[Korea Encounters] Suppression of marijuana, 'degenerate' youth culture in 1975

Singer Lee Jang-hee works as a radio DJ, circa 1973. / Weekly Woman

By Matt VanVolkenburg

From 1968 to 1972, Westernized youth culture centered on music, art, fashion, literature and film gained a foothold in South Korean media and among young people, but from 1970 it was beset by yearly government crackdowns.

In August 1970, long hair, short miniskirts and experimental art were subjected to a month-long crackdown, while marijuana was criminalized after years of American requests to do so in order to ingratiate Korea with the U.S. government which had announced troop cuts for Korea.

In 1971, Park Chung-hee's electoral victory over Kim Dae-jung was bookended by spring and fall protests from students demanding an end to campus military training ― protests that ended in mid-October when a garrison decree sent soldiers to occupy campuses.

A parallel crackdown on decadent trends such as long hair, bodypainting and go-go dancing that began in early October 1971, seen as a "smokescreen to hide the real issues" by Korea Times columnist James Wade, forced haircuts on almost 50,000 young men over a month-long period.

A policeman cuts a young man's hair, published in The Korea Times Oct. 2, 1971. / Korea Times Archive

More authoritarian moves followed. In December, Park declared a State of National Emergency that highlighted the threat from the North and urged that citizens be prepared to "concede some of the freedom" they enjoyed, and then, in October 1972, he declared martial law, closed the National Assembly and, following a propaganda campaign, held a referendum for the new Yushin ("revitalizing") Constitution that all but made him president for life.

Amid this, rock musicians thrived in go-go clubs in central Seoul while folk music sung mostly by university students ascended the charts and saw increasing record sales and radio airplay. Despite a three-month disappearance from the charts due to martial law in late 1972, folk music tinged with rock, psychedelia and even synthesizers began to grow in popularity from 1973, performed by singers like Song Chang-sik, Yun Hyung-ju, Kim Se-hwan, Yang Hee-eun and Lee Jang-hee.

One of the key figures associated with youth culture of the time was writer Choi In-ho, whose serialized novel "Heavenly Homecoming to Stars" told the story of, as Choi put it, "a girl who was killed by a city," becoming a massive hit in 1972. He followed this with "March of Fools," which focused on university students as they navigated university life, dating, boredom and aimlessness.

It was when these stories were adapted into films, however, that youth culture became a point of media discussion.

Choi chose his high school friend, Lee Jang-ho, to direct "Homecoming," and assigned Lee Jang-hee and his backing band Light of the East, led by guitarist Gang Geun-sik, to do the soundtrack. When the film was released in April 1974, its combination of traditional melodramatic elements, flashback structure and cutting-edge music drew crowds and smashed box office records.

A day before the film's release in April 1974, Choi wrote a "Declaration of Youth Culture" in the Hankook Ilbo, which helped prompt months of academic debate over the role of such culture, though it should be noted that some student activists dismissed the idea that mere "entertainers" could ever be their "heroes."

It was also in 1974 that Korean folk, rock and pop overwhelmingly topped the music charts, displacing trot music for the first time. Late that year, singer-songwriter Kim Jung-ho became a household name, writing hits sung by himself and the folk duo Onions, while "Godfather of Korean Rock" Shin Joong-hyun started a new band, the Yupjuns, and scored a massive hit with the song "Mi-in" (The Beauty).

Western Salon go-go club ad, published in The Korea Times April 26, 1975. / Korea Times Archive

In addition to selling records and playing live in a variety of downtown venues, folk singers like Lee Jang-hee and Yang Hee-eun also worked as radio DJs, playing Western rock and folk music.

But while the young people may have embraced such music, movies and literature, Park Chung-hee's regime did not. After criminalizing long hair on men in 1973, hundreds of thousands of forced haircuts took place every year, a situation so common that it was ridiculed by the 1975 film adaptation of "March of Fools" in a comedic scene during which two long-haired university students run from police.

Young men are gathered after being apprehended by the police for having long hair, published in The Korea Times July 18, 1971. / Korea Times Archive

As the government tightened its grip on society, however, no room was left for even light-hearted criticism of this sort. In May 1975, after months of student protests, Park Chung-hee used the fall of South Vietnam as an excuse to ban all dissent through Emergency Measure 9 and followed this with the forced enrollment of all university students in the Student Defense Corps.

In its desire for "social purification," the government required that an approved, militaristic "healthy song" be included on every record and carried out extensive bans on the sale and broadcast of over 100 popular songs, targeting the hits of the day. Shin Joong-hyun saw half the songs on the first Yupjuns LP banned, leading him to abandon their already-recorded, free-wheeling psychedelic follow-up and instead release a staid album featuring several "healthy songs."

In truth, the room available to criticize the government had already been incredibly narrow. The most folk pioneer Hahn Dae-soo had been able to get away with on his 1974 debut was to sing in a deliberately abrasive manner on the opening song "Give Me Some Water" and to put on the album cover a close-up photo of his face with a disgusted look on it. However, when his 1975 follow-up featured an instrumental titled "Death of a Grasshopper," the authorities interpreted the grasshopper to be Park Chung-hee and banned the entire album, making clear their intolerance of even a hint of dissent.

"Haircuts" editorial cartoon, published in The Korea Times July 8, 1971. / Korea Times Archive

The authorities also decided that one way to help eradicate "decadence" was to crack down on marijuana, and that summer they filmed an anti-marijuana film for future use. When the crackdown began in late November, prosecutors planned to round up several dozen marijuana smokers to make examples of them.

What came next went beyond their wildest expectations. On Dec. 3, three folk singers including Lee Jang-hee were arrested, and investigators soon brought in Shin Joong-hyun and Kim Jung-ho. Within a month over 80 entertainers had been arrested, including the members of Light of the East and film director Lee Jang-ho.

The government wasted no time taking advantage of the situation. Magazine articles detailed the musicians' arrests, their confinement as "addicts" in mental institutions and the punishments meted out to them. Rather than jail time, they faced bans by the Entertainers' Association from recording or performing, in some cases for life.

"Marijuana Smokers" editorial cartoon, published in The Korea Times Dec. 6, 1975. / Korea Times Archive

As well, the link between pot-smoking folk-singer radio DJs who played Western pop songs and their friendship with an AFKN DJ who allegedly introduced them to marijuana was highlighted in an article that described the 1970s as the "era of pop music pollution." Bans on over 200 Western pop songs soon followed.

The ensuing avalanche of anti-marijuana propaganda included articles warning that it caused impotence and warned readers to keep an eye out for psychedelic posters ― a tell-tale sign of marijuana use. Park Chung-hee ominously warned that young people smoking marijuana would "bring ruin to our country."

A psychedelic picture, published in The Korea Times Dec. 7, 1975. / Korea Times Archive

In February 1976, Park obliquely blamed the U.S. for this situation. As a Korea Times editorial titled "Fight Against Decadence" described it, Park "called for the gradual correction of degenerate fashions introduced from foreign countries so as to keep the nation's traditional culture and art on an independent and sound basis." In July, Culture and Information Minister Kim Seong-jin went further when he told the Los Angeles Times, "I don't think there will be any role for foreign influence in our culture in the future."

This turned out to be not at all true, but it would take over a decade, until after democratization, before South Korea's film and music scenes would truly begin to recover from the events of 1975 ― a process that is arguably still ongoing.

Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr, and co-author of "Called by Another Name: A Memoir of the Gwangju Uprising." He will give a lecture titled "1970s Youth Culture at its Zenith: Music and film in the years before Emergency Measure 9" for Royal Asiatic Society Korea on Sept. 13.