Regulating and Negotiating in T’ûrot’û, a Korean Popular Song Style

T’ûrot’û (its name derived from the Korean pronunciation of the English, trot) is a South Korean sentimental love song style performed with an abundance of vocal inflections. While this popular music has existed in the music scene of Korea for more than eight decades, it has been received differently at differ-ent times throughout its history. For instance, t’ûrot’û enjoyed its heyday as the dominant Korean popular music until the 1970s, and it remains popular par-ticularly among older adults (sôngin) and working people (sômin). According to a survey by the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) program Kayosho (Popular Song Show) in 2003, 64 out of 100 of the all-time favorite Korean popular songs were t’ûrot’û songs.1 Hence, this grassroots popular music genre can be easily heard in such spaces as taxis, buses, marketplaces, local festivals, and noraebang (private rooms for karaoke). In addition, the social meaning of t’ûrot’û has been complicated by its rela-tions to successive ideological structures of Korea, such as the elite nationalism of the Japanese colonial period (1910–45), the cultural imperialism of the Col