낙동강에서 입영열차까지 - 노래 속의 군인 표상과 그 의미

Abstract

This paper is to examine how soldiers have been portrayed in popularsongs such as hit numbers, oral traditions and protest songs since thebreak-up of the Korean War. It is also to look into how Koreans, living in our society at the time, observed their soldiers and how their opinion of those who were doing their military services have been changed by reviewing the songs which enjoyed a popularity among the civilians. Pop songs of the 1950s which were released after the Korean War portrayed the soldiers during the war. These songs were mostly the ones succeeded in finding a balance between portraying a soldier as an individual with a personal life and meeting the ruling ideology's demand that he should fulfil his military obligations as a war's expendability. By the 1960s, however, those grim images of soldiers in war disappeared and soldiers in everyday life, more polished and stylish professionals, emerged. Meanwhile, in oral traditions which were sung by the soldiers who were doing their military services portrayed them as a being which was put in the hierachized absurdity or the one with a suppressed libido. Pop songs of the 1970s and 80s showed different attitudes and expectations toward soldiers held by both older generations who had experienced the war and younger generations who were born after the war. Unlike the older generations who expected their sons to become‘mature’as a person after serving the country, the youth expressed their frustration before joining the army in songs. However, it was still a time when people thought doing the military services as a duty and such mentality tended to portray the protesting activists like soldiers in students' movement songs. Pop songs since the 1990s dealt compulsory military services only as a personal, painful and horrible experiences. It's reasonable that the number of songs dealing with the military has decreased as people are no longer keen to doing the military services.