If you know much about Korean music, you’re probably used to K-Pop groups and other crossover artists.
Still, there’s much more to Korean music than that. There are still plenty of hidden potential talents roaming around the streets of Korea just waiting to be discovered.
And today’s video is another one of them!
Meet Hongdae’s street busker, Sunho Jung, and his guitar.
Jung starts by getting the crowd’s attention.
After that, he starts playing a familiar tune—the “Mission: Impossible” theme song. He first did the suspense-inducing intro, then immediately transitioned to the bass part and then the lead.
Before long, all the passersby are ooh-ing and ahh-ing.
He pulls off the lead, bass and melody with some impressive fingerpicking—but he has even more tricks up his sleeve.
“Don’t go, it’s not over yet,” he tells his audience.
Surprisingly, that actually was not the main part of his show. What he did first was just a small part so that he could record that audio of himself playing live. After that, he does the song’s drumming on the back of his guitar as well!
When the lead part comes, he starts banging his guitar like it was a drum.
He even encourages his audience to film him and makes all kinds of faces to entertain them! It all happens so quickly that you almost wish the performance went on longer. Even so, he still managed to win the crowd in a short amount of time.
The video hit the internet and it soon won over an even bigger crowd
Ham posted the video on March 12, 2018, and since then the video reached 14 million views with no sign of stopping! In fact, it even got the attention of another famous Hongdae guitarist, whose comment got pinned at the top of the clip.
It was written in Korean, but the rough translation reads:
“Wow ~ I’ve been playing for a long time and many people recognize this performance. Thank you for finding out whether you are positive or negative. I’ve played this song a lot to survive on the street with nothing but military troops. The audience liked it so much that they played it at least 5,000 times. I’m tired of this song, but I’m still playing it because the audience is so fond. I’m trying to be a (guitarist + entertainer), so you’ll see more exciting and fun performances in the future.”
Needless to say, Jung is a big talent!
South Korea is rich with talented buskers that the world hasn’t discovered.
Buskers have their reasons for doing what they do. Some want to hone their talents and prepare for something bigger that may come to them. Others just want to share their talents with the people, and some just want to communicate with the world around them.
In any case, it’s clear Jung has a bright musical future ahead of him!
No matter what his intentions are, he’s clearly reached a much broader audience than he may have ever thought possible. If you enjoyed this performance, be sure to watch his other clips online—many of which are also viewable through the same YouTube channel (like the one below):
Hopefully, Jung’s talent will spread further and further and we’ll be seeing more of him in the future.
Congratulation to Jung on this awesome performance! Check out the full thing in the link below:
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