A small number of people have become widely known in South Korea as influential innovators and/or preservers of traditional percussion band music, having led the way to establishing it as an icon of Korean identity on the national level. Meanwhile, there have been countless others who have been responsible for spreading percussion band music-making on the local level. This paper examines the activities of two such unsung heroes, Yi Ch’ungsŏng and Kim Chŏngsu, who have lived their whole lives on the remote island of Ulleungdo and who were instrumental in founding new groups there in the 1990s and 2000s. The paper begins by examining the disappearance of the island’s original folk percussion ensembles in the 1960s and 70s. It then explores Yi and Kim’s motivations for beginning to learn traditional percussion music at a late stage in life, and documents the trials and tribulations they experienced to re-establish drums and gongs in Ulleungdo’s musical life.
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