The Cultural Reformation Movement of 1894 marked a new turning point in the history of poetry in Korea. The styles of the poems and songs the Yi Dynasty, which are characterized by their flowing flavor, became expiring specimens for literature in the convulsive modern period. New wine must be contained in a new container. After the Cultural Reformation Movement, new forms of peotry naturally were in demand.
The new forms of poems and songs developed from those of earlier ages, though not prolific, were multifarious in kind and name; consequently, it has long remained an unfulfilled task of scholars in this field to classify them systernatically. Futhermore, there have been no systematic collections of materials, and only fragmentary views on the characteristics of the new poems and songs have appeared so far. With this in mind, this paper attempts to classify systematically the new songs collected, to thereby frame up the history of new songs in the enlightenment period of Korea, and also to study their differences in form.
In this paper's "Introduction," this writer first introduces the existing classification systems and names of poems and songs in the enlightenment period, and then gives his own classification system. He classifies what have been vaguely called "songs" or "new-style poems" into the following four categories on the basis of their form and content: Kaehwa Kasa(enlightenment verses), Kaehwasi(enlightenment poems), Ch'angga(songs), and Sinsi(new poems). The "Kaehwa Kasa" has a modern motif, though assuming the 4-4 meter form of the Yi Dynasty poetry. The "Kaehwasi" is still old-style in form, but its characteristic is that it is more rhythmical, consisting of fewer stanzas(4 or 5) than the "Kaehwa Kasa." The "Ch'angga", usually consisting of 7-5 meter, was most popularly sung among the general public. We can find in this 7-5 meter song traces of having been imported from Japan. Though different in meter, there are also similar types of "Ch'angga" transformed from Korea's own 4-4 meter songs. Thus, we can see that there are two types of "Ch'angga" : One which adopted a foreign character meter system and one in which foreign-style rhythms were adapted to the Korean meter system.
The motifs of the songs falling under this category are mostly enlightening and intended to inspire the awakening of the people, especially in the early period of enlightenment, but those of later appearance take on more genuine poetic tinges than those of early origin. It is generally accepted that "The Song for the Seoul-Pusan Railway" by the late Ch'oe Nam-son was the first of its kind in Korea. This song is strictly a 7-5 meter song, and it is obvious that the writer copied the Japanese 7-5 meter song. On the other hand, however, there is evidence that in 1896, eight years before Ch'oe's song appeared, the patriotic song in the 8-6 meter was sung at the ceremony for the laying of the corner-stone of the Independence Gate. It this is correct, then the honor of being the first song should go to the above patriotic song. This 8-6 meter patriotic song is a transformation from the 4-4 meter song of the Yi-Dynasty.
The "Ch'angga" can be divided broadly into two periods: the early period ranging from the first appearance of the "Ch'angga" to the 1910's and the late period ranging from the 1910's till it gradually became transformed into the popular song on one hand and developed into modern poetry on the other.
The "Ch'angga" in the early period can be classified into the songs with a pleasure tune, a patriotic tune and an ideological tune which appeared in various enlightenment magazines during the enlightenment period of Korea, and school songs during a music lesson.
The songs that appeared in the Sonyon and the Ch'ongch'un, which were the first modern magazines ever published in Korea, are mostly 7-5 meter song with an enlightenment motif. The earliest school songs that appeared in Korea were those of the Paejae and Ehwa Schools, but they were hymn-like in rhythm. It was in the 1910's that the "Ch'angga" came to be included in the curriculum as a regular music lesson. The oldest extant collection of songs in Korea is the one which was compiled by the Yi Dynasty's Ministry of Education for common education. This collection, comprising 28 lessons of children's songs, folk songs and lyrical songs, was used at both primary and secondary schools. Predominant in this collection are the 7-5 meter songs. In 1913 and 1914, another collection of songs was published by the Government-General of Korea, but the contents were substantially the same. From around this time, Japanese texts came to be printed together with Korean texts in these song collections as a link in the chain of the Japanese language policy in Korea. On the other hand, songs with national indignation and grief were covertly sung by middle school studuents; various private Korean middle schools which were founded in succession after 1905 inspired the Korean national spirit through their school songs. Some school songs were so anti-Japanese that the Japanese police arrested all the parties concerned. In short, the "Ch'angga" played an important role as a means of discharging the national resentment of the Korean people at that time.
In comparison with the "Kaehwa Kasa" and the "Kaehwasi", most of the "Ch'angga" in the early period are much more refined in style: some of them are so good in rhetorical devices that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from full-fledged modern poems.
In the 1920's, the "Ch'angga" was transfigured. It became diversified in meter arrangement: in text form, it was at the threshold of modern poetry, and in rhythm, it came to assume the character of the popular song. Originally, this writier also intended to make comparative studies of the "Ch'angga" and the "Sinsi," which appeared following the "Ch'angga." However, space limitations forced this writer to devote himself primarily to framing the history of "Ch'angga."