Pink Floyd and Chun Doo-hwan (전두환)
One of the newer blogs I've noticed within the Korean blogosphere is White on Rice, which the author describes as "the story of one dude and his on-again/off-again relationship with Korea over 20 plus years". Current entries are dated from May 1987 and presumably come from a journal that the author kept during his (much) earlier years in Korea. His most recent post ("Strictly Verboten") concerns a student who informs him that the Pet Shop Boys song "West End Girls" was banned in Korea at the time, and reminds me of a similar story that I heard from a Peace Corps volunteer working in Korea at around that time.
After high school I got a job working at a CD store and met all manner of folks. One of them is the aforementioned former Peace Corps member, who later got a job working for the Washington State government. During one of his visits to our store he pointed out how Pink Floyd's album "The Wall" was banned in South Korea for a decade due to the fact that one of the songs ("Another Brick in the Wall") featured the lyrics:
We don't need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
The reason for the ban was supposedly that the chorus promotes the idea that education isn't important, which was seen as a serious problem in a rapidly-industrializing Korea that wanted to become an economically developed nation. However, if you take a closer look at the rest of the lyrics you'll quickly see how subversive they are. Pink Floyd's album came out in 1981/1982. On 17 May 1980 General Chun Doo-hwan declared martial law across Korea and on 18 May 1980 residents in the city of Gwangju rose up in a revolt that eventually led to the Gwangju Massacre. Between the earlier dictatorship of Park Chun-hee (1963-1979) and that of Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1988) Korea saw unprecedented economic growth but at the expense of curtailing civil liberties. Is it any wonder that the government of military dictators would forbid citizens from owning music that might make them question the legitimacy of the nation's leadership?
According to EOFFTV "The Wall" was banned in Korea from 1982-1991, an edited version was allowed to those over 18 starting in 1991, and it wasn't until 1999 that an unedited version was made available to the general adult population.