop culture encompasses various elements including rap, graffiti, DJ-ing, and b-boy/b-girling—for the purposes of this project—I mainly look at Korean rap. As such, I use the terms hip hop and rap interchangeably. I attest this as a limitation as I have only been able to look at one element of hip hop—rap—and that the majority of my interviewees are rappers.

Kyung Hyun Kim (2004) in his book, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, argues that men portrayed in Korean film reflect a series of traumas modern Korean history has endured, including: Japanese colonialism, national division, Korean War, United States military presence in Korea, military dictatorship under Park Chung-Hee and Chun Doo-Hwan, Westernization, and the Asian Financial Crisis (cf. Kyung-Sup Chang’s (2001) work on Korea’s compressed modernity). Through the crises, the notion of home and family become severely broken. Men—alienated and traumatized—desire to regain wholeness and to recover from the oppressive conditions of society, which often comes through the sacrifice or destruction of women.

Other scholars like Nancy Abelmann (2003) note collapse as an important metaphor for Korea in the 1990s, including the actual 1994 collapse of Seongsu Bridge, 1995 collapse of Sampoong Department Store, and the symbolic economic collapse of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis (p. 6). Echoing the notion of collapse, Laurel Kendall (2001) argues that Korean identities have been construction sites for new definitions of home, family, work, and leisure in the shifting conditions of Korea, including urbanization, industrialization, military authoritarianism, democratic reform, and social liberalization (p. 1). While public discourse had focused on hard work and personal sacrifice in the name of national development, the 1990s saw a decline in censorship and social control and the emergence of a consumer culture (Kendall 2001, p. 3).

Although Korean hip hop is completely different from film, it arguably extends into the traumas that Kim (2004) outlines in his book. The artists who are involved in making music are second and third generation to the series of traumas modern Korea has endured. They are also first generation to new traumas that emerge as a continuation of Westernization, Asian Financial Crisis, and the emergence of a multicultural society. Consequently, collapse (Abelmann 2003) and construction sites (Kendall 2001) are symbolic images that are ultimately tied to the notion of buran as articulated by Deegie. Buran manifests within these traumas and remains as the conditions within which the rappers operate. Buran also serves as a metaphoric state of Korean hip hop, which is continuously evolving within the conditions of Korean society.

In this section, I outline the historical, sociocultural, and economic background in which Korean hip hop developed and continues to grow. By doing so, I provide a very brief history of Korean hip hop to contextualize my own research and analysis. While there are many debates on when Korean hip hop actually started, I start my timeline with the 1992 debut of Seo Taiji and Boys. ³ I categorize Korean hip hop into largely four periods. ⁴ Each period is not completely isolated or separable, but organically falls over one another, as is history (Table 1.1).

Table 1.1

Timeline outlining the important periods and shifts in Korean hip hop

In 1992, Korean audiences got their first taste of hip hop from the birth of an idol group called Seo Taiji and Boys who debuted in the mainstream music scene—which was at the time replete with ballads—with a dance song infused with rap. With Seo Taiji and Boys came the introduction of a new musical soundscape that became almost invariably ‘Western’ pop music but also in introducing dance as a critical element of their performance (Lie 2012, p. 349). Groups like Seo Taiji and Boys, Hyun Jinyoung and Wawa, and Deux helped to create a genre later labeled as rap dance, where rap segments are incorporated into dance music and performance (Kim et al. 2008). The success of Seo Taiji and Boys is described by Eun-young Jung (2006) as efficient localization of global lexicons selectively redefined for the needs and sensibilities of Korean youth, (p. 109) in that the initial adaptation was not strongly reminiscent of American rap: [Seo’s] childlike face, youthful fashion, playful dancing and the song’s love theme were far removed from the negative images of African American culture (p. 112).

Though hip hop was introduced to the music scene through a hybrid genre called rap dance, Korean hip hop began to grow as a cultural and artistic entity from 1996 when hip hop music devotees, with the help of technology, began to actively participate and engage in virtual spaces. Fans of hip hop joined PC community groups like BLEX, Dope Soundz, and Show N Prove (SNP) to share Korean translations of English lyrics, swap imported cassette tapes and CDs, and discuss the meaning of hip hop in their lives. Participants of PC community groups started to meet offline and establish hip hop—particularly the narrative performance of rap—in the Korean language and culture. Simply put, hip hop did not start in the streets