Seo Taiji

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Jeong Hyeon-cheol (hangul: 정현철; born February 21, 1972), better known as Seo Taiji (서태지), is a South Korean singer, musician, and songwriter. After dropping out of high school to pursue a music career, he has risen to become one of the most prominent and influential cultural icons in South Korea; many refer to him as "the President of culture". He introduced incorporating elements of popular musical genres from the United States and contributed considerably larger to Korean pop culture and Korean pop's development in the 1990s.

Biography

Early career with Sinawe

At an early age, Hyeon-cheol had a fascination with music. At 14, he participated in several amateur rock bands. He took the stage name of Seo Taiji at age 17, when he was recruited into the heavy metal band Sinawe as bass guitarist by Shin Daechul. He chose to drop out of school because he felt that continuing to be enrolled in school would not be useful in pursuing a career in music.

Seo Taiji and Boys

Seo Taiji and Boys (Hangul: 서태지와 아이들) was a South Korean boy band active from 1992 to 1996. Its three members Seo Taiji, Yang Hyun-suk and Lee Juno experimented with many different genres of popular Western music. Seo Taiji and Boys were highly successful and are credited with changing the South Korean music industry.

History

After the breakup of the heavy metal band Sinawe in 1991, Seo Taiji switched gears and formed the dance group Seo Taiji and Boys with dancers and backing vocalists Yang Hyun-suk and Lee Juno. Yang said he first met Seo when the musician came to him to learn how to dance. "Blown away" by his music, Yang offered to join the group and they later recruited Lee who was one of the top dancers in Korea. Similarly, Lee joined the group as a background dancer, despite being highly regarded in his own right, because the music "moved [his] heart." Seo Taiji came across midi technology for the first time in South Korea in the early 1990s and started experimenting with different midi sound to create a new type of music that had not been heard by the public. He initially had no plans to debut as a dance/pop boy group and Seo Taiji and Boys' mainstream success was a surprise.