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<DIV><FONT size=4>Dear friends and colleagues,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>Michael Munk's article "<EM>The Fate of the Kwaks</EM>" at
NKNews,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>which I have also circulated on some Korean studies
lists,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>has elicited a swift and very interesting response below
from</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>Keith Howard, who knows a lot about music in North
Korea. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>I have his permission to pass this on, and am glad to do
so.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>Aidan FC</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>****************</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria>Thanks for this, Aidan. </FONT><FONT face=Cambria>A list
of some 40 or so Korean musicians who moved to the North was published back in
1989 by No Tongûn (in his Han'guk minjok ûmak hyôndan'gye). Clearly, it was only
partial, and the Kwak's didn't figure in it, most likely because No was reliant
on information he tracked down in South Korea. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria>No also wrote a biography of one of the left wing
composers who moved across, Kim Sunnam, in 1992, which goes into
considerable detail about how his life changed – he was first sent to study with
Khachaturian in Moscow, then ordered back, purged, sent into internal exile and
forbidden to compose for 13 years, and then rehabilitated to teach at PY Music
and Dance University as well as be vice-chairman of the Musicians' League until
his death in 1983. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria>His story is far from unique, and clearly bourgeois
tendencies amongst artists didn't fit with the regime. I have been unable
to track what happened to many of the 40 figures listed by No, except for those
who spent the war years in Yanji (or who trained musicians from there back in
PY), but rather like we discovered with the 1966 World Cup squad, we should not
jump to conclusions when such people disappear from public
view. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria>I guess the most famous supposed 'disappearance' was the
dancer Ch'oe Sûnghûi, who is routinely considered (in, for example, the two
major texts written about her in Japanese and Korean that have so far been
regarded as the authorised texts) to have been executed along with her political
husband in 1965 or 1966. A muse to Picasso, and associated with many of the
staged 'folk' dances that have been inherited until today, her disappearance is
essentially a matter of her name disappearing from programs and dance
publications at that time. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria>Last week, however – although this is info that I
haven't yet been able to substantiate – I was told that her husband was actually
executed a couple of years before her name drops out of programs, which suggests
that she died for different reasons, perhaps even from illness.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Cambria>Keith<BR></FONT>
<DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Cambria>Keith Howard</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Cambria>Professor of Music, SOAS, University of
London; Associate Dean Research, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of
Sydney</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><A title=mailto:kh@soas.ac.uk href="mailto:kh@soas.ac.uk"><FONT size=3 face=Cambria>kh@soas.ac.uk</FONT></A></DIV></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>