Shin Joong-hyun wrote his most famous song, "Beautiful Rivers and Mountains," in protest of the military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee in 1972.
20 Facts About Shin Joong-hyun
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Shin Joong-hyun was later imprisoned and tortured by Park's regime, and his music was banned until the 1980s.
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Shin Joong-hyun experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1990s and has since received numerous accolades recognizing his contributions to South Korean popular music.
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Shin Joong-hyun was born in Seoul in 1938, during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
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Shin Joong-hyun's mother died when he was a child, and his father later married a Japanese woman.
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Shin Joong-hyun spent his youth with his father and step-mother living in Manchuria and Japan.
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In 1957, when he was 19 years old, Shin Joong-hyun made his debut at a US military base in South Korea, one of the few places where South Korean musicians could find regular work at the time.
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Shin Joong-hyun had been inspired by the American rock, jazz and, later, psychedelic rock he heard on the American Forces Korea Network radio station.
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Shin Joong-hyun later said that the US military bases were where Korean rock was born.
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Shin Joong-hyun released his first album, Hiki Shin Joong-hyun Guitar Melody, in 1958.
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However, Shin Joong-hyun did not achieve mainstream success in South Korea until 1968, when he produced the album My Dear for the singing duo The Pearl Sisters.
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In 1972, the office of South Korean president Park Chung Hee asked Shin Joong-hyun to write a song in praise of the president.
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In 1975, Shin Joong-hyun was arrested for possession of marijuana after giving away a plant to a friend of the president's son, even though marijuana was not yet illegal at the time of his arrest.
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Shin Joong-hyun opened Woodstock, another music club, in southeast Seoul in 1986 and ran it and taught there for the next two decades.
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However, Shin Joong-hyun returned to the stage in 2008 for his first concert in the United States at the Korean Music Festival at the Hollywood Bowl.
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Shin Joong-hyun had used Fender guitars for much of his career.
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Shin Joong-hyun was honored by Berklee College of Music with an honorary Doctor of Music Award in 2017.
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Shin Joong-hyun was married to Myeong Jeong-gang, the first South Korean female drummer and a member of Blue Ribbons, until she died on March 23,2018.
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In 2008, Shin Joong-hyun won the Lifetime Achievement award at the Korean Music Awards.
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In 2017, Shin Joong-hyun received an honorary degree from the Berklee College of Music in Boston.