ABSTRACT
In Korea, traditional music (kugak) is still very much alive. Nonetheless, new genres have begun to emerge, connected-to a lesser or greater degree-to the old. Musical development has taken place against a complex background of competing national and international political systems. The two Korean states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), have adopted distinct but different policies toward artistic production. A unified but gradually evolving ideology based on a Soviet-and Chinese-inspired socialist realism is discernible in North Korea. In South Korea, conservative forces have argued the merits of preserving old music and have often opposed the creation of the new, while at the same time many Korean violinists, pianists, and opera singers have become international stars. The importation of Western art and popular music (yangak), and its emergence as the dominant form of musical production, complicates the account that is the subject of this section.
