Tallae Music Band (달래음악단의) is a quintet North Korean female group currently active in South Korea. The members of the group sing, dance, and play various instruments.
Seoul August 3, 2006
THE Spice Girls never had to worry about becoming political prisoners and Britney Spears never had to remember the words of the Song of Coast Artillerymen, but the members of the Tallae Music Band surely did.
The group is made up of five young women who put their lives at risk to leave Stalinist North Korea. Now they dream of making it big in the capitalist South's pop music market.
With two accordions, a song book of tunes favoured by the senior set and dance moves used in the North's Mass Games, even their manager admits their music may sound strange to younger South Koreans.
But it is all steeped in a shared Korean tradition, delivered by women with smiles made for television to an audience in the South that has been willing to embrace entertainment products that come with the theme of Korean unity.
The members of Tallae, which is Korean for a wild plant that is seen as heralding spring, range in age from 19 to 28. They left the North seeking freedom, not stardom, but would be happy to become celebrities in their new home. They have sung for Communist Party cadres, danced for members of the North Korean People's Army and impressed the proletariat with feverish fingers over accordions.
"It is our dream to play music that can bring North and South together," said lead singer Han Ok-jung, 28, who once was a singer with a propaganda band for the North's Workers' Party.
"One day, I hope to be as famous as Britney Spears," said accordion player Lim Yoo-kyung, 19.
Last year, 1387 North Koreans defected to the South, compared with 1894 the previous year. A few defectors have achieved minor celebrity status as entertainers, but there has been no group of defectors who have made it big in the South's music world.
Most Western music is banned in the North, and even though the South's pop culture is slowly creeping in, it is still a crime to listen to South Korean music.
Kim Yong-chul, the group's manager, said he was looking for something new and came upon the idea of a defector girl group. He found vocalist Han at a symposium on North-South Korean relations and the others through schools that help defectors.
One of their first singles is called My Dandy. It speaks of innocent love over music suited for a foxtrot.
REUTERShttp://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/north-koreas-defector-spice-girls-sing-for-the-south/2006/08/02/1154198206066.html http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=18&art_id=24163&sid=9133506&con_type=1 (same as the above article)
SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) -- A tasty bowl of cold noodles knows no political boundaries on the divided Korean peninsula and that has helped make defector Kim Yong a successful businessman. art.defector.gi.jpg
North Korean defectors fill out job applications during an employment lecture in Seoul, South Korea.
Kim, who runs a restaurant in the Seoul suburbs specializing in North Korean cuisine, is one of a handful of defectors making a living in the capitalist South selling goods linked to the communist country of his birth.
Most North Korean defectors have been bystanders to the South's economic boom, overwhelmed by their new environment, facing employers who see them as under qualified for a cutthroat labor market and criminals who target them as easy prey.
"Many North Koreans come here to escape starvation. They do not bring skills or money with them," said Kim, adding few had the business acumen or capital to crack into the market.
"So many defectors try to open their own business, but they disappear within a year. They don't realize how competitive capitalism is in the South."
The first of the more than 10,000 North Koreans who defected to the South came in a trickle, often members of the hermit-state's elite with the skills to find jobs in a land that celebrated their arrival.
Nowadays, they are more likely to be women laborers and farmers from North Hamkyong province, a rocky land bordering China known for its prison camps and as an economic backwater in an already impoverished country.
One of Seoul's greatest fears is that its northern neighbor will collapse sending millions across the border, creating turmoil in the prosperous South.
South Korea is a fervent advocate of dialogue with the North, including the current international talks to end Pyongyang's atomic arms ambitions in return for aid which many say will help keep its leaders in power and avoid abrupt political change. Don't Miss
They started arriving en masse in the mid to late 1990s, fleeing a famine that experts say may have killed about 10 percent of the 22 million population.
With few skills and speaking Korean with an unmistakable accent, they rarely fit in.
Even though South Korea trains defectors to adjust to their new lives, more than half wind up unemployed and those who do find work often earn only a pittance, according to a survey from Seoul National University.
About one in four defectors has fallen victim to crime in the South, most often defrauded of their welfare stipends by earlier defectors, a government study earlier this year said.
Kim, who fled to the South about 16 years ago and soon became a TV personality, now runs a restaurant called Morangak, in the Seoul suburb of Ilsan, with branches across the country.
Its best-selling dish is Pyongyang cold noodles at 6,000 won ($6.54), served in a clear, vinegar broth garnished with slices of beef. Kim has also pitched his instant noodles on TV home shopping channels.
Kim weathered a year where he did "little more than chase flies" because his North Korean cuisine was not to the taste of customers in the South.
He learned to include more meat, make portions generous and change a way of cooking from the North based on stretching sparse ingredients to that of the South where food is abundant.
His restaurant now serves about 1,000 people a day on weekdays and 3,000 on weekends.
Still technically at war with the North, South Korea has taught generations of its children that Pyongyang's leaders are devils and has stringent anti-communist laws to throttle any influence from across the border.
Defectors say they often feel like second-class citizens in a country where many see them as a burden on the welfare system.
The North's missile test in July 2006 and its first nuclear test three months later have made South Koreans more suspicious of their communist neighbors, opinion polls show.
While trade between the two Koreas has increased over the past few years and now tops more than $1 billion annually, there are almost no North Korean goods on South Korean store shelves.
The few items from the North are poorly-made cigarettes, cheap alcohol and ginseng often sold near the border.
Yet, despite the prejudice, a few defectors say they have found a receptive audience by selling the idea of a shared Korean identity which transcends their heavily armed border.
Defector Lim Yoo-kyung, 20, jumped on that bandwagon with her accordion.
Lim is a member of the Tallae Music Band, a group of young female defectors who play traditional Korean tunes virtually unknown to young South Koreans who are fed a diet of hip hop.
"I thought people would feel uncomfortable or disapprove of our group because we're from North Korea," said Lim.
"However, the reaction has been 180 degrees different from what I expected. They accepted us as people from one nation."
Defector Jong Su-ban learned success can be fleeting.
Jong once did well in the cold noodle business. But a sales slump and swindlers led him to close his three stores.
"North Korean defectors can't succeed yet," Jong said.
"I did expect much more on my arrival here, but...it's better than what I would ever have had in the North."http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/24/korean.defectors.reut/index.html?section=cnn_latest
Wild Rocambole Band _ Tallae Umakdan in Korean _ an all-female band of six North Korean defectors will release their first album here this August. Most studied at music schools in North Korea, or performed with state-run troupes.
Included on the album is ``Hong Kong Lady,’’ one of the most beloved trot songs in South Korea along with several songs they learned in North Korea.
Leader Han Ok-jung, 28, who escaped the North in June 1998 is good at singing and Chinese while dancer Heo Su-hyang, 22, who fled in 2001, is well-versed in apparatus gymnastics and singing.
Kang Yoo-eun from Pyongyang, and Lim Yoo-kyung from North Hamkyong Province, both 19, sing and play the accordion.
To protect their families who remain in the North, two of the members, who are now South Korean citizens, use false names.