"Why isn't my life working out" As the time went on after I came back from abroad, I started getting depressed. At the vocal class, the professors divide the students and assign them to the instructors. But I would get at the most 2 students, or sometimes even one. It was that some of the professors didn't like me. They didn't even call me for broadcasting or concerts. It was like that even though I was as good, if not better than anybody else with a splendid prize record. It was in November, 1986 when I finally found out why. It was when I met the producer of KBS's show "FM concert", Kyung-gyu Park.
After having a long conversation with me he said, "I was right. Just as I expected you have to meet a person before judging him." When I asked what he was talking about he told me all the bad rumors about me. I found out that there had been an absurd misunderstanding. A senior vocalist who graduated Seoul University had met a korean student while watching the opera, "Carmen" in Milan.
The student had been so rude that after he came back to Seoul, maddened, he had started speaking ill of that person. "Y'know, I don't know his name but that fat tenor who graduated Yon-sei university. He's really haughty." Hearing his words people concluded saying, " Oh, you mean Ung-kyun Yim. He's like that." But actually the fat tenor was not me.
I have never seen the opera 'Carmen' and I had a hard time cause I didn't have the money to. That was how I got to participate in the producer Kyung-gyu Park's 'FM concert'. It was a concert where 6 amateur vocalists got together and the head of the radio department had said, "Was there such a fine tenor before?" after hearing me sing. He made instructions to make me appear on air more often.
Since 1987, I appeared regularly at a program called "KBS concert hall" 'Queer Harmony', 'The Banned Song', 'The Crown Prince's Love'. Everytime I came on the audience's response was hot. Outer city concert requests spilled in like water. I also participated lively in operas like, 'Aida', 'Rigoletto', 'The Tragedy of Poscariga. I was busy with concerts that took up two-thirds of my schedule a month.
But between the many concerts, 'Open Concert' was the one that made me into a star. After the first appearance on October 1993, the 'Open Concert' raised me and I gave help in making the 'Open Concert' succeed. At my first appearance the song I sung was 'Country girl ','Love is many splendid things'. At the L.A. 'Open Concert' I sung the arranged version of 'The river Du-man' and 'Ta-hyang-sa-ri(Being absent from home)'.
I call these pieces, not traditional songs, but classical songs. It's because it broke the boundary of classical music, and made good for lots of people. So that's the reason why I was able to sing proudly on stage. Although I've been on air many times, I've also had lots of clashes with the studio. Once there was a liasion for me to appear on the program, 'Greeting Autumn's Night of Songs' , but to my suprise, they wanted me to sing 'Canzone' and opera 'Aria'. "Hey, it's enough that our songs are dying out, but how can I sing Aria on the night of songs?"
In the end, I refused to perform. Because of that I stayed away from the broadcast for some time, but I thought that I was right, and I actually got an apology from the broadcasting station. Being the head of the Music Academy of the Korean Synthetic Arts School, I did the first thing in the 111years of the Vocal Class history. I made Aria a required subject. Although I've studied in Italy, I loved our arias and korean songs.