Isang Yun

Isang Yun, or Yun I-sang (17 September 1917 – 3 November 1995), was a Korean-born composer who made his later career in West Germany.

Yun was born in Sancheong (Sansei), Korea (today part of independent South Korea) in 1917, the son of poet Yun Ki-hyon.

His family moved to Tongyeong (Tōei) when he was three years old.

He began to study violin at the age of 13 whereupon he composed his first melody.

Despite his father's opposition to pursuing a career in music, Yun began formal music training two years later with a violinist in a military band in Keijō (present day Seoul).

Eventually his father relented once Yun agreed to enroll in a business school while continuing his musical studies.

In 1935 Yun moved to Osaka where he studied cello, music theory, and composition briefly at the Osaka College of Music.

He soon returned to Tongyeong where he composed a "Shepherd's Song" for voice and piano.

In 1939 Yun traveled again to Japan, this time to Tokyo in order to study under Tomojiro Ikenouchi.

When the Pacific War began in December 1941, he moved back to Korea where he participated in the Korean independence movement.

He was arrested for these activities in 1943 and was imprisoned for two months.

Yun was interned at Keijō Imperial University Hospital for complications resulting from tuberculosis when Korea was liberated from Japanese rule in August 1945.

After the war he did welfare work, establishing an orphanage for war orphans, and teaching music in Tongyeong and Busan.

After the armistice ceasing hostilities in the Korean War in 1953, he began teaching at the Seoul National University.

He received the Seoul City Culture Award in 1955, and traveled to Europe the following year to finish his musical studies.

At the Paris Conservatory (1956–57) he studied composition under Tony Aubin and Pierre Revel, and West Berlin (1957–59), and at the Musikhochschule Berlin (today the Berlin University of the Arts) under Boris Blacher, Josef Rufer, and Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling.

In 1958 he attended the International Summer Courses of Contemporary Music in Darmstadt and began his career in Europe with premieres of his Music for Seven Instruments in Darmstadt and Five Pieces for Piano in Bilthoven.

From October 1959, Yun had been living in Krefeld, Freiburg im Breisgau and Cologne.

With a grant from the Ford Foundation, he and his family settled in West Berlin in 1964.

The premiere of his oratorio Om mani padme hum in Hanover 1965 and Réak in Donaueschingen (1966) gave him international renown.

With "Réak" he introduced the sound idea of Korean ceremonial music as well as imitations of the East Asian mouth organ saenghwang (Korean), sheng (Chinese) or shō (Japanese) into Western avant-garde music.

However, due to alleged acts of espionage, he was kidnapped by the South Korean secret service from West Berlin on 17 June 1967.

Via Bonn he was taken to Seoul.

In prison he was tortured, attempted suicide, forced to confess to espionage, threatened with the death sentence – and in the first instance sentenced to life imprisonment.

A worldwide petition led by Guenter Freudenberg and Francis Travis was presented to the South Korean government, signed by approximately 200 artists, including Luigi Dallapiccola, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Mauricio Kagel, Herbert von Karajan, Joseph Keilberth, Otto Klemperer, György Ligeti, Arne Mellnäs, Per Nørgård, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Igor Stravinsky, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann.

Yun was released on 23 February 1969, returning to West Berlin at the end of March.

Yun taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover (1969–71) and at the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin (1977–85).

Among his students are Kazuhisa Akita, Jolyon Brettingham Smith, In-Chan Choe, Conrado del Rosario, Raymond Deane, Francisco F. Feliciano, Masanori Fujita, Keith Gifford, Holger Groschopp, Toshio Hosokawa, Sukhi Kang, Chung-Gil Kim, Wolfgang Klingt, Erwin Koch-Raphael, Isao Matsushita, Masahiro Miwa, Hwang-Long Pan, Martin Christoph Redel, Byong-Dong Paik, Bernfried Pröve, Takehito Shimazu, Minako Tanahashi, Masaru Tanaka, Michail Travlos, Jürgen Voigt, and Michael Whticker.

In 1971, he obtained German citizenship.

He never returned to South Korea.

From 1973 he began participating in the call for the democratization of South Korea and the reunification of the divided country.

After 1979 Yun returned several times to North Korea to introduce new Western composition techniques as well as his own music.

In 1982, the first Isang Yun Festival took place in Pyongyang.

Two concerts with works of Isang Yun had been performed in Seoul (1982) by Heinz Holliger, Ursula Holliger, and Francis Travis, later by Roswitha Staege and Hans Zender.

In 1984, the Isang Yun Music Institute opened in Pyongyang, North Korea.

An ensemble had been founded there under his name.

Yun promoted the idea of a joint concert featuring musicians from both Koreas in Panmunjom, which failed in 1988, but South Korean artists could be invited to Pyongyang in 1990.

Yun was invited to attend a festival of his music in South Korea in 1994, but the trip was broken off after internal and external conflicts.

Yun was told by South Korean officials that to return, he would have to submit a written confession of “repentance,” which he refused.

On 3 November 1995, Yun died of pneumonia in Berlin.