Chinese and North Korean forces stationed on a nearby mountain would often play loud drum, gong, and taepyeongso music over a loudspeaker late at night, using the sound as a non-lethal weapon to try to keep their enemies sleep-deprived.
He would not find out until after his tour of duty had ended and he had entered Columbia University to start studying towards his master's degree in music education: a fellow graduate student from South Korea informed Heyman, based on the description he provided, that the sound he heard was that of the taepyeongso, which he analogised to a "conical oboe".
[4] He enrolled in the Korea Traditional Musical Arts Conservatory near his house, offering free English lessons in exchange for his studies.
[2] In 1964, with the sponsorship of the Asia Society, he organised a twenty-seven city tour of the U.S. for traditional Korean music group Sam Chun Li.
[9] However, the tour's success was damaged by negative rumours about their shows spread by a rival musical group, which resulted in cancellations by 17 out of 27 universities where they had scheduled performances; their sponsors refused to pay the musicians their contracted wages, and Heyman had to make up the difference out of his own pocket.
Again he ended up incurring unexpected expenses: the troupe arrived in Berlin and took a bus through East Germany on the way to the rest of Europe, but on the way back to Berlin a South Korean consular official in Paris demanded they fly instead of taking the bus, fearing that East German authorities might detain the musicians and turn them over to the North Koreans.
His first wife died after a protracted struggle with liver cancer in 1985, leaving him with large debts as the couple had lacked medical insurance to pay for her treatments.
[1] In September 2010, he donated a large amount of the research materials he had collected over the years to the National Gugak Center.
[10] In his old age, Heyman suffered from declining health, in particular spinal problems, but maintained good humour about his physical limitations.
[14][15] In the last years of his life, Heyman worked on what he described as his "magnum opus", translating historical materials relating to the past half-century of the Korean National Folk Arts Festival.
[4] Heyman received various awards recognising his contributions to the study, preservation, and documentation of Korean traditional music.
[16] President Lee Myung-bak awarded Heyman the Silver Crown Order of Cultural Merit in April 2011 in recognition of his contributions to the National Gugak Center.