I’m not going to lie, I’m a rock guy. I have been since I was in middle school. I own and listen to other genres, but if you were to look through my CD collect you’d see it’s mostly rock music.
As you may or may not know, I live in Korea now. Since arriving here, I’ve beens surprised by the extreme lack of indigenous rock music. I’m by no means saying it’s non-existant. There is a rock scene, with some really decent rock bands in it, but what surprises me is the lack of rock not compared to the mammoth nation of America, but compared to Japan. I mean Japan and Korea are similar countries in many ways, yet where there’s a lot of Japanese rock bands there are surprisingly few Korean counterparts.
I’ve been trying to figure this out and can’t really put my finger on it. Geographically the two countries are similar in size and terrain. Their diets are similar. Both countries were ravaged by war in the middle of the 20th century and rebuilt. Their cultures are fairly similar with a heavy emphasis on family and “the group” over the individual. Both countries are also fairly male dominated socities.
So why is it that there are so many more Japanese bands then Korean bands? I don’t live in Japan, I don’t have a lot of exposure to Japanese entertainment, yet I know of a lot more Japanese bands than I do of Korean bands (and with the Korean bands I’m counting bad college punk bands with no records and even with those bands, I can still name a lot more Japanese rock outfits.)
For awhile I thought that perhaps due to the male population of Korea’s mandatory military service, bands couldn’t get their act together for any duration of time, and that seemed like a reasonable answer, but then I realized roughly 50% of the population never has to serve in the military. Which brings up another interesting point, women are serverly under-represented in the Korean rock scene.
If it was strictly the Confucian, patriarcical society that caused women to be excluded, Japan’s rock scene would be similar, however that is not the case.
Countless Japanese bands are fronted by ladies (Shonen Knife, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Pizacato Five) or have female members (Boredoms, [insert some other band who’s name I forgot here]). The number of Korean bands with female members is drastically smaller than in Japan. Out of those bands, two of them have ties to Japan. Cherry Filter (perhaps the biggest female fronted rock band), has a female lead singer, who was originally a solo artist in Japan. Another band, Nonstop Body, is a female punk band whose albums, with the exception of some compilation work, are released on a Japanese record label.
Cherry Filter has a female lead singer (who incidently got her start as a solo artist in Japan), Schizo (an indie metal band) has a female bass player, and Nonstop Body (a punk band) is composed completely of females (they are actually on a Japanese record label).
Even when looking outside of the realm of rock music, the pop music of Japan tends to be more, for lack of a better word, rockin’. The most popular music in Korea (aside for eye candy boy bands, and even they have this style tune) are sappy ballads about unrequited love, which always have music videos in which someone dies.
This is not to say Koreans don’t like rock. Perhaps the most well known and popular musician in Korean is Seo Taiji, an artist credited with bringing rap, rock, metal, and emo to Korea. It is also quite telling, that Seo Taiji spends the majority of his time outside of Korea.
