Recovering old music that laid groundwork for K-pop

Kim Yong-wook, president of Oasis Records Music Company, holds a master tape in his office in Yangjae-dong, southern Seoul, Tuesday. Korea Times photos by Shim Hyun-chul

By Park Ji-won

• Published Jul 16, 2020 5:16 PM KST
• Updated Jul 17, 2020 10:45 AM KST

By Park Ji-won

The division of labor among professionals unrivaled in their respective fields is considered one of the factors that has led to K-pop's global success.

Entertainment companies focus on seeking out and training aspiring young singers while composers create songs for them and recording companies handle production.

But several decades ago, there existed no such specialized workforces in the domestic music industry. All work was streamlined under one single record label, and it was the good old days for them as their clout was enormous.

Notably, the labels recorded master tapes, which were the source of the vinyl records and other formats music has been sold in. Vinyl records were the preferred format for industry workers and music lovers, but disappeared gradually following the introduction of more convenient devices such as cassette tapes, then CDs and now digital music.

The decline of these early recording companies came as they were slow to respond to ever-changing technology. They refused to adapt to the fast-changing industry landscape and gradually became invisible in the market. Also, as many of them were not aware of the intellectual property of master tapes, they disappeared from history due to fires, negligence or various other reasons. So, the number of domestic vintage vinyl records slowly dwindled after the 1990s when vinyl production shut down.

However, there are signs of change as the population of vinyl lovers has been growing. Even though there are no exact market figures for the sales of vinyl records, the market is showing signs of growth. K-pop singers and indie musicians are releasing music on vinyl for fans and collectors.

Also, more record companies are expanding vinyl production as a new cash cow amid the digital era, as the situation improves for intellectual property owners.

Oasis Records Music Company is one such company that actively seeks digitization and the creation of a database of its music collection. Established in 1952 during the Korean War, it owns more than 10,000 master tapes of Korean music dated between the 1950s and 1990s, which it claims is the largest collection of its kind, unknown to the public until very recently.

Claiming to be the oldest surviving Korean record company, it now only operates the master tape business, but it had been known in the past as one of the most popular labels in the nation, rivaling Jigu Records. The renowned singers who worked with Oasis include Nam Jin, Na Hoon-a, Kim Yon-ja, Joo Hyun-mi, Sul Woon-do and Song Dae-kwan. Composers and bands also debuted under Son Jin-suk, who became the company's second owner and ran it from 1958 to 2011. Some music experts say they laid the groundwork for today's flashy K-pop industry.

About 70 percent of the tapes were digitally processed as of July, which is equivalent to around 50,000 tracks. Of that, 80 percent are pop songs and the remaining 20 percent consists of various genres such as traditional music, religious music, comedy sets, and concert recordings among others.

“It is our living history of K-pop,” Kim Yong-wook, president of Oasis Records Music Company, said during an interview with The Korea Times, Tuesday. Kim bought the music company in 2013 from Son Jin-suk's son, who ran the business for two years after his father's death in 2011.

The president of the label stressed the significance of the discoveries in Korea's early popular music in terms of various genres, which are also enjoyable for music lovers of all kinds from all over the world.

“Many would think the early form of K-pop is similar to the current trot music. But it is not. When you listen to music of the past, you can realize that musicians made efforts to introduce various music forms from the 1950s. The songs surprisingly cover many genres such as jazz, swing, pop, punk and so on.”

He also wanted to point out the high volume of good “light music,” referring to recordings made by bands or small orchestras that differed from typical instrumental albums. “As the genre doesn't include lyrics but has rich sounds and very Korean arrangements, it can be universally accepted by music lovers even if they don't know anything about the Korean language.”

He also said the tapes have revealed many interesting facts and secrets of the music industry.

“I cannot name the singers or the song over copyright concerns, but I found tapes of three singers each singing one song. It is a megahit song that anyone knows in Korea. But it appears that the record label gave it to many singers to find the best one… There are also many songs that were never released to the public.”

Digitization of master tapes

Until the 1980s, not many were aware of the value of the master tapes as intellectual property, so many companies reused the tapes, recording over them multiple times. Thus, many songs no longer exist on master tapes.

Owning the master tapes means that a company can hold several copyrights of the sources for purposes of duplication, distribution and rental.

So, when Mino of K-pop boy band Winner wanted to sample “Soyanggang Girl” sung by Kim Tae-hee for his song “Fiance” in 2018, he had to get permission from Oasis Records.

As soon as Kim took over the business, he decided to digitize all data in its collection. “I invested a lot of money in establishing the business,” he said. He started with a small number of employees in 2013 and remained under the surface. Now the number has grown to six. So far, he has managed to make ends meet, he said.

It may appear a lucrative business for Oasis Records, but it is also hard work. It takes approximately eight hours to process one master tape even with a skilled sound engineer. Also, the tapes are hard to handle and easily decay as time goes by, making restoration and digitization harder.

“The materials being used in the master tapes vary in every decade. The ones used before the 1980s were easily cut off because they were thin. The ones after the 1980s are thicker but sticky, meaning it is hard to roll them out,” said Lee Hoon-hee, a sound engineer of the label.

However, what makes the most trouble for him is the adjustment of the sound itself as it is hard to find a happy medium between the original sound quality and a digital reproduction.

“I assume that many would love the restored music close to its original after digitization. But sometimes we don't know what the originals sounded like because they were too damaged. For some that had severe water damage, for example, I had to add the digital sounds by listening to other songs recorded in a similar period of time. It cannot be done automatically. The process requires my own judgment frequently,” Lee said.

The record label decided to unveil the data right before starting to release vinyl records. It is planning to release two records today and 12 within this year in collaboration with other record-pressing companies. In January it also started a YouTube channel to upload recordings, which now number past 1,100.

It would take several years more to finish the digitization. But Kim is determined to do so to promote the legacy of Korean music in his care, he said.

“I decided to take on the digitization as my calling as I thought nobody else would do this hard job. I had very little motivation at first. Sometimes I got sick and tired of doing it because almost nobody knew about what I was doing. But the more I work on it, the more I discovered valuable and versatile forms of Korean popular music which few would imagine amid the current form of K-pop music. I hope I could share as many songs as possible so that many also could enjoy them and know more about Korean music,” Kim said.