2024-07-22 22:35:07
Kim Min-ki’s songs had the power to warm the depths of the heart. Although he himself was extremely wary of becoming a symbol of any culture or ideology and was a recluse, his songs that resonated through the plaza drove away the darkness in our hearts during those dark times.
Kim Min-ki, who entered the Department of Painting at Seoul National University in 1969, formed a two-person band called ‘Dobidu’ with fellow alumnus Kim Young-se and entered the music industry in earnest. The ‘House of the Frog’ at the YWCA Hall in Myeongdong, Seoul was the birthplace of Kim Min-ki’s music. In this space where young people freely played the acoustic guitar and sang, Kim Min-ki was reborn as a first-generation Korean folk singer-songwriter.
The meeting with singer Yang Hee-eun, a classmate of Jaedong Elementary School, left a mark in the history of Korean popular music. Yang Hee-eun, who also frequented Cheonggaeguri’s House, fell in love at first sight when she heard Kim Min-ki play Morning Dew at a concert. She picked up the sheet music that Kim Min-ki had torn up and asked him to write the song, which he released in 1971. The lyrics, which seemed to be a metaphor for the political situation at the time, touched the hearts of young people and were sung in the anti-Yushin movement. It was designated as a banned song in 1975.
Kim Min-ki’s lyrics and composition, and Yang Hee-eun’s sung ‘Evergreen’ (1979) is his representative work that cannot be left out. It is a song that Kim Min-ki wrote for a joint wedding ceremony of workers who worked together at the factory and taught him to study every morning. Kim Min-ki’s beautiful lyrics and Yang Hee-eun’s clear voice were combined to create songs that had never been seen in Korea before, such as ‘The Road to Seoul’, ‘A Small Pond’, ‘Swan’, ‘Beautiful Things’, and ‘Bonguri’. Yang Hee-eun recalled, “Kim Min-ki was the beginning and peak of my music.”
But as his songs became symbols of the resistance movement in the 1970s and 1980s, his life became more difficult. Morning Dew and Evergreen were banned, and his first solo album, ‘Kim Min-ki’, released in 1971, was also banned from sale. After his discharge, he continued his music activities in secret while working as a factory worker, but the military regime did not leave him alone. He was arrested and interrogated numerous times. For a while, he became a farmer and distanced himself from music.
What brought him back to Seoul was the school fund, which he called a “sowing ground farm.” Needing money to set up the school fund, he collected the songs he had written and released a total of four albums of “Kim Min-ki’s Complete Works” (1993). It was the first album he had officially released after his first album, released in 1971, was banned from sale. After that, he officially retired as a singer.
“I am going now/To that rough wilderness/Leaving all sorrow/I am going now…” (From ‘Morning Dew’)
Reporter Choi Ji-seon [email protected]
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2024-07-22 22:35:07