Special concert marking the centennial of Park Shi-choon’s birth

A special concert was held on October 9th at Olympic Hall in the Olympic Park in southern Seoul. Iconic Korean pop stars, from the legendary queen of elegy Lee Mi-ja, to today’s idol stars like BoA and Super Junior, were there to celebrate the centennial of songwriter Park Shi-choon’s birth. Despite their varying age and genre, these top musicians eagerly took part in the concert to express their respect and admiration for the renowned pop composer. Who exactly was Park Shi-choon?

Discovering his entertainer gene

Born on October 28, 1913 in Miryang밀양, South Gyeongsang Province, Park’s real name was Sun-dong순동. His father, Park Nam-po박남포, was a wealthy landowner and operator of a gisaeng, or Korean geisha, academy, where young ladies were trained in song and dance. The elder Park was also very knowledgeable in Korean traditional music, so much so that he was friends with famous master singers such as Song Man-gap송만갑 and Lee Dong-baek이동백.

Park Shi-choon, had been raised surrounded by music since his birth. But his family’s wealth quickly diminished after his father’s death when the young Park was in first grade. Poverty compelled him to leave his hometown at age 12 and start a long and difficult career in music.

Park tried to get over his father’s sudden death and subsequent financial hardship by listening to the music coming out of a café. When the café’s owner moved to another town, he started working part-time in the shop, taking his first step into the professional world of music. Afterward, he joined a theater company and a traveling film troupe as a drummer boy. Since the age of 14, Park traveled all over the country with the group, playing the drum by day and running the projector by night. In his spare time he learned how to play various musical instruments, like the trumpet, violin, and saxophone.

Later, Park became a member of the newly founded Arirang Song and Dance Group in Seoul, where he was given the stage name of Shi-choon, meaning “always be like the spring.” A big break in his career came when the songstress Rah Seon-gyo나선교 introduced Park as a promising songwriter to a record company executive. That’s when his career as a pop music composer took off.

Star songwriter with a copious number of hits

Starting with his first work, “A Song of Hope,” Park wrote hit after hit – “The Strait of Tears,” the debut song of the celebrated vocalist Nam In-soo남인수 in 1936, and after entering O.keh오케 Record Company at the recommendation of composer Kang Sa-rang강사랑 in the same year, “A Bar at a Port” for the esteemed Kim Jeong-koo김정구. Then he was reunited with Nam In-soo and had lyricist Lee Boo-poong이부풍 rewrite the words to the “Strait of Tears” and introduced it as a new release in 1938, which became the unprecedented sensation “The Serenade of Sorrow.”

Crying does not bring back my love
I comfort myself with tears on this sorrowful night
Silently I open the window and look at the starlight
Who is whistling for me?

The song with heart-wrenching words and an entrancing melody essentially opened a new era in Korean pop music. Park wrote songs that cover a wide range of genres, from the lyrical “Seogwipo Seventy-ri” and the witty “The World Is So Strange” to the new type of folk songs like “The Coral-colored Complain.” He was cited as one of the three greatest songwriters of O.Keh Record Company, together with Sohn Mok-in손목인 and Kim Hae-song김해송.

The root and pillar of Korean pop music

Park wasn’t just a songwriter, but an all-around entertainer. He founded Arirang Boys at Joseon Musical Company to showcase vocal ensemble, pantomime, and instrumental performance on stage. After Korea gained independence from Japan, he wrote a song celebrating Korea’s new sovereignty, “Lucky Seoul.” He didn’t stop working even during the Korean War, producing “Go Away, the 38th Parallel Line” to portray the pain of division, as well as “Be Strong, Geum-sun금순” and “Busan Station of Parting” to give hope and courage to the war refugees.

Because of his indelible mark in Korean music history and countless musical legacies, Park was lauded as the root and pillar of Korean pop music. He received the government’s Culture Medal in 1982, the first for a pop music composer.

Spending his entire life writing songs that brought out Korean people’s common sentiments, Park passed away on June 30th, 1996 after a long illness. His failing health could not keep his creative spirit down and he wrote songs until the day he died, leaving us with roughly three thousand songs. Every Korean knows one or two of his songs, making Park Shi-choon a true legend of Korean pop music.