The musical world of Korea was at a turning point, as Sinminyo(new folksong), the trend of music affected by western music, emerged and became popular during the Japanese Colonial Period.
The Korean classical music circle and the Korean popular music circle all have accepted Sinminyo, noting its value, not in a passing phase but in the mainstream.
Particularly, Seonwooilseon who debuted back in 1934 with the song [Catching the flowers], made Sinminyo become widely popular and continued her singing career, releasing Sinminyo, folk songs, and popular songs, as a representative singer until the early 1940’s
Also, Seonwooilseon’s Sinminyo, widely known as a folk song or a popular music in South and North Korea to this day, is still sung.
In this thesis, the goal is to gain a understanding of how Seonwooilseon’s Sinminyo has been accepted and the characteristics of Seonwooilseon’s Sinminyo.
One of the characteristics of Seonwooilseon’s Sinminyo is her excellent choice for the language, as a singer using indigenous terms and expressions as well as YIBSORY of pure Korean words.
Though it is not easy to express archaic words or indigenous words through the songs due to the difficulty of communicating ideas and feelings, beautiful traditional words are naturally being used in her lyrics.
The mode of Seonwooilseon’s Sinminyo features that many of her songs are Gyeongtori, and some are Menaritori and yukjabaegitori.
This means Seonwooilseon was a woman versed in Gyeonseodosori, and this can be confirmed that she released many records of folk songs such as from Seodojapga, , , from Gyeonggiminyo, , , from Menariminyo, and so forth..
On the other hand, because she didn’t sing many popular songs, unlike other Sinminyo singers around the same time, few of her songs had Japanese Yonanooki scale and some even show major scales and harmonic minor scales.
The most remarkable mode of her Sinminy is in Gyeongtori category, and this kind of Sinminy is mainly divided into Singyeongtori and Sinbangyeongtori.
So far, about ten songs such as , , , , habe been inherited among Seonwooilseon‘s Sinminyo, but some have been sung in original versions while others have been changed to new versions."
Of these, and are inherited into and from Gyeonggiminyo, into from Seodominyo. However, they are inherited not in original versions but in new versions, for political reasons or melodic complexity.