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Hye-jung Park_OSU PhD diss. (2019).pdf (3.61 MB)

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From World War to Cold War: Music in US-Korea Relations, 1941-1960

Park, Hye-jung
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2303-4556
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554818839582558

Abstract Details

2019, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Music.
This dissertation examines music in US-Korea relations from 1941 to 1960. Beginning during World War II, the US government disseminated Western classical and American music in Korea. After the war, the United States also gained the confidence of Koreans by supporting Korean traditional music that had been suppressed under Japanese colonial rule. Yet South Koreans were not merely passive recipients of US propaganda. As the Korean War divided Korea into North and South, South Korean officials used music to affirm the anti-Communist alliance between South Korea and the United States. American music spread rapidly in South Korea, contributing to the formation of South Korean identities different from those of the Communist North. By tracing a history of musical relations in the transitional period from the colonial era to the early Cold War, this project emphasizes that US Cold War music propaganda programs were not an entirely new initiative but built on the foundations laid in the 1940s. By demonstrating that a peripheral country used music as a tool for political negotiations with a superpower, this project also expands the horizons of scholarship on music propaganda, which has focused overwhelmingly on US and Soviet interventions in Europe. The US government's desire for hegemony provided both the political impetus and the resources for disseminating American music abroad, for music was an effective tool for cultural propaganda. The South Korean government's ambition of rebuilding a nationalist identity against the Communist North enabled the alliance and encouraged the acceptance of American music. Music diplomacy eventually supported a bilateral relationship based on shared political interests. The political purposes of the US and South Korean governments shaped listeners’ experiences of Western music in South Korea.
Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Advisor)
Ryan Skinner (Committee Member)
Mitchell Lerner (Committee Member)
210 p.
Asian Studies; International Relations; Music
music; cultural diplomacy; US-Korea Relations; radio propaganda; Cold War; music propaganda; World War II; Korean music; Ely Haimowitz; USAMGIK; Office of War Information; Syngman Rhee; Americanization; Westernization

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Park, H.-J. (2019). From World War to Cold War: Music in US-Korea Relations, 1941-1960 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554818839582558

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Park, Hye-jung. From World War to Cold War: Music in US-Korea Relations, 1941-1960. 2019. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554818839582558.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Park, Hye-jung. "From World War to Cold War: Music in US-Korea Relations, 1941-1960." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554818839582558

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1554818839582558
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© 2019, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License From World War to Cold War: Music in US-Korea Relations, 1941-1960 by Hye-jung Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.