PIONEER OF BALLAD

LEE SEUNGCHUL

One possible definition of a "classic" could be "where all the cliches come from." For a person without a sense of history, the 1970 novel Love Story could be a cliche-filled drollness -- blue blooded boy falls in love with a working class girl who dies from leukemia. But when one realizes that Love Story is the fountainhead of all cliches, it is elevated to the canon through which all modern variations can be understood.

By that definition, Lee Moon Sae is a classic K-pop. In the brief history of K-pop, the Korean wrote that there is no way to determine for certain who made the "folk rock" crossed over to "ballad". But if one had to guess, Lee Moon Sae  would be an excellent guess. And among his many hit songs, "The Farewell Story" is the most classic archetype -- a man-woman duet singing sensitive lyrics set to melodious soft rock that progresses up through an emotional climax and down. It is nor surprising that The Farewell Story is one of the most frequently covered songs in K-pop, including a sign language version. Through well-made albums that touched upon the sensitivity that resonates well with Koreans, Lee Moon Sae  played a significant role in turning Korea's pop music aficionados away from American/British pop songs to the homegrown version.

But that is not the only influence of Lee Moon Sae worth noting. Lee served as a DJ for a radio program On a Starry Night [별이 빛나는 밤에] from 1985 through 1996. (The program itself started in 1969 and still continues to this day.) This series previously covered the influence of Yoon Do Hyeon's Love Letter that shaped the K-pop scene. It is fair to say that Love Letter is the television version of On a Starry Night. Generations of Koreans grew up listening to music on On a Starry Night, playing quality live music every night along with entertaining talks. And as the DJ for over a decade, Lee Moon Sae 's voice literally raised a generation of Korean adolescents -- earning him a nickname "Minister of Nightly Education."

Interesting Trivia:  Like Lee Seung Cheol who was ranked just below, a number of Lee Moon Sae's "special" or "best" albums have nothing to do with the artist himself. The relatively primitive intellectual property landscape of Korea in the 1980s meant that record companies could buy the rights of a song, repackage the song and sell it multiple times in whatever manner the record company saw fit. This practice would survive until 1990s, when a certain, highly influential K-pop artist singlehandedly killed it.