Early Jazz in Korea during the Japanese Colonial Period - Focused on Texts from Newspapers and Magazines between 1927 and 1940

This study examines how jazz, first introduced to Korea in the 1920s, was received until it faced interruption by the music prohibition decree of 1940 during the Japanese colonial era. This study collected newspaper and magazine texts between 1927 and 1940. The texts were then sorted into three categories and examined based on previous studies regarding the amount of jazz record release: period of formation, development, and decay. During the formation period, “Korean Jazz Band” was notably active, which was also known as the very first jazz band in Korea. During the development period, various jazz bands were produced by record companies and they actively performed live. Lastly, during the decay period, jazz-related texts rapidly disappeared from the media due to the music prohibition decree. Although the characteristics of these three periods are less explicitly distinguished due to a brief prevalence of jazz at the time and limited available data, this study is significant in that it examines the chronology of jazz during the time of Japanese colonial rule in Korea.