Tenor Ung-kyun Yim, who'd sing [Mil-Yang A-ri-rang] magnificently, who'd take his handkerchief out of his pocket and wave it while he sang. With the highest popularity through [Open Concert] his life is different from any other ordinary vocalists. With only a few months of lessons during his 3rd grade in high school, got him in the Vocal class of Yon-Sei University as first. With only 300million won he left for Italy to study, rather it was more like an asceticism. Plunging forward on this side and dashing in on that, the hot blooded [fellow] vocalist. Let's ear about his younger life he claims to have shed many tears in.
When I speak my voice is very think and loud. When I scold my students the whole music academy would ring with the sonorous sound. So they all ask, "Aren't vocalists supposed to save their voices?" I'd always reply with my 'steel theory'. I want my voiced tempered like steel. So I use vocalization when speak and even when I snore, I'm just temperingmy voice. Of course steel can break. But on the other hand, it gets used importantly. Even if it breaks and I live shortly, I'd rather live as steel during that short life.
My blood was always hot. I hot blood had been boiling since my child years. At our neighborhood, the Yim's family's third son was known as malicious. It must have been when I was in 4th grade at elementary school. Before then, I was kind of timid. It was after we got ruined making us leave the 60room house and move to Tuk-sum. Our family has 6 sons. Our whole family lived in one room, so at the house owner's point of view, we were a nuisance. At that time, I knew the sorrow of living in a rent room, and I was taught to watch to make sure I didn't anger the owner. This is how I lived when I got into a fight with the bully of the village. For years I was his follower and one day I had raised upon him. The opponent soon had a bleeding nose and started had started to cry. The fight had been slightly boring. When I was young, I was strangers with music. However if I did have some relation, it was that my mother sung very well. After she got married, she had even enrolled in the vocal class of
Suk-myung Womans University, but she got pregnant and didn't get to fill her ambition. And the child she bore was me. Being poor, I couldn't learn the piano and my music grades were poor. My voice was unbelievably resonant and I got slapped on my cheek from my teacher when I was in 5th grade. I had only sung it the way the music said, 'more and more harder'. In the end my music score was very poor. Also during my first grade of middle school I had problems because of my loud voice. The teacher gave me 59 for not singing it quietly and prettily. I'd flunked. So that was why I had no idea that I had talent in music. But in 2nd grade, my teacher, Song-mae Lee was different. Suprisingly he praised me, "You have an unbelievable voice that must do vocal.". My courage doubled, I got a habit 'singing with a loud voice'. At the time the owner of our neighborhood reading room had a great baritone. Every evening while he walked down the road he would sing, 'Oh Sole mio' or 'Catari' and it would look so classy. I had also started going around the neighborhood singing with a loud voice, imitating that man. After school, if I would start singing from outside the neighborhood, the village people would say, 'Ung-kyun must be coming.' The songs 'Send me to my hometown', 'Want to go', 'My mind' were my regular reportory.