Just one month remains before CCM artist Song Jung-mee’s concert “The Blessing Song” opens at Carnegie Hall in New York City, U.S.A. It will be the first performance by a Korean CCM singer at the famous hall, which hosts mainly classical performances. Pop stars who have taken the stage at Carnegie include the Beatles and Mariah Carey; Korean singers who have appeared there include Cho Yong-pil, Patty Kim, Lee Sun-hee, Insooni and Kim Bum-soo. Song Jung-mee, with her 2 million album sales and a record audience of 100,000, has met strict standards.
On the afternoon of April 23, Kukmin Daily was at the Patmos Cultural Mission Association office on Eonju-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, to meet with Song Jung-mee, recently returned from about a month in the U.S. preparing for her concert. She looked tired, but also strong, as if she was turning her tensions into energy. “Just as Jesus fed 5,000 people with one child’s lunchbox (John 6:5~14), I hope God will feed the souls of the many people who hear my small songs.”
Song Jung-mee, who in 2000 became the first CCM singer to stand onstage at Seoul Arts Center, will perform at Carnegie Hall this May 30th. “The Korean church has held me up till now. Now I think I need to hold up the ‘next generation.’ The Carnegie Hall concert is not the goal but the starting point. I want to go to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8), singing together with the next generation.” She will perform with 150 some children selected from local U.S. churches. “We selected the children this January through auditions; they range in age from elementary school to high school and attend churches in the New York area. I plan to sing four songs with them including ‘O, Daehan Minguk (Korea).’ I want to give the next generation the opportunity to receive the Gospel in wholeness through culture.” Also at an earlier concert in 2013, marking the 25th year after her debut, she shared the stage with 10 or so aspiring CCM singers who were chosen through auditions.
Song Jung-mee, too, met God and learned to sing through diverse ministries in the church. “As a fourth grader in elementary school, when I was taking part in the Korea Child Evangelism Fellowship summer camp, I decided to be a missionary. Too young? At the time, I was already 167 cm tall. (She laughs.) When I was in my first year of high school, our church mission worker introduced me to a music missionary from the U.S., from whom I first learned Gospel singing; and I learned sacred music from a music college student who taught me, ‘Your first teacher was the Holy Spirit.’”
Following her 1986 admission to the sacred music department at Yonsei University, she went through a time of despair when she suffered from nodules on her vocal cords and couldn’t even take the practical exam. It was at this time that she made “The Blessing Song.” Transcriptions of “The Blessing Song” now are sung in 20 different countries. Song Jung-mee won the gold prize at the 1st National University Students Gospel Singing Competition in 1988, and the following year she won the grand prize at the 8th National Gospel Singing Competition. She received YWAM (Youth With a Mission) training during 1992 and 1994 in Toronto, Canada and Hawaii, U.S.A., respectively.
“A singer sings where people call her to sing, but a mission worker must go and sing where God calls her. Because I am a mission worker, I sing for God’s presence, whenever and wherever that may be.” Her albums, from the 1st collection “For the Lost Soul” to the 6th “Song of Hope,” are a consistent whole. Song served as a professor of the CCM department of Soongshil University for 10 years, from 1998, nurturing the “next generation.”
“It was worthwhile work teaching younger persons, but whenever missionaries on the frontlines of ‘spiritual battle’ sent me an urgent SOS for help and I couldn’t run to their aid, it was frustrating. If you go to an Islam mission field, there’s a siren calling Muslim people to prayer five times a day. It gave me the feeling that my throat was contracting; I would get this symptom from fear of spiritual closure.”
After resigning as a professor in 2009, she was able to visit the mission field often. “In the same way that God helped Paul and Silas when they sang praises to God in the Roman prison, I can see God comforting the spirits of the exhausted missionaries when I sing.” Song Jung-mee is a cultural missionary who heals other missionaries. She sang an elegy for Kim Sun-il after his kidnap-murder (2004), and a song to comfort the survivors of the Afghanistan kidnapping (2007).
She also has played a missionary-sending role. “The year before last, the Carnegie Hall concert was confirmed, but the expense was going to be substantial and I even thought about giving up on it. But at a mission rally last year, a missionary to Laos said, ‘I decided to become a missionary at your concert, Professor. Don’t give up!” Another missionary delegate said, ‘When everything was so hard that I couldn’t express it even in tears or prayers, I listened to your songs, and sank down and cried.’ Their words gave me courage.”
Song Jung-mee is singing in the center of Manhattan, New York, known as the world’s cultural capital. “In the 90s, God gave me culture in one hand and the Gospel in the other, and let me know that I had to be a missionary. The Christmas concerts I have performed in ordinary halls every year since 2001 are in the same dimension.” She said she hopes God will use the Carnegie Hall concert. “All I can do is sing, but I hope many people will come to know God’s love and God’s will through my songs. Like that one child’s five loaves and two fishes.”
Reporter Kang Ju-hwa (rula@kmib.co.kr), with Marion Kim (marionkkim@icloud.com)
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