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The logo of Tongyeong International Music Festival Foundation is composed of five staffs used in a music score. With theses five staffs, the nature of Tongyeong, mountains, islands & waves, are symbolized expressing the complete harmony between music and the beautiful nature of Tongyeong.

Tongyeong International Music Festival, a Mecca of classical music in Asia has begun its history passing through the preparatory phase of Tongyeong Contemporary Music Festival in 2000 and 2001. Since the establishment of Tongyeong International Music Festival Foundation in March, 2002 (The 1^stChairman: the late Seong-Yawng Park, Honorary Chairman of Kumho Asiana Group), Tongyeong International Music Festival conducted 2002 and 2003 festivals with a great success, and had gained a foothold as a reputed international music festival in Asia, encompassing contemporary music as well as jazz and classical music.

Tongyeong International Music Festival Foundation is organized of the Board of Directors which is responsible for the entire foundation, Operational Committee, who are responsible for making decisions on the programs of the festival, and Seoul & Tongyeong Offices which undertakes all the substantial operations. With such tight and systematic structures of the organization, and the strong experiential background gained from several years' international festivals, the festival marked an astonishing leap to the prominence.

Since 2003 Tongyeong International Music Festival Foundation has been holding one and only international music competition in Korea, Gyeongnam International Music Competition and contributed to the expansion of business. Year 2004 especially has a significant meaning in the history of the festival: the festival evolved into a leading music festival brought up a seasonal event with year-long concerts freeing itself from a fixed frame of an annual week-long concert and started to manage various festivals and relevant events. All this is to prepare for the construction of a new concert hall in Tongyeong in the near future and furthermore, to celebrate for the new birth of Tongyeong as an international music city which will ultimately become the world's Tongyeong International Music Festival.

Tongyeong International Music Festival Foundation makes attempts to be a center of the World and Asian Music and to nurture Tongyeong, a small fishing town in Asia, to grow into a culturally rich city embracing world music and contributing world's cultural exchange. Along with inauguration of the 2^ndChairman, Dr. Hong-koo Lee in july 2005, its firm determination has just begun.

"My music has been born historically from all the artistic, philosophical and aesthetic tradition of my country (people), and socially my country`s doomed fate, destroyed order of my people`s human rights, and bureaucratic oppression has influenced to command maximum expressive language within the limit of nobility and purity of music."

Isang Yun is a Korean composer who stands upon in the world of 20th century`s modern contemporary music as of his unique musical language through the creative communication of eatern and western`s different culture. In addition, he is a humanist who sacrificed for his country`s reunification, the human rights of the oppressed, democratization of his country and the world peace. For Yun, life and art were inseparable. He firmly believed that an artist could not exist outside the society and the works sincerely created from pure, innocent and righteous conscience only could be touching. Over 150 compositions which is not confined to one genre, is the expression of his artistic belief and world view based on Orientalism.

Isang Yun was born in 1917 during Japanese occupation of Korea and died in Berlin, Germany when he was 78 years old. He experienced Japanese occupation, liberation and separation of his country and the tragedy of Korean War throughout his life in Korea for 39 years. Early 20th century, he studied western music under the barren environment when the western music has just introduced to Korea, and became a composer who pursued to establish the Korean music breathing together with the world and the generation. To accomplish this mission, he came to Europe in 1956 to study the art of contemporary composition. And during his life in Europe for 39 years until his death, he continuously sought the creative possibility lying within his country`s tradition which has formed himself. He himself was a grueling struggle for the future of his country and people, and the strong longing for the peace of all mankind was submerged into his art.

Isang Yun was born as a first child between Kihyun Yun, the father who was an aristocrat and Sundal Kim, the mother who was a farmer on September 17th, 1917 in Duksan Li, Sancheong Gun, Gyeongsangnam Do, Japanese Occupied Korea. He moved to Tongyeong in 1920 with his family and grew up there. Tongyeong has been the place where Europe`s new culture coming in from Japan rigorously exchanged and co-existed, the cultural center which numerous well-known poets and artists came from, and politically, militarily and commercially the significant point due to its geographical location surrounded by the ocean. Yun grew up breathing and wholeheartedly feeling colorful Korean traditional culture being inherited for ages - and new culture.

From five to eight, he studied Chinese literature in a village schoolhouse and went to Tongyeong public school where European educational system was applied, when he was eight years old. At this school, he started to get exposed to new culture. Especially European songs with precise scale taught at the school attracted him. He was very talented in music from the early age showing great ability in reading music and singing along the organ accompaniment. Chants, which he used to sing at the church nearby his home, were one of early experiences of western music. At 13, he learned violin and guitar and started writing melodies. These melodies were arranged and played at small concerts in a movie theater in between movies without him knowing it, and accidentally he found about this and made him dream to be a composer.

After graduation from the public school, he went to Tongyeong Hyupsung commerce school for 2 years as his father objected the idea of being a composer. However, Yun never gave up music and went to Seoul at the age of 17 despite his father`s objection. He stayed in Seoul for 2 years and studied harmonics from a violinist of a military orchestra. Also he studied classical music and the music of R. Strauss and Hindemith on his own.

In 1935 he came back to Tongyeong, earned his father`s permission to study music under the condition of studying business altogether and went to Japan. He went to a business school in Osaka and also studied composition, theory and cello at a music academy. In Osaka, he lived where Koreans forced to move to by Japanese. It was here he saw the oppressed people`s lives and this experience opened his eyes to political and social awareness. Upon his return to Korea in 1937, he started teaching at Hwayang academy (Hwayang Elementary School, currently) where the nationalism was blossoming. During this period, he studied the opera, continued writing music and published his first work of songs for children. In 1939, he went to Japan for the second time and studied contrapuntal and composition from Ikenouchi Tomojiro who studied at Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique.

In 1941 he came back home feeling the Pacific war was about to break. When the war broke, he was drafted to work at a warehouse. He formed the underground group working against Japan and was captured by Japanese police, tortured and imprisoned for 2 years. After release from the prison, he tried the rebel against Japan again and flew to Seoul avoiding Japanese police. He was hospitalized because of tuberculosis when the liberation came.

In Tongyeong after the liberation, he established "Tongyeong Cultural Society" with artists from Tongyeong to create ethno culture and he led the musical society. During this period, he composed Alma Maters for almost every school in Tongyeong. He became the director of Busan Orphanage after he heard from children became orphans due to the war, taught children and took care of them.

In 1948 he became a music teacher for Tongyeong women`s high school and transferred to Busan high school not long after. He taught music, composed lieder and quartet and published his first songbook of five lieders "Dalmoori" in Busan. Soon after his marriage to Soo-Ja Lee, who taught Korean literature at the same school on January 30th, 1950 the Korean war broke out and he had his first child, Djong in November of the same year. He registered to "Composers` Society during the War" in Busan, taught music at Busan high school in 1951 and moved with his family to Seoul after the armistice in 1953.

For his life in Seoul for three years, he made his position as a composer in Korea teaching composition and music theory at Seoul National University and Duk-Sung Women`s University and publishing his works and critiques actively. In 1954 "Composers` Society during the War" was reborn as "Korean Composers` Society" in Seoul and he became the General Manager leading the Korean music society. 1954 published work, "Problems in plotting music society" which revealed the problems facing the Korean Music Society and suggested the direction for the music society to establish "Korean Music", is a significant index to understand his compositional works. In 1956, he was awarded "Fifth Seoul Culture Awards" in the praise of String Quartet No.1 and Piano Trio, and this award made him to decide studying in Europe to learn 20th century compositional technique and music theory. In June, 1956 at the age of 39, he went to Paris, France with warm and loving farewell of his friends and colleagues. No soul anticipated he would never be able to come back to Korea ever again.