Korean enka singer Kim Yon-ja
The Chosun Ilbo reports about Kim Yon-ja, a South Korean who came to Japan in the 1980′s and became a popular enka singer:
Kim topped the Japanese Oricon Chart 15 times. “I got noticed thanks to the uniqueness of Korean voices, which the Japanese don’t have,” she says. Yet it wasn’t easy. She went to Japan all alone at the age of 18 in the late 1970s, but it ended in utter failure. Then she met her lifetime partner, a second-generation Korean-Japanese 18 years her senior who was a member of a famous jazz orchestra. The two married in 1982.
The key to her eventual success in 1988 was the stability and security that her family gave her. “But it was very difficult in the beginning. When I sing overseas, I have to be aware of many things because I’m no longer just the singer Kim Yon-ja, but a ‘Korean’ singer.’”
The article also contains her fond recollections of traveling to North Korea and meeting Kim Jong-il. She apparently could not make a second visit to the DPRK because she was worried about anti-North Korean sentiment in Japan.
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