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Korean funeral music can be classified into two different scopes, narrow and wide. In the narrower sense, funeral music is that which is used for funeral rituals, including some folk songs, such as Sangyeo-sori, sung while carrying the sangyeo (funeral bier). The wider scope would include the music used in cheondo, a ritual of Buddhism or shamanism, to escort the dead to geuklak (paradise). This paper refers only to the former. Various folk songs are during the funeral ritual. Daedodeum-sori is sung while holding the empty sangyeo, the night before it is carried to the tomb. Dasiraegi is a type of song for the consolation of the mourners. Un-gu-sori is sung while transporting the coffin. Sangyeo-sori is sung while bearing the coffin on one's shoulders and marching. Dalgu-sori is sung while returning the earth to the grave. In order to be concise, among these various songs, this paper focuses only on Sangyeo-sori. Sangyeo-sori are classified according to their functions. Barin-sori or Hajik-sori is sung when the sangyeo departs the house of the dead. The original Sangyeo-sori is sung while marching. Another song is sung when walking up hills. This paper deals exclusively with the original Sangyeo-sori. The general traits of Sangyeo-sori are as follows. It is classified as a ritual song on the grounds that it is used during a funeral rite, at the same time it is considered a labor song, because it is performed while carrying the sangyeo. The majority of labor songs have disappeared from contemporary working places, since the mode of manual labor has changed, but only Sangyeo-sori, with its original function, is still sung in certain rural areas. The Sangyeo-sori is performed in the following way : either a single singer will lead a part of the song with the remainder of the pallbearers answering in a responsorial manner, or, the pallbearers will divide into equal groups with the latter answering the former. The burial place is generally located in the hills around a village. As such, it takes quite long time to carry the bier from the house of the dead to the burial site. Along the road the lead singer (seonsorikkun) recounts the feelings of the dead, or describes the scenes of the other world where the dead will stay, or sings about the history of the burial place. Since the Sangyeo- sori is often quite long, it is usually comprised of narrative traits and has a simple melody. Because Sangyeo-sori are sung widely in rural areas and are composed of simple melodies, their research enable us to gain a better understanding of the basis of other Korean folk musics. Several academic methods can be utilized in the study of Sangyeo-sori. First, one could collect all the data and classify it according to type, including geographical distribution throughout the country. Second, research methodology can be divided micro-scopically or macroscopically. Ultimately, the main question to be answered is : "How were Korean songs made?" This question is the reverse of "How should songs be analyzed?" Perhaps the answers to these questions can be resolved, at least to some extent, through the research of Sangyeo-sori. Though it may be impossible to reach a definitive conclusion to all such questions in a brief paper such as this, my purpose is to approach the problems concerning the formation of Korean songs. This papers bound by certain limits, including the problem of collecting enough data concerned with Sangyeo-sori to classify them and examine their distribution. Some materials were added to the main data of 59 airs of Sangyeo-sori recorded in MBC Complete Works of Korean Folk Songs. All conclusions drawn in this paper are justified from that datum. In order to survey the overall characteristics of Sangyeo-sori through all the regions of the country, I selected a piece of Sangyeo-sori from each of the nine provinces of South Korea and compared the refrains or responses(dwissori). Examples are from the MBC Complete Works of Korean Folk Songs(Ex.1-1 through 1-9). Texts, musical forms, tempi, ranges, figures, tones and scales will be observed in order that we see roughly the common and different features. Not that all the examples can be classified into three groups according to their scalar types (Ex.1-10). Objective observation and analyses like this are necessary process of research, but I'm not sure to what extent it contributes toward our reaching the "inside" of Korean traditional songs. Therefore more reflections and investigations on the methodology of analysis, particularly that of musical scale, is needed. Next, various refrains of Sangyeo-sori pieces from the South Gyeongsang Province, where the melodic structures are simpler and materials abide, are compared (Ex.2-1 through 2-11). While the diversity of refrains are the result of certain intentions, the respective results are all different. To comprehend how the songs were made, it is necessary to investigate the causes rather than results. The refrains have, in general, common figures in the beats 1-2, 3-4 and 7-8, while they are different in beats 5-6. Most refrains show similar structures to this. Remembering the difference, we can group them all into one. Now, if we destroy the structure, what remains is the four tones do', la, sol, mi and the movements among them. The four tones which are connected with an invisible bond and the "will to move" therewithin were the very cause. The songs themselves are the result, while the scale derived through analysis is the "result of the result" (Ex.2-12). The cause and the result of the result look similar, but are actually quite different. The approach, most of all, to song is entirely different. The former belongs to "dynamic scale" with movements, and the latter, without movements, "static" ; the former to "collective scale" as a tone-group, and the latter, composed of separated tones, "divisive." Refrains from South Gyeongsang Sangyeo-sori pieces can be considered songs "made (or formed) through unfolding of the dynamic tone-group and movements therein." While the refrain or response is decided through a silent consensus among people engaged in it, the call or utterance(apsori) largely depends on the individual will of the lead singer. Let us see how the call is formed, by examining the Sangyeo-sori from Gimcheon, South Gyeongsang Province, with a simple melody in its refrain (Ex.3-1). The call is divided into two phrases like the reftain. The antecedent of the refrain is in a simple descending figure, while that of the call is in a descending curve. But the tunes of the second halves of both the call and the refrain are identical. Thus the call of the Gimchoeon Sangyeo-sori acquires both organic unity with and melodic independence from the refrain, by a common following and an independent antecedent phrase. The antecedent phrase of the call descends stepwise re'- do', do'-la, and la-sol-mi, with a reverse turn la-do' of the do'-la-do' at the third beat. The second phrase is simpler, with a stepwise ascending figure followed by a descending one. Movements within the given tone-group become concrete with stepwise progressions as well as reverse turns, and a specific progression is preferred among many possibilities. What is notable in the call is the appearance of re', which is absent in the refrain. Thus the call assumes a greater expressiveness than the refrain through the expansion of a given tone- group. While most Sangyeo-sori pieces are in the call-and-response manner, a few are rendered antiphonally between two groups. In this final example, we will observe the antiphonal Sangyeo-sori from Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province (Ex.4-1). The scale of this song can be analyzed in various ways (Ex.4-2). The scale or series in Ex. 4-2-1 notates all the tones appearing, while Ex. 4-2-2 reduces them into a pentatonic one, considering the fluctuating db' of m3 as c'. Ex.4-2-3 is the same scale treated as dynamic or collective, interpreted as a combination of three tone-groups. The tone-group in mm.l, 2 and 4 is composed of c'-b b of, where f is vibrating tone. The tone-group c'-b b -g-f-d, where bb is retreating tone. Thus the movements within a tone- grup are explained as containing such gestures as vibrato, glissando and so on. (Ex.4-2-4 is still another possibility.) A song is made or formed through a simultaneous combination of texts, meanings, rhythm and its patterns, abstract melodic type and concrete progressions of tones, gestures and idiomatic figures, and so on. Thus far we have taken a look into some problems concerning the formation of a song through some examples from Korean Sangyeo-sori.