Labeling the Uncarved Sound : Derridean, Wittgensteinian, and Zhuangzi’s Perspectives on “Korean Music”

National-linguistic labels such as “Korean music” frequently appear in global English-language social media as shorthand for popular genres, while in ethnomusicological scholarship, they typically encompass classical, folk, popular, and contemporary classical traditions. This article analyzes how these divergent usages affect our understanding of musical practices and explores what they conceal regarding the fluid interactions of sound, identity, and community. Integrating Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language-games, Jacques Derrida’s différance, Zhuangzi’s skepticism toward fixed categories, and Benjamin Brinner’s framework of networked musical knowledge, the study positions “Korean music” as a contested, contextually negotiated symbolic category shaped by historical, commercial, diasporic, and scholarly forces. Wittgenstein highlights how labels gain meaning pragmatically within social practices, Derrida foregrounds their inherent instability and continuous reinterpretation, and Zhuangzi cautions that rigid categorizations obscure experiential creativity. Applying Brinner’s ethnomusicological emphasis on relational musical networks, the analysis demonstrates that labeling simultaneously enables communicative clarity and risks oversimplifying complex cultural realities. Ultimately, this study argues that the semantic fluidity and multilayered nature of “Korean music” are neither trivial nor incidental, but essential outcomes of ongoing interpretive processes across diverse sociocultural contexts.