6. KPOP: Roots and Blossoming of Korean Popular Music (Contemporary Korean Arts) Perfect Paperback – 1 Jul 2012

The author of this book deserves a special mention. Professor Kim Chang-nam is himself a pretty important figure in Korean pop music history, as he was one of the leaders for 노래를 찾는 사람들 ["People who seek music"], one of the more important bands of the 1980s in Korea. Unfortunately, the book would have been better if Professor Kim simply wrote about his own story.As of the writing of this review, this book is the only book in English that attempts to cover the entire history of Korean pop music, beginning in the 1920s. For a reader who knows absolutely nothing about the history of Korean pop music, this is an okay introduction. But ultimately, the slim 150-page book simply is not up to the task of describing nearly a century of Korean pop music history in adequate detail. Partly, that is because of insufficient number of pages, often filled up with large pictures.But partly, it is also because of the deliberate choice that the author made: Kim devotes approximately half of the book for the history between 1920s and 1990s, and the other half for 1990s to present, because he focuses more on the smaller definition of K-pop involving the current generation of idol groups. The result is, to me at least, a gross injustice in historical writing. Shin Joong-hyeon, Korea's "godfather of rock" and likely the most important figure in Korean pop music history, is described in two paragraphs--while discussion about the idol groups of the 2000s take up the last one-third of the book.There are also irritating failures of execution in the book as well. The song's titles are translated without giving the original Korean title in the body of the book. (The book does have an index of songs with Korean script at the end.) The title of one of the most important songs in Korean pop music history, namely 황성옛터, is mistranslated: it should be The Old Castle Ruins rather than Vestiges of the Yellow Castle. (Professor Kim likely thought 황성 was 黃城 ("yellow castle"), but it is actually 荒城 ("castle ruins").) At p. 40, the book discusses the frequently appearing words in the K-pop songs of the 1970s without any citation. That insight comes from a pioneering work by Professor Lee Yeong-Mi of Korea National University of Arts, and Lee deserves the credit.The Bottom Line: Read this book if you would like to learn more about the history of K-pop and unable to read in Korean, because you have no other choice. But know that even the 10th best book about the history of K-pop in Korean language is probably superior to this one.T.K.Reading Korea (readingkorea.blogspot.com)