Seo Taiji 1992-2004: South Korean popular music and masculinity (my master's thesis) © Janet Hilts 2006 - please note: this is not the final version of my thesis.

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Published 화요일, 3월 21, 2006 by 쟈넷 | E-mail this post

A small city in Kyôngsangbuk-do, South Korea, winter 2002

I was wooed with a Seo Taiji cd. At the time, as a young Canadian in her mid twenties still swimming in the euphoric and confused first phase of culture shock, I didn’t notice. One day on the weekend outside of class, I received a Seo Taiji cd from one of my students a little younger than me. He was handsome, athletic and very determined and hardworking when it came to learning English. I liked him. At the time I received the cd, actually a copied cd off his computer, I knew almost nothing about South Korea. This cd taught me more than just how valued Taiji is to many Koreans of my generation. In receiving it, I began to learn about the relations between many Korean young men and women, a gendered world that falsely seemed simple.

When my student gave me the cd, he said that his girlfriend was angry he had made it for me. I remember clearly I though something along the lines of “What a pathetic girlfriend. She must be crazy. It’s just a cd! He’d better break up with this jealous psycho of a girlfriend before he goes insane too!” I kept my mouth shut (thank god) but it took a few months to realize her reaction to my gift was not “crazy” or “pathetic” but actually quite ordinary. As I began to try to make sense of my surroundings, I began to realize that the behaviours of many couples around my age, which to me seemed like middle school-aged antics, were actually serious and meaningful. Though still very confused about how a 25 or 26 year old women could get upset over her boyfriend making some other female a small present, I realized that receiving this cd meant more than I had assumed.

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