The first time I heard Kim Min-Ki’s songs I was in elementary school. I turned on the radio one evening and the song “Baek-goo” flowed out. The song was about a child who had a dog with long white hair called Baek-goo. Every year Baek-goo had a litter of cute puppies. One day she got sick and was taken to the vet, but before she could get her shot she ran away. Her family looked here and there for her until they heard from an old lady that as Baek-goo was crossing a street, a car had struck her. That night the child dreamed of an early snow falling on the mountainside in soft, white piles, the same soft white as Baek-goo’s fur.

For some reason I loved that song. I’d also had my own dog, named Happy. We lived in an apartment on the second floor above our toy and stationary shop along a busy road. One day, I came home to find that Happy had been hit by a car. Just like the child in the song, I had buried Happy on the mountainside behind our house, marked the place with sticks, and mourned her loss for a long time.

First album of Kim Min-Ki, 1971. Photograph courtesy of Hakchon.

The next time I heard Kim Min-Ki’s music was in 1987, when I was in middle school. It was evening and my friends and I went downtown and bought pork cutlets. Afterward, we passed by the entrance of Myeong-dong Cathedral, where many people were gathered. This was during the military dictatorship, when those who protested for democracy frequently took refuge in the cathedral when chased by the police. Because the cathedral was considered a sanctuary, the police were unwilling to abuse their authority there. As I passed, the group of protesters who had been shouting and chanting from the cathedral entrance began to sing: “After a long night without sleep, when sorrows cling to my heart, one by one, like drops of morning dew…”

The tension on people’s faces eased. They still looked serious but were now full of confidence. The line of police still bore expressionless faces, though it seemed that they too were thinking about something. Some people walking by on the street stopped and quietly began to join in the singing: “I am going now, to that distant wild plain, leaving all sorrows behind…”

My friends and I moved on from that place with its strange current of tension and started walking toward our bus stop. My heart was pounding. Kim Min-Ki’s “Morning Dew” had first been sung in 1970 by Yang Hee-eun, a singer loved for her unique voice, and had appeared on Kim Min-Ki’s first album in 1971. Later, Kim Min-Ki would say that “Morning Dew” was just an expression of things in daily life. But for people suffocating under dictatorship, this song awoke something in them and gave them courage to act. It was sung by those calling for democracy on the streets, by students in front of schools, by suppressed workers, and by people who had lost loved ones unjustly:

After a long night without sleep
When sorrows cling to my heart,
One by one, like drops of morning dew
More beautiful than pearls
On every blade of grass,
I climb the hill behind my house
And study how to smile a little.

When the sun floats crimson over the graveyard,
The steaming heat of midday will be my trial.
I am going now, to that distant wild plain;
Leaving all sorrows behind,
Now I go. footnote

Kim Min-Ki’s songs spread, passed from person to person, despite never being performed on stage. Because they included his 1972 songs “The Flower-Growing Child” and “We Shall Overcome,” both of which were banned, his albums were seized from stores and he was taken into custody by the police. In 1974 he enlisted in the KATUSA (Korean Augmentation Troops to United States Army) but when the Korean Army called on him to write patriotic songs, he refused to cooperate and, as punishment, was sent to the frontlines at the demilitarized zone on the border with North Korea. In 1977 he was discharged from the army and worked as an accountant in a sewing factory. While there, he opened an early morning school for the teenagers working in the factory. The following year he wrote the musical “The Factory Light,” disclosing the plight of the workers. It was released as a tape, under his own name, and as a result he was again taken into custody by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. He was soon released, and decided to move to a rural district, where he took on seasonal work, farming in the warmer months and working in the mines or on seaweed farms in winter.

By 1987 the demands of the movement for democracy had intensified. But General Chun Doo-Hwan, who had seized power through a coup in late 1979, ignored the citizen’s voices demanding direct presidential elections. Then in mid-January, Park Jong-Cheol, a student at Seoul University, died after being tortured under police interrogation. In June, Lee Han-Yeol, a student at Yonsei University, died after being struck by a tear gas cannister fired by state security forces. Lee’s funeral was held on the streets of Seoul. As the procession headed toward City Hall, citizens left their workplaces and came out into the streets to join in, until more than one million people had gathered in the square in front of City Hall. The students started several movement songs, but most of the citizens did not know them. Then someone in the crowd started singing “Morning Dew.” As Kim Min-Ki’s beloved song started, the whole crowd joined in, filling the square with one voice. Later, Kim Min-Ki said he too had been in the square at Lee Han-Yeol’s funeral. Hearing the crowd singing “Morning Dew” had made him tremble: “As those many people started the funeral procession and sang that song with melancholy, at that moment, that song was theirs.” As he so often said, the moment a song left him it was no longer his song, but the people’s.

In 1992, I graduated from high school and entered university. There I joined a club whose members stayed up late discussing issues and writing articles for the school newspaper. Most of our articles were about workers who had been fired for their activism or political views. Why, if the citizens had chosen their president, were people still not free? Why were workers still unable to receive fair treatment? I attended protests with colleagues from the newspaper and traveled to write about places where workers were organizing.

The next year Kim Min-Ki came back! Kim Min-Ki, who had disappeared from public life after his songs were banned, suddenly reappeared, releasing a whopping four albums at once. Even so, he could not be seen on stage. For some reason, he had put out the four records but decided to remain invisible. Still, this was all right with me. Here were new songs sung by Kim Min-Ki himself, a rare opportunity that I, a poor student, could not miss. I bought all four CDs. With my friends, in our rented room, we listened to them on the player my dad had bought me as a university commencement present. As the second CD started playing, we gathered round, silently eating ramen noodles. At times we put down our chopsticks and sang along.

Photograph by Lee Chungyeol. Used by permission.

I married an American woman and we ended up living in England. To teach our four sons the Korean language and pass on Korean culture and history, we sang songs together. At first, we sang children’s songs, then traditional songs and folk songs as well. When our oldest entered middle school, I introduced him to Kim Min-Ki’s “Morning Dew” and “Evergreen.” Kim Min-Ki had written “Evergreen” during his time working at the sewing factory, to be sung at a collective wedding for workers too poor to afford a ceremony. In 1998, as South Korea recovered from a financial crisis, the song was used in a public advertising campaign and again gave people courage. Now, as a father, I listen to that song with my sons and our hearts are touched:

See the green needles
Of the pine on that plain;
Not a single person tends them;
Though pounded by rain and snow,
They are green as they wish
To the end of the world.

Sad and painful days gone by,
Never, never come again;
We will toil, awaken,
Become pine needles
On the wild plain.

Though our possessions are few,
We will shed tears hand in hand,
Though our road is long and steep,
We will break through and advance
To triumph in the end.

What has Kim Min-Ki been doing in the fifty years since composing these songs that have echoed down through the decades? In 1991, he opened a small theater called Hakchon in Daehak-ro where singers and bands could hold concerts. Starting in 1994, he wrote and staged the rock musical Seoul Line 1, adapted from the 1986 musical Linie Eins, which is set in Berlin. Kim Min-Ki transformed the original to fit the Korean situation. Set against a backdrop of the streets of Seoul, it tells the story of a young Korean woman originally from Yanbian, China. Through her encounters with hawkers, gangsters, prostitutes, runaways, and pastors, the musical satirizes the many faces of society and its carnival of humor. The play was performed over four thousand times, and in 2007 Kim Min-Ki received the Goethe Medal from the German government.

Kim Min-Ki discovered new singers and actors, and worked hard with them to put performances on the stage, always giving them fair pay. His regular workers received insurance, which was unheard of at the time in the performing industry. Many of the hundreds of actors and singers who performed at Hakchon went on to play major roles in the cultural industry. Kim Min-Ki always told his actors that if a good opportunity arose, they should take it and fly off without looking back. When I recently watched a documentary of his life,footnote I was deeply impressed by his sincerity and the care he showed these people.

Poster of the musical Seoul Line 1. Photograph courtesy of Hakchon.

After Seoul Line 1 ended its run at Hakchon, Kim Min-Ki focused on children’s plays such as Spicy Rice Cakes and We Are Friends. These were not financially profitable, but he felt it was essential to create productions that saw the world through the eyes of children. To make it easy for children to watch the plays, he lowered admission fees. Groups were invited to watch for free and Hakchon shouldered the cost.

In 2023 Kim Min-Ki was diagnosed with cancer. As his health began to fail, the Hakchon theater ran into insurmountable financial difficulties; it closed in March 2024 despite his efforts to keep it open. Kim Min-Ki died on July 21, 2024. Some days later, the hearse carrying his body stopped by Hakchon. Many actors who had performed in Hakchon were waiting with serious faces. Kim Min-Ki’s family carried his funeral portrait inside to see one more time the theater he had built up and cultivated with such dedication. As the family returned to the hearse, the actors standing nearby began to weep. Someone quietly started singing “Morning Dew.” It was a fitting farewell to a friend who had always treated them with respect and, rather than standing out in front, had supported them from behind.

Kim Min-Ki’s best days may have been stolen from him when he was imprisoned and banned from performing or composing. How had he continued to write such beautiful songs full of encouragement, or such funny musicals, despite repeated imprisonment and beatings? One time he was beaten so severely by an interrogator that he thought he was about to die. Yet as his consciousness faded, he suddenly felt sorry for the torturer. “He is sinning because of me,” he thought. It was a turning point in his life: he decided not to hate the people who had made him suffer. Perhaps it was fighting through these difficult times that gave him the ability to write such exceptional songs.

I never saw Kim Min-Ki sing his own songs, but from childhood until today, those songs have stayed with me. As I think of his songs and his life, I hear his song “Beautiful Person” and imagine Kim Min-Ki watching the child who appears in the song standing under the eaves in the evening rain.

In a dreary rain, standing in tears
Alone under the eaves:
When raindrops collect
In those two limpid eyes;
Mm, that beautiful one
Is a human being.

Listen to a playlist of Kim Min-Ki’s songs.

Footnotes

1. English translations of lyrics by Carter J. Eckert, quoted from Kim Chang-Nam, “Kim Min-Ki,” Hanul Academy, 2020.
2. SBS documentary, “Hakchon and Kim Min-Ki, the Anonymous,” 2024.