The project Correlation between the 20th Century Contemporary Korean Poetry and Student Activists? Songs has two aims. First is to make a comprehensive database of student activists? songs (hereinafter ?the songs?) collected from 1960 to 2000. The dat ...
The project Correlation between the 20th Century Contemporary Korean Poetry and Student Activists? Songs has two aims. First is to make a comprehensive database of student activists? songs (hereinafter ?the songs?) collected from 1960 to 2000. The database will then be used to make a CD that has a search feature. Second is to analyze the songs in the database and find out their correlation with contemporary poetry. To this end, our research team categorized the songs as follows.
Categories are: (1) Creators ? composer, lyricist, singer (2) Lyricist ? poet, individual, group, unknown, others (3) Time of Creation (4) Duration of the Song (5) Listeners (6) Keywords (7) Song materials (8) Reference ? additional information for footnotes (9) Lyric. It is possible to track down categories (4) and (5) through data and interviews yet their accuracy and consistency could be in question so these two will not be reflected in our final research result. Approximately 1,800 songs are categorized according to the nine categories mentioned above and stored in a CD which provides a search feature. This will allow songs to be used as a basic data in the future, follow-up research (The CD is registered as a research result. Refer to the attached paper for detailed statistics.)
Various types of follow-up research will become possible through the CD. In a larger context, the CD will, first, allow research on correlation between the songs and contemporary poetry through comparison of elements such as theme, underlying spirit, creation process and etc. Second, the CD will allow research on time of creation and features of the songs. This paper which looks into the reunification spirit found in the songs is closer to the second type of research. Based on this paper, the scope of research could widen to include research that compares the reunification spirit found in contemporary poems with that found in the songs.
We obtained some results by categorizing 1,746 songs according to time of creation and theme. We divided the periods during which these songs were made into five stages and found out how the theme changed in each stage. Determining when the songs were exactly created and drawing a clear line between different periods plays a pivotal role in the basic analysis of the songs yet we had to accept some degree of uncertainties when undertaking such tasks. Academic research on the songs should give a historical and social interpretation of these songs and analyze their characteristics. However, as it was difficult to determine the exact time of creation and the duration of the songs, a general and objective categorization of periods used in historical and sociological studies was hard to achieve in this case. Thus, the categorization of periods was carried out loosely based on time of creation.
The CD made by our research team will provide solid information to fellow researchers working on student activists’ songs.
For each song, the CD provides the following:
1. Printable version that provides information on composer, lyricist, origin, recording period, lyric, historical event and etc.
2. Score of song whose lyric is adopted from a contemporary poem
3. Origin of song
4. Bibliography
5. Song creator index
6. Four papers written by our researchers
The CD allows for diverse types of search such as search by creators (i.e. composer and lyricist), time of creation, keywords, words in lyric, lyric and etc. In addition, search results could be printed for researcher’s convenience. The database of approximately 1,800 songs and the CD will serve as a valuable source not only in research on correlation between the songs and contemporary poetry but also in research on the songs themselves.