Life and Career
Born in Pyongyang in 1897, she studied at the Pyongyang Girls' Middle and High Schools, and graduated from Kyongsong Women's Teaching College in Seoul in 1914. After graduation she became a primary school teacher in Wonju.
She left for Japan where she studied music at Tokyo Music School. It was there that she met and fell in love with an English literature and drama student, Kim Woo-Jin (Korean: 김우진). However, Kim was married and had a wife and children at his home in the city of Mokpo.
They set off back for Korea on a passenger ship but jumped from the ship into the ocean and were drowned.
Her most famous recording, recorded in Osaka by the Japanese Nitto recording company, and accompanied by her sister on the piano, is "Saui ch'anmi/In Praise of Death" (or a Psalm of Death, Korean: 사의 찬미) which is set to the tune of "The Waves of the Danube" by Ion Ivanovici. This was released in Korea in 1926 and is often regarded as the first "popular" Korean song.
Two films have been made of her story. The first a 1969 film entitled "Yun Shim-Deok" directed by Han Hyeon-Cheol (Korean: 한현철) and starring Moon Hee. The second was Death Song named after Yun's most famous song, and made in 1991. It was directed by Kim Ho-Seon (Korean: 김호선), for which he won the 1992 Grand Bell Award for best director. Chang Mi-hee starred as Yun, and the film retells the story of the lovers' time in Japan and their death.
Read more about this topic: Yun Sim-deok
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)