Book Talk with Translator Seulbin Han: Brother is a Street Musician - Viewing the Landscape of Modernity through Korean Popular Music by Zha

Event details Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2026 Time: 3:00 PM to 4:20 PM Location: Ahn House (AHN) - 100 - 809 West 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90089 Type: Lecture / Talk / Workshop Campus: University Park Campus Department: Korean Studies Institute (KSI) Audience: Students, Faculty/Staff About this event Brother Is a Street Musician - Viewing the Landscape of Modernity through Korean Popular Music by Zhang Eujeong was originally published in South Korea in 2006. Described as a “fascinating journey upstream into the past to understand where the current will bring the future of Korean pop music,” (Busan Ilbo Review, 2009) Brother Is a Street Musician does not deal with K-Pop as it is known today in its contemporary global iteration; rather, it visits the very first chapter of Korea’s popular music history, which in fact coincided with Japanese colonization in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Combining archival research with critical social and cultural analyses of the earliest popular songs, the early recording industry, the first modern era musicians and composers, and the first formation of the consumer masses, Zhang’s book seeks to address a question that is essential to understanding the history of Korean popular music – how did a colonized people construct their own, unique form of popular culture? Celebrating its 20th anniversary since its publication in Korea, this foundational Korean-language text is now available in English for students, teachers, researchers, and anyone interested in a deeper engagement with Korean popular music’s complex and tumultuous history of the past century. As the book’s English translator, I present an introduction and overview of the book’s core concepts, arguments, and methods, as well as some guiding resources for this text’s potential application in a variety of Korean studies courses dealing with Korean popular music, history, society and culture. RSVP Link About the Author: Zhang Eujeong is a professor of liberal arts at Dankook University, ­South Korea. She received her PhD from the Department of Korean Language and Liter­a­ture at Seoul National University in 2004. She has published thirty books and over ninety essays on Korean popular music, popular culture, and oral tradition, including Brother Is a Street Musician (originally published in South ­ Korea in 2006), Tearooms and Cafés: The Sanctuaries of the Modern Boys, Introduction to K-­ Pop History (co-authored with Sŏ Byŏnggi), If You Ask What Trot Is: The History of ­ Those Songs That Comforted Us with Laughter and Tears, and more. She is also a recording artist with three full-length albums (Modern Joseon: Jazz Songs of the 1930s, Midnight in Gyeong-seong, and Gunmal: Meeting Manhae Han Yong-­Un Through Songs) and numerous digital singles. Website: eujeong.com/ YouTube: youtube.com/­channel/­UCNqi-Zcq2Lt6oHDBShYH6JA About the Translator: Seulbin Han is a doctoral student in the department of Comparative Studies at The O Official event details: https://calendar.usc.edu/event/book-talk-with-translator-seulbin-han-brother-is-a-street-musician-viewing-the-landscape-of-modernity-through-korean-popular-music-by-zhang-eujeong