Kim Won-gyun

Kim Won-gyun (Korean: 김원균; 2 January 1917 – 5 April 2002)[4] was a North Korean composer and politician. He is considered one of the most prominent,[5] if not the most celebrated,[6] composer of North Korea. He composed "Aegukka" — the national anthem of the country — and "Song of General Kim Il-sung", in addition to revolutionary operas.[5]

This is a Korean name; the family name is Kim.
Kim Won-gyun
Born(1917-01-02)2 January 1917
Wonsan, Kangwon Province, Korea[1]
Died5 April 2002(2002-04-05) (aged 85)
OccupationComposer, politician
Era20th century
Kim Won-gyun
Chosŏn'gŭl
김원균
Hancha
Revised RomanizationKim Won-gyun
McCune–ReischauerKim Wŏn'gyun
[1][2][3]

Career

In his youth, Kim Won-gyun attended high school but dropped out after three grades.[4] After the liberation of Korea, he wrote his first composition: "March of Korea".[7] Before his musical career, Kim had been only "a farmer who just happened to write [the] 'Song of General Kim Il Sung'".[6] That was in 1946, very early into the cult of personality of Kim Il-sung; the song was the first work of art that ostensibly mentions Kim Il-sung.[8] After the success of the song, he was asked to compose "Aegukka". As a musician, he was initially self-taught but went to Moscow in order to study there.[9] At some point he attended a music school in Japan.[5] By 1947, when "Aegukka" was adapted as the national anthem,[10] he had risen in status.[6] Other compositions by Kim include: "Democratic Youth March", "Our Supreme Commander", "Glory to the Workers' Party of Korea", "Sunrise on Mt. Paektu", "Steel-stong Ranks Advance", "Song of Great National Unity",[11] "We Rush Forward in Spirit of Chollima", and "Song of Anti-Imperialist Struggle".[12]

Kim is credited with contributing to "the creation of the 'Sea of Blood' -type revolutionary operas".[11] It is possible that he worked on the operatic version of Sea of Blood and a symphony based on music from the opera.[13] He is also credited with the opera Chirisan.[14]

Kim served as a composer to National Art Theatre.[7] He also became the head of the Central Committee of the Korean Musicians Union in 1954, and would later become the vice-president and president of the Union.[5] He was the president of the Pyongyang University of Music and Dance since 1960. In 1985, he became the general director of the Sea of Blood Opera Troupe.[5][11] He was the North Korean chairman of the Reunification Music Festival in September 1990.[5] He was also the chairman of the National Music Committee of Korea[15] and honorary member of the International Music Council.[16] Besides his musical activities, he was a deputy to the ninth and tenth Supreme People's Assemblies (SPA).[5] Upon his death in 2002, he held the posts of deputy to the SPA and adviser to the Central Committee of the Korean Musicians Union.[17]

He received many prizes and honors, including Labor Hero, Merited Artist, People's Artist, recipient of the Order of Kim Il-sung and a Kim Il-sung Prize winner.[5][16] The Pyongyang Conservatory was renamed the Kim Won-gyun Conservatory on 27 June 2006.[5][11]

Kim Won-gyun died on 5 April 2002 of heart failure. Kim Jong-il sent a wreath to his bier on the day following his death.[17] Kim Jong-un paid homage to Kim Won-gyun by organizing a concern on the centenary of his birth in 2017.[7]

gollark: Hmm, this is a possible concern I guess.
gollark: There might be helpers for that in the standard library, which this would actually have.
gollark: I would probably also drop forms since their functionality is fairly easy to replicate with the scripting capabilities.
gollark: Oh, and in terms of arbitrary preferences, I'd probably make some of the web APIs more functional programming™️ instead of using objects; instead of `URL` objects, you would just have a `parseURL` function returning a table of URL components, and `serializeURL` function... unparsing it.
gollark: Well, also the web is gigantically complicated and there's no hope of dislodging it.

See also

References
  1. Yonhap News Agency, Seoul (27 December 2002). North Korea Handbook. M.E. Sharpe. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-7656-3523-5. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  2. "Gukka" 국가(國歌). JoongAng Ilbo (in Korean). Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  3. George Ginsburgs (1974). Soviet Works on Korea, 1945-1970: Prepared for the Joint Committee on Korean Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. University of Southern California Press. p. 137. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  4. 내나라 [Kim Won-gyun]. Naenara (in Korean). Archived from the original on 13 August 2009. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  5. James E. Hoare (13 July 2012). Historical Dictionary of Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Scarecrow Press. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-8108-7987-4. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  6. Marie Korpe (4 September 2004). Shoot the Singer!: Music Censorship Today. Zed Books. p. 220. ISBN 978-1-84277-505-9. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  7. "Kim Won Gyun, World-famous Composer". KCNA. 4 May 2018. Archived from the original on 17 May 2018.
  8. Jae-Cheon Lim (24 March 2015). Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea: The Leader State. Routledge. p. 29. ISBN 978-1-317-56741-7. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  9. Portal, Jane (15 August 2005). Art Under Control in North Korea. Reaktion Books. pp. 92–93. ISBN 978-1-86189-236-2. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  10. IBP, Inc. (13 April 2015). Korea North Country Study Guide Volume 1 Strategic Information and Developments. Lulu.com. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-4330-2780-2. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  11. "Famous Musician Kim Won Gyun". KCNA. 30 June 2006. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  12. "Kim Won Gyun concert". KCNA. 10 March 1997. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  13. Keith Howard (22 December 2004). "Dancing for the Eternal President". In Annie J. Randall (ed.). Music, Power, and Politics. Routledge. pp. 130, 178. ISBN 1-135-94690-6. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  14. "Korea". The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (3rd ed.). The Gale Group. 1970–1979. Retrieved 5 July 2015 – via TheFreeDictionary.com.
  15. Yonhap News Agency (2000). Korea Annual. Yonhap News Agency. p. 284. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  16. "Composer Living along with Conservatory". KCNA. 10 August 2009. Archived from the original on 12 October 2014. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  17. "Kim Won Gyun passed away". KCNA. 6 April 2002. Retrieved 5 July 2015.

Further reading
  • Kim Sunnam; Kim Won-gyun (1953). "Iskusstvo sluzhit narodu (O razvitii muzykainoi kultury Koreisko Narodno-Demokraticheskoi Respubliki)" [Art Serves the People: On the Musical Culture of the Korean People's Democratic Republic]. Sovetskaya muzyka (in Russian) (3): 109–111.
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