By Jung Da-min Nancy Lorena Castro Gonzalez, a Mexican musician who sings “minyo,” or Korean traditional folk songs, said that she first fell in love with minyo in 2013 when she learned about Korean traditional music. Earlier in 2010, when she was in her last year of middle school, Castro first got to know about Korea through the K-pop band, Super Junior. “I knew nothing about Korea at the time, not even where it was located or what the country was like. So I started to look up information about Korea online. As I was interested in the politics and laws, I studied the history, society and politics of Korea and became more interested in the country,” Castro said during an interview with The Korea Times, Monday. After learning about Korean traditional music called “gugak” and minyo folk songs, she especially took an interest in Gyeonggi minyo, folk songs handed down in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, and started to practice singing the songs by herself in her room. In 2014, she started to learn the language at the Korean Cultural Center in Mexico City, run by the Korean government, and first came here the next year, for a cultural training program with the government-run King Sejong Institute Foundation. Then she got to meet Nam Sang-il, a star “sorikkun,” meaning a singer of traditional Korean music, and to sing Gyeonggi minyo in front of him. When she came to Korea again in 2017 as an exchange student to take a 10-month web programming course at a local vocational training center, Nam and a producer of local broadcaster Gugak FM proposed she appear in a gugak contest program on the radio. “I knew that my performance was not good enough at the time, compared to other contestants who participated in the program, but everyone, including the judges, encouraged me, saying they really appreciate that I, as a foreigner, love Korean traditional minyo. That made me so happy and convinced me that it was a thing I really want to continue doing in my life,” Castro said. But as Castro majored in law in university, her mother wanted her to become a lawyer and did not understand why she wanted to sing minyo, especially as a foreigner. “I got a job with a Korean company in Mexico City and took a flight to Korea in 2018 without telling my mom. … Looking back, I think I did something really bold, but I have no regrets,” she said. After taking a Korean language course at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, she entered the Korea National University of Arts to study and learn minyo more. She is now focusing on learning Gyeonggi minyo from sorikkun Lee Chun-hee. “Learning minyo means learning about Korea more, because the songs tell you the geography and history of Korea. For example, I learned through the traditional songs that Korea used to be one country, before being divided into North and South Korea. And some Gyeonggi minyo tell you about the mountains on the North Korean side,” Castro said. “Although it is now difficult due to the COVID-19 situation, I want to go to other Spanish-speaking countries to let people know about gugak, once the pandemic situation gets better. I am currently making YouTube videos with other students at my school, in which we talk about different genres of gugak in Korean and I make the Spanish subtitles.” Castro said that maintaining traditions is important, as it is about cherishing the culture of the society. “Many people say that gugak is rather boring, but it has its own colors and attractive aspects, which are rooted in Korea’s culture and society.” Castro will give an offline performance together with Taiwanese musician Hsu Yun Pei, who plays the haegeum, a traditional Korean string instrument, at Seoul’s Donhwamun Traditional Theater in Jongno District on June 1.
The poster for an in-person gugak performance, featuring minyo singer Nancy Lorena Castro Gonzalez and haegeum performer Hsu Yun Pei / Courtesy of Hsu Yun Pei
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