북한 민족음악의 실제 『조선민요의 조식체계』와 『조선민요조식과 민족전통화성』을 중심으로

Abstract

North Korea’s minjok ŭmak 民族音楽 (ethnic music) emphasized the content and meaning of the songs, and broke the constrictions of nationalistic traits, which was a socialist view of music. The simultaneous pursuit of national development and regime maintenance, while competing with South Korea, and tensions with superpowers led to the formation of these characteristics. Minjok ŭmak comprises popularity, which focuses on the realities of the present times; nationality, which reflects traditions and the past; and modernity, which represents external inputs and the present. In that sense, minjok ŭmak was flexible and maintained sensitivity toward the influences of external input, and also integrated genres rather than categorizing them into a certain style (i.e., traditional, Western or popular). Considering these characteristics, this paper studied the practice of North Korea’s minjok ŭmak using tangible structures, which were the National Traditional Harmony and Chosŏn Minyo Chosik (『조선민요조식과 민족전통화성』), and the Chosik System of Chosŏn Minyo (『조선민요의 조식체계』). The emphasis on minyo was in connection to its role in being ‘the people’s music,’ in line with the North’s heavy focus on nationalism as a concept linked to ‘the people,’ a general feature of socialist countries. Minjok ŭmak is at its core ‘people’s music,’ but it embraced court music, which was a musical form of the ruling class, viewing it as a legacy of minjok ŭmak. North Korea’s focus on nationalism led to interaction with modern, contemporary western tonal music based on major and minor scales. It also concentrated its efforts to theorize and institutionalize Korea’s tonal music system, which was based on p’yŏngjo 平調 and kyemyŏnjo 界面調, to achieve independent development. North Korea’s minjok ŭmak focused on popularity as grounds to acknowledge and utilize modern music symbols from external influence as a foundation as well as using the traditional music symbols which were intrinsic to Koreans handed down historically.