Although imprisoned for his anti-Japanese activities during the Second World War and obliged to live as a political refugee in Germany in the late 1960s, the Korean-born composer Isang Yun played an important part in the development of music in Korea. He exercised influence over a generation of younger composers, many of whom studied with him in his adopted country. Yun's own compositions reflect a synthesis of East and West, in a technique of writing that, while contemporary, draws on older Chinese and Korean traditions.