The songs, which truthfully reflect the requirements of the times and sentiments and desires of the then people, greatly helped raise their anti-Japanese patriotic consciousness.

   The majority of them called sad song of wanderers or song of loving one´s home mainly manifest love for the motherland and native home of wanderers and their children who lived scattered in alien lands, deprived of their motherland and native homes by the Japanese imperialists.

   Among them are such popular songs as "Sorrow of a Wanderer", "Wild Rose" and "Life in an Alien Land" and such children´s song as "Spring in My Home Village" and "Sky over My Native Place".  The love for the motherland and home depicted by the songs convey the sentiments of grievances and defiance at the aggressors who snatched away and trampled upon everything dear to the Koreans.

   The children´s songs "Beloved Kangnam" and "Half-moon" represent the earnest desire of the then people for national liberation through the children´s mind longing for a new land free from exploitation and oppression. Many love songs of sorrow including "River Tuman in Tears" earnestly sing of the desire and yearning for the liberation of the country by metaphor about "a lover who is sure to come back".

   "Emotional Age", "Falling Blossoms on Running Water" and many other songs depict in a romantic poetic language the sentiments of the times overflowing with belief in the spring of liberation that was sure to come with victory in the anti-Japanese armed struggle led by President Kim Il Sung.

   By preserving the melodious features of folk songs which had become familiar to the Korean people through a long period while broadly introducing excellent successes achieved by human music in applying means and technique of expression such as tonality and rhythm and combining them to suit the taste of the Korean nation, the songs in the enlightenment period assumed new artistic features peculiar to the modern songs to some degree.

                               -  from KCNA Information Bulletin