KOREAN music is well-known and well-loved the world over, with songs from bands like BTS and BlackPink populating playlists in every continent of the globe and filling stadiums wherever they go.
With that said, it has been claimed over the years in print and online that one of the most enduring hits of 1980s-era Russian rock - “Gruppa Krovi” or “Blood Type" in English – was written and sung by an ethnic Korean.
Is there any truth to this?
VERDICT:
TRUE
Yes, this is true as Viktor Tsoi - the late frontman of the band that recorded both the song “Gruppa Krovi” and the album of the same name - was indeed of Korean descent.
Tsoi is in fact Koryo-saram, a descendant of Koreans forcibly moved from areas in the Russian Far East on the Pacific coast to what are now the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
These Korean communities were violently uprooted in the 1930s on the order of dictator Joseph Stalin, as he believed that they were potential traitors who would align themselves with the invading powers should war break out between the Soviet Union and Japan.
These displaced Koreans and the generations that followed eventually made a name for themselves, with sports stars like footballer Mikhail An of Uzbekistan's FC Pakhtakor and Kino frontman Tsoi being part of the post-Stalin pop culture in the final decades of the USSR, the 1970s and 80s.
And when it comes to Tsoi, how famous is “Gruppa Krovi '' and is it still an enduring hit today?
Well, both the 1988 song and album are still remembered fondly to this day as a bold protest against the ongoing Soviet war in Afghanistan and it received wild success at the time.
Indeed, as Associated Press journalist Alan Cooperman wrote in a May 1989 article, the song had made its way across to the other side of the Cold War to win fans in the United States.
“Of the new releases, perhaps the most authentic is Gruppa Krovi (Blood Type), a collection of protest songs and dance numbers by singer-poet Viktor Tsoi and his punk group Kino (Cinema). The album was recorded in the apartment of one of the band members,” wrote Cooperman.
With that said, “Gruppa Krovi” still endures to this day as American heavy metal band Metallica sang it at a Moscow concert in 2019, which not only won over the crowd but had them taking over to sing it en-masse along with the band.
Sadly, Tsoi never got to enjoy the wild, enduring success of his hit; he was killed in a road accident in Latvia in August 1990. He was 28 at the time of his death.
SOURCES
eurasianet.org/uzbekistan-the-koryo-sarams-tragic-soviet-soccer-superstar
www.allmusic.com/album/gruppa-krovi-mw0000203983
www.rferl.org/a/metallica-plays-song-by-soviet-era-rock-star-at-moscow-concert/30069623.html
