Sijo refers to both a literary genre and a musical genre. Sijo as poetry was formed by, and was, the lyrics of a musical genre, gagok. On the other hand, sijo as songs was developed to enjoy the standard form of sijo as poems. The strong yearning for the ideal world in gagok may not be traced in the musical element of sijo as songs, but its shadow still lingers in the form of lyrics.

“The sole moon prints on the surface of thousands of rivers (月印千江).” The moon shining over a thousand rivers is the king. This sijo sings about the moon reflected in the river and thus about the king. However, like any other sijo, something suspicious is going on here. Although the moon is the master of the sky, its words do not reach the ground. Instead, the speaker submerges the sky in the water, which is followed by the sinking of the moon. While the speaker even has power to pick up the moon from the water, the moon cannot move itself or doesn’t seem to be working properly. The active agent here is the speaker of the sijo, one of the jungin whose social mobility was often obstructed by a rigid class structure. This is how the moon was portrayed in the late Joseon Dynasty.

The sound of this sijo has a calm, peaceful face. Rather than focusing on the rebellious implication within the poem, our rearrangement of the song tries to capture this --- its serenity and peacefulness.