Music I Put On Repeat 101
http://kangmin.muxtape.com/
You Must Eat Well If You Wish To Be A Footballist 97
A professor once told me that translation is the hardest thing in the world to do well, and I never agree more than when I listen to Kim Min-Ki’s songs, which offer up one startling phrase after another that I couldn’t hope to convey in English. Part of the problem is cultural: Kim’s lyrics are deeply heartfelt and deftly ironic, which is a contradiction in terms to the American who thinks of irony as “I’m saying something but I don’t really mean it” instead of “I’m saying something and it means more than one thing.” American irony is univocal – it assumes that the meaning of something in its unironic guise is beyond dispute; e.g., everyone has to agree that caterpillar mustaches are unfashionable for them to function as ironic signifiers. What is generally agreed upon (mustaches are unfashionable) is exactly what is conveyed (mustaches are unfashionable). So it can be hard to explain to such an earnest bunch why a simile linking dew drops to pearls is ironic, or why it makes perverse sense to compare the formation of droplets to the atomization of a person’s sorrows.
Achim Isul is known to every Korean the way Danny Boy is known to any Irish-American. It was taken up as a rallying cry during the democratization struggle of the 80’s (the video shows footage of a funeral procession for students killed in clashes with government forces), and it retains its status as an unofficial anthem, belted out hoarsely by drunken salarymen in Noraebangs and played over speakers in malls and cafes: