OMONA THEY DID(N'T)!

It’s almost Lunar New Year’s Day aka seol-nal in Korea! Seol is one of the country’s biggest holidays and one of the few occasions where most Korean families still practice old traditions such as eating specific traditional food, and customs such as cha-re [altar rites memorializing ancestors] or sebae [younger generations of the family bow to their elders to pay respect and wish them good fortune and get spending money in return \0/] Some people even still wear hanbok (mostly kids and newlyweds though).

In this day and age, it’s not unusual for the more esoteric elements of any country’s native culture to be reserved for special occasions and I definitely remember when the only times I saw hanboks on Korean TV was in seol and chuseok holiday specials or dry, dense sageuks that nobody but my uncles seemed to watch. But at some point sageuks became more fashionable, hanboks re-emerged as hipster trends, and really starting just a few years ago (about the same time that certain departments of the government realized just what a potent soft power they could harness in K-pop, but I digress) more and more surface elements of traditional Korean culture have been emerging in mainstream K-pop. The increasingly widening and globalizing audience for Korean pop culture has helped in part to lead to a surging revitalization and reclamation in mainstream media of the culture that is considered endemically ours, literally ‘우리의 것.’

In fact, there have been so many songs in just the last few years that this post had to be split into two parts - part 1 with various “honorable mentions” and OP’s ranking of the 10 best traditionally-inspired songs/concepts will be posted in part 2.

NOTE: For the sake of judging on equal terms, such as music / lyrics / choreography / aesthetics / MV, I only ranked official releases with properly staged and filmed videos. Noteworthy songs/performances that didn’t meet these ranking criteria or otherwise crack the best-of are listed below.
[Plus all the typical disclaimers - these are all OP’s subjective personal opinions, keep it civil, etc etc]