It may not have been the most obvious choice for Yura Min and Alexander Gamelin, the U.S.-born ice dancing pair representing South Korea at the Olympics, to skate Tuesday to “Arirang,” a Korean folk song whose roots go back hundreds of years.
There was concern in their camp that the international judges at the Winter Games would not respond to a tune unfamiliar to them. But for Min — and for any Korean watching — the significance of the choice was clear.
“Even though it could be difficult to get high scores from foreign judges, I wanted to perform with ‘Arirang’ at the first Winter Olympics in Korea, and I did,” Min told Korean reporters Tuesday. “I was born in the United States, but I am proud to be Korean.”
In an 1896 essay, Homer B. Hulbert, a U.S. missionary in Korea, wrote: “To the average Korean, this one song holds the same place in music that rice does in his food — all else is mere appendage. You hear it everywhere and at all times.”
The same could perhaps be said about the song’s place at these games. It has turned up as more than background music for the skating pair’s routine. It was played twice at Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony. It has been sung in the stands at hockey games. And with all the interaction here between North and South Korea, it has served as a stand-in national anthem for the formerly unified countries.
“Arirang,” which today generally refers to the melody and lyrics of a version first recorded in 1926, has become a catchall tune, a blank canvas onto which Koreans can paint their emotions. Over the years, it has absorbed varied cultural meanings, whether at home or among the diaspora. For some Koreans, it can be overwhelmingly evocative, provoking tears or a swell of pride.
Ten years ago, the New York Philharmonic took a trip to Pyongyang to perform for a North Korean audience for the first time. Michelle Kim, a violinist, recalled that the atmosphere inside the room was cold and muted. Then the orchestra began to play “Arirang.” Members of the audience were soon in tears. Kim and several of her fellow musicians were crying, too.
“A couple of my American colleagues told me they wanted to jump off the stage and go hug somebody there,” said Kim, who moved from Seoul, South Korea, to Los Angeles when she was 10. “'Arirang’ captures the heart of Korea — not North, not South, just Korea.”
“Arirang” served as the anthem for the joint Korean women’s hockey team. At the opening ceremony, when the North and South Korean athletes emerged before the crowd, the pop music booming over the speakers paused, and “Arirang” began to play. The North Korean cheerleaders here have been singing it inside arenas.
The infinite ways that the two countries have diverged in the past 70 years are well-documented. But the song, beloved in both countries, reminds them of the ways they are the same.
“It symbolizes the unification so well,” said Jung Jae-eun, 40, a spectator at the opening game for the Korean women’s hockey team.
Arirang — as a song, as a concept, as a name — is omnipresent. When Koryolink, North Korea’s wireless telecommunications provider, revealed its first smartphone five years ago, it was named Arirang. The first South Korean-made satellite launched into space was called the Arirang-1. North Korea’s irregularly held arts and gymnastics festival — which reportedly can feature more than 100,000 performers — is known as the Arirang Mass Games. Arirang cigarettes remain a cult favorite in South Korea. And innumerable Korean restaurants around the world are named Arirang.
“It’s synonymous in many ways with what it means to be Korean — which of course is very complicated,” said Hilary Finchum-Sung, an ethnomusicologist at Seoul National University.
Asked for a comparison from another country, Finchum-Sung cited “Danny Boy,” which perhaps plays a similar role for the Irish.
The name Arirang actually refers to a category of folk songs. There are countless regional variations, with dozens of known melodies and thousands of known lyrics. The common thread among them is the use of the word “Arirang,” or other words that sound similar. Complicating matters some is the fact that those words do not have a universally accepted meaning. Some historians believe them to be simply euphonious syllables, a Korean fa-la-la.
The version most popular today — known as “Bonjo Arirang,” or “Standard Arirang” — originated from a 1926 anti-Japanese silent film called “Arirang,” which became a sensation in Korea during the colonial period.
The song’s continued emergence within that colonial context imbued it with solemnity, and today many view the tune as one of the foremost articulations of han — the bitter, unyielding melancholia that is often described as a national characteristic.
As music historian E. Taylor Atkins wrote: “'Arirangs’ have articulated the sorrow of lovers parting, the injustices of life for common people, the nostalgia for one’s hometown, the disorientation experienced during periods of dramatic change or the resolve to persevere and conquer oppression.”
On Tuesday, Min and Gamelin wore outfits inspired by traditional Korean clothing, known as hanbok. If their goal was to endear themselves to the Korean crowd, they had no other choice for the music. Min told the Detroit Free Press that at competitions leading up to the Olympics, judges from Korea were crying as the pair skated to the song.
“It just means that much to them,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Entertainment: A tune heard often at these Olympics gets to the heart of being korean
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