Abstract

In the history of Korean contemporary music, “identity” was an important issue inevitably faced by most composers: Korean composers were meant to find their own musical styles, while appropriating new Western music trends and contemplating their identity as Korean. Through the harsh post-war period, experiencing modernization and modernism during the 1960s-1970s, the democratic movements in the 1980s, and fast incorporation into the global neo-liberal system from the late 1990s, Korean composers revealed their musical identities in diverse ways, according to their socio-cultural conditions and individual concerns. This paper attempts to review how Korean composers’ “identity” discourses have changed in Korean contemporary music, from the post-war generation, like La Unyung, to young composers in their thirties, through a focus on three issues: tradition, nationalism, and locality. As a result, I argue that the identities of Korean composers are thoroughly individualized, hybridized, and multi-faceted in the globalized new music scene, both transgressing boundaries and connecting the locals.