Registration is open today at the Seoul Museum of Korean Folk Music for “Na Un-gyu’s Arirang, 100 Years — Listen and Sing,” scheduled for October 1. That date marks exactly 100 years since Na Un-gyu’s film Arirang opened at Dansungsa on October 1, 1926.
NowHitz Editorial · 2026-09-26 · From the archive
The film itself no longer survives, but the song does. The ongoing exhibition “Again, Arirang” brings together early recordings, SP records, lyric books and regional versions of Arirang—traces of a song that kept finding new voices instead of staying inside one era.
Arirang was never fixed to one definitive set of lyrics. Korea’s National Heritage Portal describes its open form as one of its defining features: the words can change, and people can keep making and singing new verses.
A century, then, feels less like a number sealed inside a display case and more like a refrain passed from one generation to the next. Perhaps a tradition stays alive not because it remains unchanged, but because every era can still find room inside it.
On October 1, a hundred-year-old song will not simply be commemorated. It will be sung again.
