Donghoon Gang is an artist, composer, and researcher.
[KR]
[EN]
Score for Light for 影없는 聲音, 2026
"I am determined to work as much as I can, to save money, and to go West洋行[1]."
Yi Ae-nae
April 23, 1931
13 Nishihara-chō, Minenishi, Tenjinshita, Kobe, Japan
Camille interrupted me, asking me what my native tongue was—to be precise, my musical mother tongue. Then there fell a noisy silence unlike any I had ever known. The stack of sheet music before me seemed peculiarly pallid that day, and I knew her question had not been born of my skin color alone. It was an arrow that laid bare the question of whether the toil of years cramming notes and symbols onto five lines had been a discipline freely chosen, or if it was the branded mark of an Other forced upon me.
When the long silence was torn by a clumsy outburst from my lips, the stale shame of wearing a stiff white Mandarin collar came flooding back, as I turned to sing an Italian aria for a performance grade. Shuttered in silence, unable to play the danso[2] until the very end, I felt it turn from breath to blow, from song to strike, falling heavily upon my palm— and with it, a string long buried within me shuddered awake.
At twenty-eight I crossed the great sea and wandered from place to place, and at thirty-four—according to an old prophecy—I was to return to my place of origin through a stroke of fortune. An augury that had long been my curse became unbelievably true. With half my tongue severed, I could no longer shape a single word, and was grateful for any offer.
But the gratitude of this moment, veiling even my resentful eyes, called out insistently toward something far off, beyond the reach of time. “Ten years,” Yeasul surmised—an eternity to me. Though the span granted to reclaim the severed half of my tongue was merciful, I could not bring myself to swallow the humming that droned through my body.
In March 1879, Eckert set foot in Japan for the first time. The following month, he signed a two-year contract and assumed the position of conductor of the Tokyo Naval Band. In 1880, the next year, he was commissioned to compose Japan’s national anthem.
“Recently, I received a request from the Marine Ministry to compose a national anthem, since there was no anthem officially recognized by the state. In response to my request, several Japanese melodies were presented. From these I selected a few, harmonized them, and reconstructed them with chords suitable for European instruments[3].”
As a result, on November 3, 1880, Kimigayo was performed for the first time at a ceremony celebrating the Emperor’s birthday. Eight years later, in 1888, the Navy Ministry published the score of Kimigayo and circulated it abroad.
On the cover, beneath the title Japanische Hymne (“Japanese Anthem”), appeared the subtitle nach einer altjapanischen Melodie (“from an old Japanese melody”), through which Eckert indicated the source of the tune.
On March 31, 1899, after nearly twenty years in Japan and numerous achievements—including being awarded a medal for his service—Eckert returned to Germany upon the expiration of his contract. A century later, in 1999, Kimigayo was officially proclaimed the national anthem of Japan.
I first met Kyungboon in a forest in Jeju.
A full year had passed since Yeasul had given me Kyungboon’s number. She appeared far more slight in person than the prolific density of her writing had led me to expect. It was always her words that stilled my unrest. She was always a step ahead of my unease, and to walk beside her was to be granted a stillness, as though the answer had already been found. Two months later, we met again in the heart of Seoul.
A few weeks ago, I suddenly called Kyungboon. After a brief exchange of greetings, I told her without preamble that I wanted to make a book together. Absurd as the proposal was, before my words had even come to an end she answered simply, “All right,” and fixed a time and place.
Her writing stood between us like a wall. In that moment, it struck me that perhaps the time it would take to recover the lost half of my tongue might be measured by the very height of that wall. Before I was even born, she had already set out for the places where I would later dwell, and upon her return, she wove together the histories of those paths her feet had once traced.
Exile亡命 and studying abroad留學.
Exile is a forced flight at the precipice of life. To study abroad is to choose a dwelling, a drawing forth of meaning from within a place.
Then what of her, of me, of them—was it to escape, because there was no other way? Or to remain, simply by one’s own will?
Eckert, who had first gone East in his twenties, returned to Hanyang (the capital of Joseon) on February 19, 1901, now on the verge of his fifties and for much the same purpose. The introduction of a Western-style military band under such harsh conditions, and the invitation of a German composer, were not driven by musical motives alone; underlying them was a profound reverence for empire.
On November 26, 1883, at a banquet in Hanyang celebrating the treaty between Joseon and Germany, the naval band of the warship S.M.S. Hertha performed an interludemusikalisches Intermezzo.
“The band played before dinner was served. Though the guests were already seated, the meal was inexplicably delayed. Finally, my husband, Möllendorff, explained why: the maids carrying steaming dishes had been so captivated by the music that they forgot to bring out the food[4].”
Upon his arrival in Hanyang, Eckert began training promising musicians, assisted by Baek Woo-yong as interpreter and aide, and overseen by Min Yŏngchan, the younger brother of Min Yŏnghwan. He turned away those whose heads were flat at the back—declaring them unintelligent—and if an instrument was held even slightly incorrectly, fists and slaps would follow. His instruction was severe, like driving an ox into a mouse hole[5].
As a result, in just three months on September 7th, Emperor Gojong’s birthday, the new military band was at last able to perform for the first time.
That same winter, the first national anthem of the Korean Peninsula, The National Anthem of the Korean Empire, was allegedly composed by Eckert. Performed for the first time the following year, this anthem, like the fate of the nation itself, lasted scarcely eight years before it was ultimately replaced in 1910 by Kimigayo.
In 2012, Kyungboon, together with Hermann Gottschewski, then a professor in Tokyo, published a study reexamining The National Anthem of the Korean Empire. Entitled “Was Franz Eckert the Composer of the ‘Korean National Hymn?’: A Reconsideration of the First Korean National Anthem,” this research reviewed the historical context in which the distinction between composition and arrangement was unclear, and posed multilayered questions about the first national anthem of the Korean Peninsula.
What offered them a new perspective was a piece transcribed by Homer Hulbert and published in The Korean Repository (issued between 1892 and 1897), specifically in the February 1896 issue under the title “Korean Vocal Music.” The transcription began with the lyrics parami punda, meaning “the wind blows.”
Born in the United States in 1863, Hulbert arrived on the Korean Peninsula in 1886 at the invitation of Joseon, serving as a missionary and educator. Through his prolific publications, he conveyed to the West the realities of Korean society and politics, and as a secret envoy of Emperor Gojong, he stood at the forefront of efforts to defend Korea’s sovereignty in its final years. After assisting the envoys at The Hague in 1907, he was effectively expelled by the Japanese Empire, yet he continued to raise his voice against Japanese imperialism and colonial rule.
The song transcribed by Hulbert, beginning with parami punda (“the wind blows”), bore a striking resemblance to the melody of the Korean National Hymn. Yet whether it was Gunbam taryeong, Maehwa taryeong, Gyehwa taryeong, or another tune remains uncertain, and research continues without definitive conclusion. What is clear, however, is that the piece was closer to minyo (Korean folk song) than to aak (Korean court music).
“That is not to say, however, that there were no primary sources hinting that Eckert was not so much the composer as the arranger. Among the documents we have examined, it is mentioned only in Allen’s writings. The term adaptation first appears in Supplement to A Chronological Index, and is repeated in Korea: Fact and Fancy, as well as in the section “Korea” of A History of Foreign Music[6].”
On July 1, 1902, The National Anthem of the Korean Empire was published, and one thousand copies of the score were distributed not only within the Empire but also to more than a dozen countries with which it maintained diplomatic relations, and were also widely circulated aboard incoming foreign mail ships[7].
As with Kimigayo, the cover of The National Anthem of the Korean Empire also bore a subtitle. The phrase nach koreanischen Motiven (“from Korean motifs”) stood in clear contrast to the subtitle of Kimigayo, nach einer altjapanischen Melodie (“from an old Japanese melody”). The former merely suggests that Eckert had drawn a degree of “influence” from Korean elements, but unlike the case of Kimigayo, it offers no firm grounds to conclude that there was direct melodic borrowing.
Knowing this, Eckert may have deliberately avoided declaring on the cover that he had truly composed the national anthems of these two East Asian states, instead leaving the attribution deliberately vague, presented von Franz Eckert (“by Franz Eckert”).
Among the twenty-six high school music textbooks newly introduced in stages from 2025 under the 2022 revised curriculum, all but one begin with Ahn Eak-tai’s Aegukga, adopted as the national anthem upon the founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948. Only one specialized textbook, titled History of Music, retains a trace of The National Anthem of the Korean Empire.
On a day of torrential rain, Heemoon, whom I barely managed to meet, asked me at the end of a long conversation, “Do you know how the word gugak (national music, referring to traditional Korean music) was born?”
Like the record-breaking downpour that seemed to swallow the entire Korean Peninsula, the name gugak—born in opposition to yangak (Western music)—bound together all that came before it in contrast with the new, while preserving its former traces.
These songs, unable to secure their place in the pedagogical canon of ‘music’ were replaced by the name gugak, their colors stripped away and pushed into the past:
in between motif and melody,
in between composition and arrangement,
in between the anonymous minyo that starts with parami punda and The National Anthem of the Korean Empire,
in between 動 (to move) and 行 (to act),
they linger like notes erased and written anew, obscured by ambiguity.
For those fleeting moments—like the severed halves of our tongues, driven to the margins by the great current—now is the time to choose, once again, to move to act.
edit. Joan Lee
[1]
Azuma Akira, who translated the letter from Yi Ae-nae to Yanagihara dated April 23, 1931—held in the Archives of Momoyama Gakuin University—noted that the Korean term is no longer in common use today and rendered it as to “go West (study abroad, training).”
[2]
a small Korean end-blown bamboo flute, traditionally used in both court and folk music.
[3]
Franz Eckert, “Die japanische Nationalhymne,” MOAG, vol. 3, no. 23 (March 1881), p. 131, re-quoted in Kleider, Globetrotter Abenteurer Goldgräber, p. 148.
[4]
Rosalie von Moellendorff, P. G. von Moellendorff. Ein Lebensbild (Leipzig, 1930), p. 66, cited in Kneider, Globetrotter Abenteurer Goldgräber, pp. 150–152.
[5]
Dongmyeong, December 3, 1912, “The Illusory History of Western Music in Korea, Part 2 – The Lingering Echo of Syrinx over Hamnyeongjeon咸寧殿.”
[6]
Kyungboon Lee and Hermann Gottschewski. 2012. “Was Franz Eckert the Composer of the ‘Korean National Hymn’? : A Reconsideration of the First Korean National Anthem.” Critical Review of History 101, p. 392.
[7]
Changwon Choi, The Imperial Guards Band and the National Anthem of the Korean Empire, Vol. 2, p. 81; Horace N. Allen, Korea: Fact and Fancy (Seoul: Methodist Publishing, 1904). Cf.