About the Composer:

Charles Lee
Born in 1981 at Riverside , CA , Charles Lee moved to Suwon , South Korea at the age 4. He began studying composition and piano around the age 14 and attended Seoul Arts High School as a composition major. In 1997, he returned to the US and began his formal instruction with Pablo Ortz and Andrew Frank, professors of composition at the University of California at Davis . Charles Lee attended the University of Southern California (USC) as an undergraduate composition major graduating with the Department Award and Cum Laude, and recently completed the Masters of Arts degree at the University of California , Los Angeles (UCLA). Lee studied with notable professors including Stephen Hartke, Donald Crockett, Frank Ticheli, Roger Bourland, and Paul Chihara. His compositions have been performed in Davis , Los Angeles , Sacramento , Seoul , and Suwon . Currenly, Lee is working in both music and real estate development. Lee plans to concentrate primarily on writing commercial music.

About the Music:

Taken Away at Twelve

After reading a true story based on an Korean comfort woman, Yi Okpun, and her terrible experiences during World War II, I was shocked yet inspired to write a piece for this woman. The author was one of many comfort women who were forced to become sexual slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army. I intended to write a piece that has both angry and sad sounds, as if these sounds symbolize a comfort woman’s deep sufferings and times they have gone through.

The first and second section of the piece is called “Taken…” and “…to a comfort station”. In order to raise the war effort, Japanese war minister deceived and kidnapped hundreds of young Korean girls. This twelve-year old girl was enslaved, beaten, and starved. Later, the girl was sent to a comfort station in Taiwan and forced to become a sexual slave. Her job was to comfort 20-30 men in a day. Oppressed by too many hungry soldiers, her body was almost half-dead, beaten, and starved.

This piece that I submitted to the Sejong Society is the third section, named “Return”. After World War II was over, the girl could finally return to her homeland trying to forget the tragedy that had happened to her. She sings “Saeya Saeya” on the boat to Korean. I quoted this traditional Korean folksong throughout the section. I decided to quote this folksong, since the melody is well known among Koreans and beautiful despite using only four notes. The folksong also sets a perfectly nostalgic scene for a lonely girl on the boat singing and crying alone. She yearns for mother, home, and peace. When she arrived in Korea at the age of twenty-one, she would conceal every truth for a half century. Her agony would never be forgotten but remain forever in her life. I hope to dedicate this piece to the innocent Korean comfort women.