Kim Sunnam

(b Seoul, 28 May 1917; d Sinp'o, 1983). Korean composer. Born in Seoul during the Japanese colonial period, he travelled to Tokyo in November 1937, enrolling in the Tokyo Music School in the spring of 1938. He returned to Korea in 1943, and was soon associated with the independence movement. After the defeat of Japan, Kim was involved with a series of left-leaning musician and artist collectives. He was head of composition in the Korean Proletarian Music Union, founded in September 1945, and the Korean Musicians’ Union, founded in December. Elected to the central committee of the Nationalist People’s Battle Forces (1946), he was soon under police surveillance and, with many other artists, he moved northwards to ally himself with the socialist regime. He was appointed head of composition at the Pyongyang National Music School (1948), and subsequently served on a number of central committees. Kim was the most prolific of revolutionary song writers in the first five years following liberation. His political and nationalist ideas are well expressed by the songs Kŏn'guk haengjin'gok, Sangnyŏl, Haebang ŭi norae and Inmin Hangjaengga. His lyric songs, cast in a style inherited from Japan earlier in the century but with texts describing the beauty of Korea, include Sanyuhwa and Chindallae kkot. Abstract works such as the Piano Trio and Piano Concerto develop from the Expressionist mould.

In 1952, after being appointed a teacher at Pyongyang Music University, Kim was sent to Moscow for further study with Khachaturian. Six months later, having written only a piece for oboe in Moscow, Kim’s promising career was abruptly ended. Ordered back to P'yŏngyang, along with many artists who had emigrated from what was now the capitalist South Korea, he found himself alienated from the proletarian ideals he had fought for as Kim Il Sung purged him and all potential opposition to his leadership. Forbidden to compose, he was eventually sent to Sinp'o, an isolated port on the east coast in South Hamgyŏng province. He was rehabilitated in late 1964, and for three years some of his works were heard and published in the capital. By 1970 he had again been sent to Sinp'o; little is known about the last period of his life. A fuller account of his career is given in No Tongŭn: Kim Sunnam, kŭ salmkwa yesul (‘Kim Sunnam, his life and art’, Seoul, 1992).

WORKS

(selective list)

KEITH HOWARD