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영어

Popular music reflects, in Korea, the process of modernization, the contemporary society, and the psychology of the public. Therefore popular music plays a certain role for us: It allows us to look back over the past years into life in a specific era. Since lifestyles change as times change, lyrics of popular music have gone through various changes. This process of changes is mainly represented by times of suffering, induced by oppression in the Japanese colonization era, the division of Korea and industrialization. In this paper, lyrics, theme and content of popular music which prevailed from Japanese colonization era through the 1970s are examined to explore Koreans′ sense of home and its changes. As subject matter, starting from the first popular music “A Psalm of Death”, songs with sentiments of missing home were selected from among popular music of Japanese colonization era. post-liberation era, Korean war era and industrialization era. Home in popular music of Japanese colonization era was somewhere you had to leave against your will; thus it is an object of ardent wish. After liberation and under the United States Army Millitary Government, home is a place which you left on your own to lead a better life. You left for the city but life in the city was not that easy and you miss home. You wanted to go back home but it was practically difficult. In the popular music of 1950s, home missed by displaced people is presented most often. You stayed in South Korea as a refugee, missed your homeland in North Korea, but soon you came to reality and decided to adapt to South Korean life. As situations don‘t turn our as you wish, homecoming is put off. In the 1960s, popular music was mostly about people who came to stay in the city after leaving home due to industrialization and urbanization. Rather than missing your original home, you were satisfied with your second home in the city. Thus, in this era, songs oriented towards the city (a place away from your home) were prevalent. However, the city life turned out to be hard edged, and in 1970s songs oriented towards countryside (home) were much loved by the public. Powerful sentiments of longing and sincere wish occurred simultaneously as you left home. Also, as geographical or psychological distance between the speaker and the speaker‘s home increases, the ardent wish to go back home becomes stronger. The level of ardentness towards home in the songs differed according to whether the possibility of going home was open or not. Thus, it could be said that different looks are cast upon home according to social and historical situations. This paper attempted to read popular sentiment toward the subject of home in popular music. It also confirmed that our life and the songs were in a close, inseparable relationship.