Former Korean vice minister turns 15 Shakespeare sonnets into AI-assisted album

Yong Ho-seong, a former South Korean vice minister of culture, sports and tourism, released his debut full-length album, "Fragile Beauty," on Nov. 10 under the name Dr. Dragon. The record uses AI-assisted composition and vocals to recast 15 William Shakespeare sonnets as contemporary songs.

The album is the first release in DiVerse, a project intended to set all 154 Shakespeare sonnets to modern music. Yong said its name combines the poet’s original verse, his newly written lyrics and the range of genres used to reinterpret the material.

Rather than translate the sonnets’ archaic English directly, Yong adapts their themes for modern listeners. He writes the lyrics himself, specifies rhythm, instrumentation and musical references in detailed prompts, and sometimes regenerates a track 30 or 40 times before editing individual tracks himself.

He describes AI as a creative assistant rather than a substitute for human artistry. The album uses the contralto voice of an AI vocal persona called NikkiD, with arrangements drawing on late-1960s avant-garde folk and chamber folk, including nylon-string guitar, upright contrabass, cello, viola, flute, harmonium and bass clarinet.

The Korea Times reported that the idea began when Yong, then director of the Korean Cultural Centre UK, received a hardcover complete edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets from a British friend. His move into AI music followed his retirement from government service in 2025, after more than 30 years in cultural-policy work. He also completed an AI composition course at SM Universe.

Yong had a musical background before his public-service career. He studied classical music and jazz, collected more than 10,000 records, played drums in jazz and rock bands for decades, and began writing as a music critic after winning Auditorium magazine’s annual criticism competition in 1993.

His earlier Shakespeare-inspired song "Frozen Edge," based on Sonnet 97, has received differing descriptions. The Korea Times said it won the AI.LOVE.JAZZ. composition competition in Montreux, Switzerland, in July, while a July report by Maeil Business said it was one of 15 semifinalists. The song reworked the sonnet’s farewell and winter imagery as modern vocal jazz, with Yong directing its concept and narrative while AI handled composition and vocals.

The release arrives while South Korea’s treatment of AI-assisted music remains unsettled. The country’s copyright framework protects human creative contributions but does not recognise material made solely by AI as copyrightable. In August, the Korea Music Copyright Association introduced registration criteria for AI-assisted works in which humans had a substantive leading role, then withdrew them 22 days later amid criticism over the lack of social consensus and an objective way to assess human and AI inputs.

Yong plans to issue a sonnet-inspired album each month in genres including jazz, blues, hip-hop, rap-metal and K-pop. He is also developing progressive-rock operas based on "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," and a separate reinterpretation of poetry by the Joseon-era writer Yi Mae-chang.