When Massive Attack covered Seo Taiji & Boys’ “Regret of the Times” at Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival on August 1, the British band framed it as a tribute to a song that had once defied authoritarian control.
Now, a South Korean city councillor wants to use a government audit to investigate the band over the performance, a move critics say risks reviving the very dynamic the song was written to resist.
“Regret of the Times”, released by Seo Taiji & Boys in 1995, was itself once at the centre of a censorship battle. The group refused to comply with a government pre-screening requirement for the track, resulting in a stand-off that contributed to the eventual abolition of South Korea’s pre-release music censorship system.
Massive Attack’s cover, performed partly in the original Korean as homage and partly in English for a wider audience, was explicitly framed by the band as an act of solidarity with that legacy.
“‘Regret of the Times’ took on an authoritarian government and won. In 2026, as corporate absorption and the censorship of artists for political expression looms large again, it resonates as a signal lesson,” the Bristol-based band said in a social media post introducing the cover.
“We see this cover as an act of continuity, revival and solidarity with Seo Taiji & Boys – K-pop progenitor – whose work defied state censorship while creating a global genre.”