Premiered in Seoul, this symphony in one movement integrates a Korean folk tune throughout the piece. This melody is played by the lower strings.

Like the composer's Third Symphony, this piece opens with strongly repeated accents on one pitch, this time in the violas. Other strings (and gradually other instruments) then appear above that note and descend in a mournful gesture. Everything pauses for a moment. Then the violas begin their earnest declaration, or chant of evocation, again. And the previous enfolding gesture occurs again. Another melody is hinted at between these repeated, successively more intensely orchestrated gestures.

After this first section, the violas suddenly enter with an energetic, long, and unfolding melody that is joined by the winds and upper strings which extend it into skipping and onrushing phrases. There are accents and stabs from the percussion and brass which continue to build toward a tremendous first climax. Sustained brass and lower strings recede from this powerful density into a droning texture.

A plaintive cor anglais interweaves a melody with a high string melisma, and the atmosphere is funereal with tolling tubular bells (as in the Third Symphony). The descending figure of the beginning re-occurs as a flash of some terrible unnamed vision, but quickly disappears.

The strings and winds begin whirling figures that develop into a grotesque danse macabre in markedly accented triplets that end in downward chopping bowings (as in the famous passage from Bernard Herrman's score for Hitchcock's film Psycho). A half-comical, half-marching band-like toy soldier theme (as in Prokofiev's or Shostakovich's works) then develops in an odd trio.

The whirling motive begins to return. This evokes the danse macabre scherzo once again in its mad triplet frenzy. A peak is reached, and the horns and cellos begin to lead away from that vision with entreating and tear-filled gestures surrounded by an eerie, desolate atmosphere. The oboe creates a long solo harmonized simply by other winds. Creating a shock, the scherzo breaks in suddenly. The horns sail across the whirling and frantic orchestra. Powerfully harmonized chords are joined in by the full orchestra as it builds toward but doesn't reach a final climax; tubular bells are heard once again.

Instead of breaking into a climactic passage, the music recedes as the cor anglais and oboe play odd chromatic melodies (with a hint of tubular bells) that suggest very isolated, abandoned figures. The sighing, descending strings of the beginning are heard again, along with the slight, clustered texture of more bells.

Just as everything seems to be dying away, the strings bring in a double-dotted martial theme that builds to a dramatic shimmer of scales in ascending and descending directions. This leads to a powerful coda in which the single note F is driven home with a determined demeanor that draws the whole to a conclusion in the true sense, rather than to a Romantic transcendence.

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