On August 14th, one day ahead of Gwangbokjeol [Korean Liberation Day marking independence
from Japan], a symbolic concert promoting Korean unification will be held on Dokdo, a small group of
mostly uninhabited islets approximately 90 km east of Ulleungdo in the East Sea
between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
The event titled, “Love for Dokdo – Hope
for Unification Concert” will feature
a 55-member defector youth choir joined
by South Korean singer Lee Seung Chul, singing songs like “The Day,” which explore themes of unification.
The plans for this
concert formed in March, when the Youth Defector Choir proposed a visit to
Dokdo and asked Lee Seung Chul about the chance to collaborate on a musical
project.
Other world-class musicians have also
volunteered to perform; Yang Byung Un, the composer behind the 2002 Busan Asian
Games theme song, has been charged with arranging the orchestral parts.
Moreover, Grammy Award-winner Steve Hodge,
who has previously worked with Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson, will behind
the sound engineering. “The Day,” composed by Jung Won Bo, a member of the
group ‘NeighBro’ who famously made it to the final rounds of popular program
“Superstar K”, will also be released in English
following the Dokdo event.
Lee Seung Chul plans to perform the hopeful
tune at the UN headquarters in New York, as well as Harvard University, and
hopes other American pop singers considering singing with him to more effectively
disseminate the song’s message.
“Even amongst all this tension between
North and South Korea, our voices unite when it comes to calling Dokdo ‘our
land’ [in response to Japanese claims of ownership]. Dokdo is the stepping
stone that connects the North and South and will lead to unification,” Kang Won
Chul, a defector student who plans to attend the concert, told Daily NK. He
hopes to “become a stepping stone, akin to Dokdo, tying together North and
South” with plans to help the North transition after unification.
The concert is slated to air as part of a
Chuseok [a harvest moon festival serving as a thanksgiving holiday]special by
the KBS Documentary team and all revenue resulting from album sales will be
donated to organizations helping defectors.
Youth Defectors Choir was founded in 2011
by another young North Korean defector group called ‘With-U’ and consists of
North Korean defectors in their 20s.
