Posted on 03/31/2006 2:32:33 PM PST by Screamname
Defector lured by 'shockingly beautiful' Western music
Friday, March 31, 2006
SEOUL — Pianist Kim Cheol-Weong said he decided to defect to South Korea after hearing decadent Western music in a coffee shop in Moscow.
“I listened to Richard Clayderman’s music such as ‘A Comme Amour’ and ‘Love Story,’” he told an interviewer. Returning to North Korea, he said he was forced to write a 10-page apology when a security official heard him playing a Clayderman piece while alone.
It was then, he said, that “I decided to defect to South Korea.”
Kim, who teaches piano here, rebelled against the notion that Western music was “barbaric” while being forced to play pieces that venerated either Kim Il-Sung, the long-time leader of North Korea who died in 1994, or his son, Kim Jong-Il.
Musicians, he said while rehearsing for a concert here, “were only a means and a tool to maintain the regime,” while “jazz is considered barbaric because it has no melody.”
Kim, 31, said he “learned that [Western music] is the most corrupted culture rooted from capitalism” but “the music, which I had had a bad image of, sounded shockingly beautiful to me.”
Said to be the son of a senior North Korean military official, he escaped across the Tumen River to China and wound up playing in a Christian church. At a concert here, he played in a manner that seemed quite gentle in comparison to the strong, tough music of rebellion that some members of the audience had expected.
Kim said that his consuming ambition is to play at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Kim worries, however, about the impact his defection will have on his father’s position — and on the safety of others members of his family. North Korean security officials are notorious for punishing family members of defectors, often sending them all to prison camps.
In the meantime, said Kim, Clayderman “is still my favorite even though I have encountered many other genres.”
Well,thanks for the new and revised picture!Photoshopping can work miricles!
Helen Thomas in all her beauty
Yowsa!!
He obviously never heard Johnny Cash or Buck Owens...God rest their souls.
OMG! That was so funny. I hated that song. Thanks a lot. Now I'm hearing it.
Those two were awesome. I remember hearing Buck one day saying it don`t matter how good looking or how talented a musician is, if they ain`t got good songs they are just cheating themselves and the public. Just wish todays MTV fans would realize that and stop buying all this crap they see on TV, we might have better radio today. I can`t even even listen to FM radio anymore.
Why give up a pig or a goat for Helen Thomas? Either one would be a more attractive mate.
The music where he was must have been pretty awful, I mean REALLY awful....bad....REAL baaad.
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just too damned funny............
OK,you got me on that one!Ive got you number now!
It is, all they can sing about is Kim Jung Il, and the music sounds like nursery rhymes. "Kim Jong Il is our leader- we must follow la di da di da" Can you imagine suddenly exposing them to punk rock? Or speed metal? lol!!
Sounds like he could play "So Ronery" only so many times before flipping out.
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