Here is a wordless song that is the title track of a famous Korean soap opera of 2001, sung by Korea's greatest artist, Ahn Sook-sun (or An Sukson).
Ahn Sook-sun, one of Korea's foremost classical musicians and the mother of traditional Korean folk songs, was born into a musical family in Nam-won, a major center of Korean traditional arts. Since her youth she has been a constant presence at traditional musical festivals nationwide. She is a master of pansori, or traditional narrative song, that she started to learn when she was 9 years old. At around the age of 10, she won several student pansori singing contests over the country. It was when she was 20 that she got down to study pansori in Seoul as a student of Kim So-hui, one of the greatest pansori singers (1917-1995). Her aunt was Kang Soon-young, a great gayageum (a twelve-stringed Korean harp) player and her uncle was Kang Do-keun who was a great pansori singer and passed away in 1994. She has been designated as "human cultural treasure" by the Korean government. The formal title is "the 23rd important intangible cultural asset of gayageum". She regularly tours the world and is acclaimed everywhere.
Listen to her grand and powerful singing, that recalls the traditional Turkish way of vocalizing (see Hamiyet Yüceses) (which is not so amazing, the Turks being the far-off Altaic relatives of the Koreans) and enjoy!
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