Jung Mina

Jung started learning to play the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument, at 12 years old. She said it became a big part of her life, so she continued to play it as she developed her music career.^[3] She found the instrument when she started taking traditional Korean dance in elementary school. From her second year in middle school she started lessons with a neighborhood teacher, then studied at Gukak National High School, Hanyang University, and Sookmyung Women's University.^[4]

She worked various part-time jobs during school and after starting her musical career, including in the ticket office of a racecourse on the weekends for four years, and at a call center, like many of her friends.^[5] She said making a living with music was difficult. During a leave from graduate school, a club owner in Hongdae, where she was working part-time, convinced her to start composing and performing on stage.^[4] Even after releasing her first album, she returned to part-time work, selling rice balls near Gwanghwamun Station, but soon gave up, admitting that she was not skilled at the work.^[4] One of her ballads, "Jumeokbab", or "Rice Balls" was about her work experience.^[6] She said, "If I didn't have these experiences, I wonder whether I could have written the music I did, because the only thing I knew was traditional Korean music. I think I would be making only shallow and superficial music."^[4] She has said she differs from many musicians, in choosing to write her lyrics first, and the melodies afterwards.^[3]

She worked in Hongdae for five years, becoming popular as a fusion indie musician, known as the first with a gayageum to perform there on a regular basis.^[6] She uses a 25-string variant of the original 12-string gayageum, to give variations in the range of notes, and incorporates her Western music theory and jazz training in her compositions.^[6][7]

In 2005, she debuted with her first extended play (EP), Tragedy.^[3] In 2006, she released her first studio album, Love Dream,^[6] which sold over 10,000 copies. One of the tracks on the album was included in a middle school music textbook.^[4] Her second studio album, Afterimage, was released in March 2010. It was described as "[forging] contemporary sounds that successfully blend traditional instrument's sounds with bass guitar rhythms."^[6] She released her fourth, A Person's Moment, in January 2014.^[3] She wrote the lead track "Poor Woman" for the album after browsing through random books in a Seoul library. This led to her traveling across the country for more inspiration, visiting more libraries, and sleeping in jjimjilbangs to meet the people of the different regions.^[3]

A documentary was made of her and her band on a 15-day busking tour in 2009, titled Fantastic Journey of The Modern Gayagumer. It was released on August 18, 2011, after screening at the Jecheon International Music & Film Festival earlier in August.^[1][4][8]

In 2012, as an artist, she charted in the number one position on the Billboard chart "Next Big Sound", a weekly chart of the "fastest accelerating artists during the past week, across all major social music sites, statistically predicted to achieve future success."^[9]