Earticle

Completed in 574, the main icon of Hwangnyong Temple (皇龍寺) in Kyŏngju 慶州 is an Aśoka image, one of the most popular types of auspicious image in medieval China. The legend of the Hwangnyong Temple statue, however, differs from Aśoka images found in Chinese texts. King Aśoka’s only contribution was the materials for the image, which was then completed by Silla 新羅 artisans in the form of a changyuk 丈六, or sixteen-foot image. Focusing on the significance of creating a sixteen-foot statue, this article explores the circumstances surrounding the choice of this image by contextualizing the decision within the tradition of sixteen-foot images as reconstructed from Chinese sources. It demonstrates that scale and materials were key factors in selecting this type of icon and that its creation was closely related to the political aspirations of King Chinhŭng (眞興王, r. 540-576) to protect the nation and consolidate his power.

For the first three months of the East Asian War, Chosŏn commanders learned how fleetly the Japanese armies, equipped with keen swords for close combat and dreadful muskets for long-range shooting, marched due to their adroit maneuvers. This article examines the way the Chosŏn armies made tactical adjustments during the East Asian War, especially from the third quarter of 1592 to the first quarter of 1593, while at the same time avoiding a direct confrontation with the Japanese armies. One focus of this paper is upon how the Chosŏn armies opted for defensive fortifications, depended on infantry-centered operations, and achieved some meaningful victories. The other focus is upon how the tactical changes had a bearing on Sino-Korean military collaboration and the resumption of Sino-Japanese negotiations. This two-tiered approach will place Chosŏn perspectives in line with recent research on the interstate scale of the war, where infantry warfare and firearms became one major strategy of Chosŏn and Ming against “the northern caitiffs (the Mongols/Jurchens) and the southern dwarves (Japan) 北虜南倭” in the sixteenth century and beyond, and illuminate the complex interstate relations among the East Asian countries that couched Ming-centered regional hegemony in terms of their own security.

This paper examines a seemingly insignificant subject – a withered tree in a Chinese county. From 1712, it became a persistent subject in Chosŏn travelogues, or yŏnhaengnok 燕行錄. It loomed large in Chosŏn travelogues because, as an outlet of Chosŏn anti-Qing sentiment, the tree was believed to prophesize the predestined downfall of Qing rule. The case of this ordinary object shows that Chosŏn writers’ perception of the Qing landscape was not restricted to their immediate observations but was deeply entwined with beliefs that were prevalent in Chosŏn. The withered tree, a ubiquitous subject in yŏnhaengnok, was completely omitted from the Qing imperial narrative, which was compiled in the comprehensive gazetteers of the empire and local gazetteers. How Chosŏn writers chose to write on Qing localities and landscapes was independent from the imperatives of the Qing imperial narrative, which was sponsored by and in turn endorsed the Qing empire-building process. The parallel relationship between the two narratives allows us to see yŏnhaengnok as fitting into a broader production of narratives in early modern East Asia.

In this paper, we examine the transformation of women’s fashion in 1970s and 80s South Korea by analyzing the images and narratives of unisex clothing in print media. During the industrialization, modernization, and Westernization of South Korean society in the postwar period, women’s fashion underwent tremendous change. Korean society witnessed women’s daily clothes shifting from traditional hanbok 韓服 to simplified Western clothes (kansobok 簡素服) to unisex/androgynous styles. Fashion items such as pantalons, jeans, shirts, tailored jackets and suits, casual office wear, and neckties, conventionally identified as men’s wear, became wardrobe choices for women. One explanation for this is that these changes took place as a result of the influence of South Korean state policy and the national reconstruction movement to simplify women’s dress codes for the sake of economization. However, a closer investigation of the narratives of unisex clothing reveals the impact of feminist movements, a robust youth culture, and young women’s own desire to achieve gender equality and active social participation. Women’s choice of unisex styles came to be viewed as “the era of de-feminized culture: shock of daughters” (t’al yǒsǒng munhwa sidae: ttaltŭl ŭi ch’unggyŏk). There was increased social pressure to reinforce the existing gender-binary system in the face of gender-blurring styles or what was seen as the masculinization of women. Women’s cultural expressions of power, freedom, consumer choices, and modernity, nonetheless, became manifested through their fashion choices. By shedding light on the emergence of unisex clothing in South Korean modernity, this study ultimately seeks to undermine our view of the West as the epicenter of fashion and beauty and urges us to imagine alternative histories and spaces of fashion and bodily aesthetics.

Korean hyperrealism, a style that transfers photographic imagery and conventions to the medium of painting, is one of the few art forms of the late 1970s that has yet to receive substantive re-evaluation. Contrary to some critics’ derogatory dismissals, the style raises issues of cultural identity central to the aesthetics and critical theory of art after the Korean War. This study investigates how the hybrid forms and iconographical attention paid by Korean hyperrealism to common objects of everyday life reflect Korean society at a time when sophisticated encounters of opposing socio-political identities were taking place. After reviewing the history of this little known art form, especially of its critical discourse with prevalent social currents in the Korea of the period, the present study proceeds to define its iconography in relation to its “cultural other,” American hyperrealism. Many works of Korean hyperrealism engage some of the most pressing issues of Korea in the 1970s. In terms of subject matter, the works show complicated views of the character of the urbanization policies under President Park Chunghee (Pak Chŏnghŭi 朴正熙). Formally, the works present photographic details with a monochromatic tendency, a minimal surface infused with a sense of real-time theatricality, and an image of actual objects confluent with the illusionistic details. Juxtaposing and combining many antithetical concepts in an attempt to maintain a fragile balance, Korean artists struggled to create a culturally relevant mode of modernist expression and representation, and thereby translate their experience into a distinctive artistic language that is unique to their time period.