Earticle

This article investigates representations of the Korean War in South Korean cinema, focussing on Pak Kwangsu’s To the Starry Island and Yi Kwangmo’s Spring in My Hometown and using the notion of cultural imagination, in which cinematic representations contribute to collective understandings of war. The article builds from Isolde Standish’s 1992 analysis, which argued 1990s Korean War films took an opposite stance to previous representations of the war while continuing to rely on nationalistic and melodramatic discourses. This article argues that in terms of their representation of the causes and character of the Korean War and their formal characteristics, Korean War films from the 1960s onwards are marked by continuity and rely on many of the discourses identified by Standish to account for the conflict; namely an externalisation of blame, problem-solving violence, and a narrative structure that displaces historical problems onto individual dramas. I argue To the Starry Island and Spring in My Hometown are unique because they place a far greater burden of blame on the Korean population and provide genuine critiques of the Korean War’s destruction. The films produce more ambiguous readings of the violence and identify reprisals as a key feature of the conflict, a phenomenon largely neglected in other Korean War films. To the Starry Island avoids a more romanticised treatment of pre-war Korea, presenting more anonymous sites of conflict that detract from heroic narratives of national mythmaking. Spring in My Hometown is a formally challenging work, and both films implicate the viewer in a brutal conflict.

Korean filmmakers have always sought inspiration in Korea’s long literary tradition. This article compares three recent films—Shin Han-sol’s Karujigi (2008). Kim Dae-woo’s Pangja-jŏn (2010), and Choi Dong-hoon’s Chŏn Uch’i (2009)—with their inspirations from premodern Korean literature and examines how these traditions have been reimagined for modern Korean audiences. Karujigi retains one of the main characters of the original, Pyŏn Kangsoe, but replaces his female counterpart with a much more demure and innocent love interest. The film is notable for its inversion of gender roles, but it focuses solely on the first half of the original work, and so much has been lost thematically from the original work that it is almost unrecognizable. Pangja-jŏn takes Korea’s most famous love story, the tale of Ch’unhyang, and puts forth the servant instead of the master as Ch’unhyang’s lover. As a result, the idealism of the original is replaced by a more cynical and realistic depiction of Korean society at the time, a depiction that is perhaps more suited to a modern audience. Chŏn Uch’i is the most faithful to the themes and ideals of its inspiration. Through magic and wizardry, it brings its premodern characters into modern Seoul, showing that, in fact, some things never change, and some themes and principles stand the test of time. The tactics adopted by these writer/directors met with varying degrees of success at the box office, but they show that interest in Korea’s literary traditions is still alive and well in Korean film.

The wide-spread sexual objectification of women in Korean popular music performance subconsciously teaches men and boys that women and girls are sexual objects that exist to please them. Simultaneously sexual objectification disempowers girls and women by emphasizing superficial beauty. Although many decisions related to Kpop choreography, costumes, or lyrics may be attributed to music management companies, this article analyzes how music television programs Inkigayo (Seoul Broadcasting System) and Music Core (Munhwa Broadcasting Company) contribute to the sexual objectification of women through the ways that emcees frame performances and the ways the camera draws attention to sexualized body parts. In August 2012 racy performances by the girl group Kara raised public debate and spurred calls for amendments to the Juvenile Protection Law. At that time commentary focused on the impact of sexually provocative performances on young people. The law places responsibility for monitoring content onto the content producers and broadcasters, yet frame analysis of Kara’s performances, compared with performances in early 2013, demonstrated that neither Inkigayo nor Music Core had changed the sexually objectifying performance frame on their shows. The final version of the revised law, passed in March 2013, does not contain amendments to address these issues more stringently than in the past.

South Korean television dramas, K-Dramas, initiated the Korean Wave, Hallyu, in the late 1990s. Nowadays, a global viewership gathers online to stream K-Dramas live, watch them with subtitles, and discuss them on specialized blogs and message boards. However, most research still concentrates on East Asia as the main realm of K-Dramas’ diffusion, and online communities that watch K-Dramas on the Internet have rarely been considered. Furthermore, most researchers analyze K-Dramas as products inscribed by “Korean culture” or “society,” an approach that relies on an understanding of “cultures” and “societies” as discrete, homogenous, locally bounded entities. Expanding upon the nascent online audience research on K-Dramas, I propose in this article a shift of perspective by focusing on how international fans themselves account for K-Dramas (or elements thereof) as socially and culturally “Korean” or operate a rupture with such a culturalist viewpoint.

At present, there are two contrasting views on the historical significance of the Tonghak 東學 peasant uprising: first, that the uprising was a step towards a modern society; second, that it was a “conservative rebellion.” Controversies and arguments all narrowly focus on whether or not the Tonghak peasant uprising aspired to modernity, and since researchers have tended to highlight those parts of the statements, actions, and demands of the insurgents that were advantageous to their own cause, our understanding of the uprising has been restricted rather than broadened by this debate. In order to achieve a more balanced assessment, this article probes the motives behind the Tonghak peasant uprising against the background of the governing system and ideology of Chosŏn society, while also considering the varied social customs and experiences of the people at that time. The members of the Tonghak peasant army internalized and appropriated Confucianism to justify their actions with the aim of restoring the Confucian ideology of minbon and injŏng, which had been abandoned by government officials. They did not fundamentally reject or try to overthrow the governing system of the Chosŏn dynasty, nor did they deny the validity of the institution of kingship. In this regard, the political awareness of the armed peasants was far from modernist, as they were still influenced by the existing Confucian political culture of benevolent governance. Yet, in their forceful insistence that they were entitled to benevolent government, they betrayed a mindset that had been lacking in earlier centuries and may be regarded as a precursor of a more democratic consciousness.

This article discusses the education-related contents of the English edition of the bilingual Korean newspaper The Independent which appeared from 1896 to 1898. The paper, edited by Sŏ Chae-p’il and Yun Ch’i-ho, was the key organ of the enlightenment party. It is argued that education was a key component of an internal civilizing mission spearheaded by the newspaper’s editors. This mission involved two elements. Firstly, The Independent saw education as a major means to emancipate Korea from Confucian tradition (which was itself seen as backward) and forge a new sense of nationalism. Secondly, education was continuously linked to new (predominantly male) practices, such as sports and military drills, as well as public speech and debating contests. Furthermore, reporting in the newspaper provides insights into educational debates and practices in late nineteenth-century Korea.

While the international community recognized Japan as a dominant foreign power in Korea following Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War, it was not an easy task, in terms of international law, for Japan to annex Korea, which was already a member of the international community bound by international treaties. Japan was eventually able to annex Korea because it coordinated and negotiated with the foreign powers invested in Korea. Considering its sovereign rights over Korea, however, the Japanese government could not continue indefinitely to recognize the foreign claims to administrative rights in Korea. After a consultation between the Government-General of Korea and the Japanese government in Tokyo, a plan for the liquidation of foreign settlements was created. The Japanese government obtained approval for settlement abolition by accepting demands to safeguard Western economic interests to the extent that they would not violate the principles of national sovereignty. The Government-General of Korea eliminated the final obstacle to implementing provincial administrative reform through the “Protocol on the Abolition of Foreign Settlements in Korea” on April 1, 1914. By recognizing Western privileges in Korea, Japan was able to maintain its cooperative relationship with the Western powers. As can be seen, the Western powers played a role in stabilizing Japanese colonial rule over Korea. The Western powers tolerated Korean suffering under Japanese colonial rule as long as their privileges were safeguarded. By recognizing Japanese hegemony over Korea, the Western powers maintained a system of “cooperative imperialism” in Korea.

Kim Yusin (595–673) was a noble, general, and statesman of the early Korean state of Silla (ca. 300–935). According to Korean sources, he played a vital role in the wars that resulted in Silla’s conquest of the other states on the peninsula by means of an alliance with Tang China (618–907) in the 660s. The biography of Kim Yusin comprises almost three full chapters of the Samguk sagi, and is the largest single biography in the tenchapter section of biographies in the work. Other sections of the Samguk sagi, particularly the basic annals (pon’gi) of Koguryŏ and Paekche, show that Kim Pusik (1075–1151) relied considerably on other sources, such as Chinese dynastic histories and collectanea, or have entries clearly rewritten from the “Basic Annals of Silla” section of the Samguk sagi, which appears to have been compiled first. However, Pusik based his biography of Kim Yusin primarily on a “Yusin stele” and an Account of Conduct compiled by his grandson Kim Changch’ŏng. Although Yusin plays a vital role in Silla’s history of this time period, he is not mentioned in Chinese materials related to the war on the peninsula, although Pusik’s biography suggests that such material existed. Divine marvels pervade Yusin’s biography and they seem to function to support the theme that Silla is a “land of Confucian gentlemen.” The core historical material associated with Kim Yusin, which is comprised of narratives developing his close relationship with his brother-in-law Kim Ch’unch’u (604–661; T’aejong Muyŏl, r. 654–661) and the peninsular war for the “unification of the Three Han states,” is encased in stories of divine marvels, which strongly suggests that the historical memory of Yusin was inseparable from the legends that developed surrounding him by the time the Samguk sagi was compiled.

Korean Buddhism during the Chosŏn period (1392–1910) has been characterized as a religion whose institutional integrity and philosophical vigor severely declined due to the state policy of oppression. Since such a negative description was promulgated by Japanese scholars during the colonial period, it has been adhered to even by postcolonial era Korean scholars. This article is an attempt to redress such a stereotypical understanding of Korean Buddhism, especially that of the late Chosŏn period, and to bring to light its real nature from a historical perspective. As for the factors that contributed to the enhancement of Chosŏn Buddhism’s status, we may adduce some changes in the institutional and social settings. During the years 1550 to 1566, the traditional system of the Sŏn and Kyo schools was restored and government regulations for clerical ordination and the state examination for monks were also reinstated. During the Imjin War, the monastic armies’ military achievements led to the enhancement of their social status. Thereafter, the government publicly utilized their corvée labor, and the Buddhist institution came to receive state support. In the early seventeenth century, along with the rearrangement of religious institutions, various lineages and branches were established and an economic foundation for managing their monasteries was secured. The Buddhist circle in this period proclaimed their self-identity by determining the dharma lineages and established systems for monastic education and practice through combining the practice of meditation and doctrinal studies, in which kanhwa Sŏn took precedence.

Korean modernism supplanted realism as the dominant trend in literature with the demise of the Korean Artist’s Proletariat Federation (KAPF) in the early 1930s. There is in Korean literary modernism a strong sense of the belatedness that is found in many aspects of colonial modernity, and this perhaps explains why characteristic writings (in both prose and verse) were less the critique of modernity found in western high modernism than an expression of a “will to modernity” that included a strong desire to move away from traditional conventions, especially those governing art and morality. This article will discuss the critique of traditional morality and aesthetics as found in the writings of Yi Hyosŏk, one of Korea’s better known modernists. In mounting his modernist critique of the conservative Confucian morality that had governed social interaction in Korea for 500 years, Yi used a pronounced eroticism in his works and produced sexually liberated female (often femme fatale) characters who are not morally conflicted in the use of their sexuality for pleasure or power, a stance I am calling antimorality.

The study of Pyŏn Kangsoe-ka (hereafter PKSK) reached its peak in the 1980s and 1990s. However, several important topics in PKSK still remain provocative and unexplored. This study attempts to bring new approaches to the debates regarding how to interpret the identity of the main character Kangsoe and what the actual theme (as opposed to the surface theme, namely, lewdness) of the work is in order to clarify a number of contradictions in the PKSK not explained in extant research. Contrary to the presupposition that there should be a single consistent theme in PKSK, one can identify more than one possible theme and hear multiple voices in the work. Any work of fiction, as Bakhtin argues, represents a “multiplicity of styles” and exemplifies the idea of the “nonexistence of a one-voiced novel.” This essay argues that there was an intentional and systematic revision of PKSK by Sin Chae-hyo, who thoroughly compiled the work. Kangsoe can be seen as an alter ego of Sin Chae-hyo in that they share exceptionally high levels of self-aggrandizement, resulting mainly from the discontent that their talents were not properly appreciated. As a frustrated scholar, Sin’s escape from reality was accomplished through his devotion to p’ansori, just as Kangsoe’s only escape is his devotion to carnal desire. Kangsoe is used to betray Sin Chae-hyo’s resentment toward an absurd social system, his disdain for the petty moralism of yangban, and his unrestrained pursuit of aesthetic value in erotica. Teptŭgi and Kangsoe, as the two polemic reflections of Sin Chae-hyo’s inner conflict, betray the realism and idealism of Sin, respectively. Eventually, Sin makes the realistic version of his alter ego annihilate the idealistic version.

Below are English translations followed by the original Classical Chinese (Hanmun) texts of the twenty-four surviving poems of Chŏng Chisang (d. 1135; stylized name: Namho), a Koryŏ literary icon and a native of Sŏgyŏng (Western Capital, present-day Pyongyang). Chŏng passed the Civil Service Examination in AD 1114 and began his official career, starting as Secretary (Sain), advancing to Advisor on the Left (Chwachŏngŏn), Counsel on the Left (Chwasagan), Royal Diarist (Kigŏju), Hallim Academician, and Royal Drafter (Chijego). As a scholar, he was well-versed in Buddhism and Daoism, and later developed a keen interest in Yin-Yang Mysticism. He became close friends with Buddhist Master Myoch’ŏng (d. 1135) and scholar-official Paek Suhan (d. 1135); together the three have been identified as the “Three Sages of the Western Capital.” In the political domain, Chŏng was a vocal critic of corrupt officials. He played a decisive role in impeaching and exiling Ch’ŏk Chungyŏng (d. 1144), a major political figure and powerful military official. In 1135, Chŏng was accused of being linked to an uprising initiated by Myoch’ŏng, and was killed by an army led by his chief political rival, Kim Pusik (1075–1151). An anthology of his writings is said to have existed but has not survived. The extant works, twenty hansi and four couplets, deal with a number of themes, including scenery, official life, reflections on the past, drinking, parting, and seclusion.