SKorea's "Godfather of Rock" hangs up guitar

SEOUL, Dec 22 (Reuters) Shin Jung-hyun is as old as your grandfather, but the man credited with creating South Korean pop music plans to rock on forever.

The 68-year-old artist, dubbed the ''Godfather of Korean Rock'', has been compared to the legendary Jimi Hendrix and his songs were as successful at home as The Beatles' hits in their time.

Now, after a career spanning more than 50 years and hundreds of concerts, Shin is retiring from public life -- but not music.

''I will concentrate my attention on my favourite music, without any burden, without paying any attention to the general public,'' Shin told Reuters Television before his farewell concert in Seoul earlier this week.

''I will dig my favourite kinds of music alone from now on,'' he said, admitting that he was probably getting too old for public performances.

Born into an affluent family in 1938, Shin started work when he was barely a teenager after both his parents died in the Korean War, according to Yonhap news agency.

He saved all his wages from his job at a pharmaceutical plant to buy a guitar, which he said reminded him of his father, who used to listen to the gramophone, and his mother, who left him a harmonica, the news agency said.

ROCK ON Shin's musical career started in 1955 with performances for US troops stationed in Seoul. Nearly 10 years later, he formed South Korea's first rock group, ''Add 4'', which played Western-style rock and roll until Shin decided to do it his way.

''After checking and practising various kinds of foreign music, I started digging out Korean-style rock in the middle of the 1960s,'' he said.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Shin churned out hits such as ''Woman in Rain'' and became a household name.

But fame came with a price -- he was jailed for 4 months in 1972, allegedly for drug possession, after he refused to write a song glorifying military dictator Park Chung-hee.

The military authorities banned his songs until Park was assassinated in October 1979.

Shin remains bitter about the dictatorship, but only because of the damage it did to Korean music.

''(Dictators) try to seal people's lips. Our dictator at that time imposed silence on influential popular stars, taking an oppressive measure on our culture,'' he said.

And Shin's not too happy about today's Korean music culture either, despite the fact that the country has produced some of the most popular singers and actors in Asia.

''Recent Korean songs have no identity,'' he said. ''Music should be full of life with its originality of each country.'' Younger performers, however, love Shin. In 1997, they created an album of cover versions, ''A Tribute to Shin Jung-hyun''. His fans, mainly middle-aged professionals, also love him for reminding them of their youth.

Rock and roll runs in the family -- one of Shin's sons is a guitarist, another a drummer, and they have often performed with their father.

The music also runs through this sexagenarian's veins. Asked what rock means to him, Shin simply says: ''Freedom''.

REUTERS MS BD0852