Beetle on the Vinyl Floor

Beetle on the Vinyl Floor (비닐 장판의 딱정벌레) is a song from Essays with Guitar, the first solo album of the South Korean singer-songwriter Kim Chang-wan, released in October 1983. Recorded with little more than an acoustic guitar and his voice, it belongs to the hushed, folk-leaning side of the man who led one of Korea’s most influential rock bands, Sanulrim.

Key facts

Artist
Kim Chang-wan (김창완)
Album
Essays with Guitar (기타가 있는 수필), his first solo album
Released
15 October 1983, Daesung Records; CD reissue 1996
Track
Side A, track 8
Style
Acoustic folk: guitar and voice
Artist’s band
Sanulrim (산울림), debut album 1977

Essays with Guitar

The album, 기타가 있는 수필 in Korean, was released on 15 October 1983 by Daesung Records and reissued on CD in 1996. Beetle on the Vinyl Floor closes its first side, two tracks after Mother and Mackerel (어머니와 고등어), which Weiv calls the album’s best-known song. The Korean webzine Weiv notes that most of the album’s songs were written for an MBC Bestseller Theatre television drama, My Heart’s Windmill (내 마음의 풍차); Korean Wikipedia credits Kim with the drama’s music and a small acting part.

It came at a turning point. Sanulrim, the band Kim had formed with his younger brothers Kim Chang-hoon and Kim Chang-ik, released its ninth album in 1983, after which his brothers took regular jobs and Kim carried on as a full-time artist. The critic Im Jin-mo, writing for the music webzine IZM, sees the album as the moment the weight of Kim’s music shifted from Sanulrim’s explosive impact to a clear, transparent lyricism.

The sound of the song

Both reviewers mention the song. Weiv’s critic Kim Seong-gyun hears in it the album’s typical style: a picked acoustic guitar rather than strummed chords, with Kim’s low, almost drowsy voice flowing over it, closer in feel to English-language folk music than to Sanulrim’s ballads. He picks out the middle of the song, where the guitar is plucked almost one note at a time, at moments sounding like a gayageum, and suggests that the empty space this creates carries the loneliness that runs through the whole record. The echo-heavy recording adds to its soft, slightly blurred character.

Im Jin-mo groups it with the album’s other quiet pieces, all coloured by Kim’s distinctive murmured delivery, and praises their absorbing melodies. With only an acoustic guitar and his voice, he writes, the album leaves the comfortable feeling of having read a book of essays.

About Kim Chang-wan

Kim Chang-wan was born in Seoul in 1954 and graduated from Seoul National University in 1975. With his brothers he formed Sanulrim, meaning mountain echo, whose 1977 debut What, Already? brought a psychedelic and hard-rock sound that Korean audiences had not heard before; the band released more than ten albums by 1984 and became one of the most influential names in Korean rock.

Alongside music he has worked as an actor, writer and radio presenter, and he formed the Kim Chang-wan Band in 2008, the year Sanulrim ended after the death of his brother Kim Chang-ik. In Emblem World, Beetle on the Vinyl Floor sits in the South Korea music collection, where people discover and rate local food, drink and music.

Sources

Checked by Emblem editorial on 17 October 2026.

More songs from South Korea