For sEODo Band, 'Joseon pop' is feeling before formula

sEODo BAND / Courtesy of sEODo BAND

Before sEODo BAND had much of an audience, it had a problem familiar to every new act — it needed 30 minutes of music to play at performances.

The solution came from a source most rock bands would not think to raid. The band took the highlight passages of the traditional pansori "Chunhyangga," strung five of them together and found that the half-hour set told the whole story of the 18th-century Korean love epic from beginning to end.

That set is now, nine years later, the band's first full-length album, "ONE," expected for release on Friday.

"It turned out to be more fully realized than we expected," the band's vocalist, sEODo, said during an interview at The Korea Times headquarters in central Seoul, Aug. 3. "Making a full-length in that shape became something the band had wanted to do for years."

The album's title carries more in Korean than it can in English. "ONE," or "won," means circle in Korean. It is also the "won" of resentment and of longing, the two forces driving the lovers through the "Chunhyangga" story. The plot itself loops — a couple meets, parts and meets again. It also doubles as the English "one," for the band's first full-length.

"An old story survived across time, and our recreating it now is another turn of the circle," sEODo said with a smile.

The members of sEODo Band pose backstage during the 2026 Korea Memorial Festa at Nanji Hangang Park in Seoul's Mapo District, June 7. The five-piece, known for blending pansori with rock, releases its first full-length album, "ONE," on Aug. 14. Courtesy of sEODo BAND

In between two scenes

Formed in 2017, sEODo BAND pairs sEODo, who trained in traditional Korean vocal music, with a conventional rock lineup — guitarist Yeon Tae-hee, bassist Kim Tea-joo, drummer Jeong Hyun-bin and keyboardist Kim Seong-hyun.

The group broke through on broadcaster JTBC's traditional music competition show "Poongryu" (2021) and sEODo appeared more recently on Season 4 of music show "Sing Again" in 2025. Its 2024 five-song album, "Break Through," came out of roughly three years of creative drought.

The label that follows the band everywhere is "Joseon pop," a term the members themselves have grown wary of over-defining.

"I can't explain [Joseon pop] as a genre defined by using a particular rhythm or a particular scale," Kim Seong-hyun said. "If you call it a term that holds the emotional register Koreans can feel, that's broad enough to cover what our band does."

sEODo said the band spent its early years explaining "Joseon pop" in technical terms, borrowing this melody or that rhythm, but eventually stopped believing the explanation.

"Once we'd built the definition that way, we honestly weren't sure it meant anything," he said. "And we shouldn't be boxing in the music we make."

What the band offers instead is a song. At festivals and outdoor shows, the band always closes with "Ganggangsullae," the traditional circle dance that nearly every Korean knows without being taught it.

"Koreans who have never heard of us still know that song," sEODo said. "Our music has something that can be shared through that kind of inner resemblance. And it isn't about telling international listeners, this is uniquely Korean, you wouldn't get it. It's more like, there's something only Koreans have, maybe you could give it a try?"

Vocalist sEODo of sEODo Band performs during 1901 Live Road at Sangsang Platform in Incheon's Jung District, March 28. Courtesy of sEODo BAND

Neither side claims them

Sitting between two worlds of tradition and modern pop rock sounds has been less contentious than it sounds. Criticism, sEODo said, has been scarce, because each scene assumes the band belongs to the other one.

"In the traditional music scene we're the pop act, and in pop we're the traditional act," he said. "So they end up placing us in a space of respect."

He is more bothered by the ceiling installed by that respect. He recently read an academic paper analyzing the band as a case of traditional music evolving, and while it was generous in its praise, to his mind it was pointed in the wrong direction.

"I'd rather people see us not through the lens of a traditionally trained musician doing something, but as musicians, full stop, with a traditional element folded in," he said. The band is hosting a listening session for critics the day before the album's release, hoping to provoke arguments rather than deference.

He is unreservedly enthusiastic about the widening field around him, including the newly debuted gugak-idol duo Dodree.

"It's as natural as hip-hop scenes growing in the United States," sEODo said. "It's the one weapon in the global music market that nobody can copy."

For listeners abroad, he points to the opening track, "Arirang," built on the triple meter that underpins Korean traditional music and turns, appropriately, in circles. Yeon Tae-hee nominates "Love Song," an R&B-leaning track whose melody moves in a pentatonic scale that resists the ear's expectations.

The 12-track album carries no English at all, which the band insists was unintentional. Between seven songs sit five passages of "aniri," the spoken narration of pansori, each produced by a different member.

"Like the name says, a circle keeps rolling," sEODo said. "It has rolled from the Joseon era until now, and we've set it moving again."

sEODo Band performs during the 2026 Korea Memorial Festa at Nanji Hangang Park in Seoul's Mapo District, June 7. Courtesy of sEODo BAND