Music Faculty Honored With Best Paper Award at KAUPA 40th Anniversary Conference

Moon-Sook Park, associate professor of music in voice performance at the University of Arkansas, was honored with the Best Paper Award at the 40th annual Conference of the Korean American Professors Association, held Jan. 23 at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Her presentation, "600 Years Reimagined: Reviving King Sejong the Great's Yongbieocheonga Through Generative AI and Modern-Classical Vocal Interpretation," was recognized among a competitive field of KAUPA scholars for its innovative, interdisciplinary contribution to Korean studies in the era of artificial intelligence.

The project centers on Korean court ritual music with lyrics composed by King Sejong the Great, reexamined through AI-informed structural analysis and contemporary classical vocal performance. Yongbieocheonga (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven), composed in the 15th century, holds a unique place in Korean cultural history as the first literary work written in Hunminjeongeum, the original Korean phonetic script. While the text has been preserved, much of the original performance tradition associated with this repertoire has been lost over time.

Park's research focused on artistic realization and vocal interpretation, with particular attention to Chihwapyeong, one of the principal musical settings associated with Yongbieocheonga. Through the adaptation of modern Korean language and the application of classical vocal technique, she explored how ancient melodic structures may be meaningfully re-embodied for present-day audiences, situating historical court music within a contemporary classical vocal context.

A key component of the project was the AI-based analytical framework, developed independently by Dasaem Jeong (Sogang University, Korea) and his research team in Korea and England. Their work applied generative AI techniques to reconstruct structural principles of 15th-century Korean court music, providing an analytical foundation for contemporary musical exploration. Park emphasized how such technological research can inform artistic inquiry while preserving interpretive agency within performance practice.

The conference theme, "Korean Studies in the Artificial Intelligence Era: Multidisciplinary Research by Korean Scholars Transforming the World," highlighted innovative cross-disciplinary scholarship. Park's project exemplified this mission by integrating historical research, emerging technology and embodied artistic practice to reengage Korean traditional legacy within contemporary performance.

The award underscores the U of A Department of Music's commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship and highlights Park's leadership as an artist-scholar bridging historical tradition, technological inquiry and contemporary classical vocal performance.