The Institute for Korean Studies presents:
Korean Songs: From Sijo to K-Pop
Young-mee Cho
Rutgers University
Flyer: Cho Flyer [PDF]
Abstract: Professor Cho discusses one of the most prominent and enduring poetic forms of traditional Korea, sijo, a three-line verse form written to be performed in a musical setting, emerged in the latter part of the Koryŏ dynasty (918-1392), flourished through the Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910). After chronicling the rise of this distinctive literary/musical genre, I will then explore its developmental into the 18th century sasŏl sijo as a narrative form and modern sijo as written both in Korean and English. Finally, I will examine the 20th century emergence of song lyrics as a new literary genre in the context of musical performance: art songs based on poems at one end and Korean popular music (yuhaengga & K-Pop) at the other.
Young-mee Yu Cho is an Associate Professor of Korean Language and Culture at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She is one of the five authors of the best-selling Korean language textbook series, Integrated Korean (University of Hawaii Press). In 2020, she published a new textbook for Korean heritage students, Integrated Korean--Accelerated and edited the volume, Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language: Theories and Practices. In addition to her publications in the areas of East Asian linguistics and Korean language education, she has been doing research on sociolinguistic issues, including Korean/Japanese honorifics and the development of Korean Hip Hop lyrics.
Free and Open to the Public
If you require an accommodation, such as live captioning, to participate in this event, please contact Stephanie Metzger at metzger.235@osu.edu or 614-247-4725. Requests made at least two weeks in advance of the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
This event is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.
