Korean ballad

As the "background music of the Park era" (in reference to the Park Chung-hee dictatorship from 1963 to 1979), trot music was also an extremely popular music style in Korea.[2] Having gained popularity during the Japanese colonial period of Korea, its foreign influences included Western instruments and the Japanese pentatonic minor scale.[2] Popular trot singers notably include Cho Yong-pil, and used a faster paced and fun music style that evolved many times throughout modern Korean history to gain popularity amongst consumers.[1] Due to the skills necessary to sing trot songs, popular singers moved towards ballads for their "easy-listening" style.[3] Unlike trot songs, which derive singing techniques like vibration and pitch changes from older styles like pansori, ballad songs are slow yet simplistic in singing style.

Pop ballad: Debuting in 1976, Hey Eun-yi's pop ballad "당신은 모르실거야" ("You Wouldn't Know"), with its slow, melancholic rhythm, became extremely well-received.[2]

Rock ballad (also known as power ballad): With a stronger emphasis on the rhythm, along with the inclusion of instruments more closely related to the rock genre, such as the drums and guitar, rock ballads can ramp up to a faster pace and higher power than classic sentimental ballads. Singer Yim Jae-beom's song "임재범 너를 위해" ("For You") (2000), begins softly with a keyboard accompanying his singing. However, the song quickly builds with each refrain getting louder than before along with the inclusion of drum accompaniment. As the song continues, the emotion of the song is portrayed by an electric guitar solo. Other popular rock ballad groups include Boohwal.

The initial wave of popularity in response to rock music in Korea ended before the rise of ballads in the 1980s. However, revivals of the genre since that have allowed to new experimentation within the genre.

Folk music in Korea arose from anti-government movements in the 1970s which consisted largely of college students.[2] Because of its simplistic nature (use of few instruments), it was easy to perform, alluding to its popular name t'ong g'ita ("barrel guitar") named after the barrel which people would sit on while playing instruments.[2]

Ballad & folk: Popular balladeer Lee Sun-hee has numerous songs that represent a "Korean interpretation of American folk music" through the emphasis of acoustic guitar, such as her song "그대가 나를 사랑하신다면" ("If You Love Me") (1991).[4] This song elaborates on how someone should feel if they were truly in love and how that should manifest into their actions toward their loved one (the singer). Throughout the song, a piano melody accompanies Lee Sun-hee until breaks into slower, more melancholic refrains where the soft twang of an acoustic guitar takes the place of the piano.