The Dual Career of “Arirang”: The Korean Resistance Anthem That Became a Japanese Pop Hit

The Dual Career of “Arirang”: The Korean Resistance Anthem That Became a Japanese Pop Hit
from The Journal of Asian Studies
Research ArticlesE. Taylor Atkins, The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 66 Issue 03 , pp 645-687
Arirang is known worldwide as the quintessential Korean folk song. Its iconic status in contemporary Korea derives from its perceived role in strengthening Korean resolve to resist the cultural violence of the Japanese colonial occupation (1905 45). A musical skeleton capable of countless improvised variations and interpretations, some Arirangs explicitly assailed the Japanese and thus were censored by colonial authorities. However, in the 1930s and 1940s, precisely the time when assimilationist pressures in colonial Korea were intensifying, Japanese songsmiths, singers, and recording companies released Arirang renditions in prodigious quantities, sometimes in collaboration with Korean performers. Arirang became the most familiar song in the Japanese empire: Its persistent theme of loss spoke to Koreans of their lost sovereignty and to Japanese of the ravaging effects of modernity on traditional lifeways. For both peoples, it served as a mirror for self-contemplation and an ethnographic lens for gazing upon the other.