Abstract
This chapter investigates ways that recent South Korean cultural products recreate or even fantasize historical traumas. By focusing on a musical theatre production (The Last Empress), a music video (The Lost Empire), and a film (Hanbando) that all feature a historical female icon, Empress Myoungsung, I examine how cultural texts inculcate anti-Japanese sentiment by juxtaposing a single, century-old incident (the night of Queen Min’s assassination) onto contemporary South Korean social contexts. In an attempt to appeal to public sentiment, the three texts variously re-enact the historical trauma and adopt it as a crucial visual ingredient. Here, I question how producers inflict the Korean trauma upon the image of Queen Min on-screen by conflating this century-old tragedy with current situations and transforming the figure of Queen Min into an undying “spirit”—a nationalistic icon who promises the nation’s bright future in the global era. I also demonstrate how the workings of visualization in these texts posit the Empress and her significance within ambivalent frameworks (i.e. between “tradition”/“modern” and “national”/“global desire”), and how such positioning manipulates her significance in order to fulfill Korea’s desire for global visibility and success.
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Notes
- 1.
Leo Ching, “Yellow Skin, White Masks: Race, Class, and Identification in Japanese Colonial Discourse,” in Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, ed. Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1998), 66.
- 2.
Min-won Yi, Myungsung Hwanghoo Sihae wa Akwanpach’on [The Assassination of Empress Min and Kojong’s Escape to the Russian Consulate in Seoul] (Seoul: Gukhak Jaryowon, 2002), 47.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Haekyoung Lee (Hye-kyǒng Yi), “The Gazes of the Other upon the Life of Empress Myoungsung and Its Portrayal in The Last Empress ,” Feminist Studies in English Literature 10.2 (2002): 141–61.
- 5.
Between its premiere in 1995 and May 2006, The Last Empress has attracted more than 920,000 people to 694 performances.
- 6.
Dong-A Ilbo, 9 May 1997.
- 7.
Young-hae Noh, “Exploring the ‘Kukmin’ Musicals of the late 1990s South Korea: The Last Empress and Linie 1—Das Musikal,” Music and Culture 3.3 (2000): 61–90.
- 8.
Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 157.
- 9.
Ibid., 141–6.
- 10.
Ibid., 143.
- 11.
I discuss the version performed by Sang-eun Lee (as Queen Min) at the Seoul Arts Center Opera Theatre on 4 February 2005. All translations from Korean sources are mine unless otherwise noted.
- 12.
According to A-Com International, the musical appeared at Lincoln Center in New York (1997 and 1998), the Schubert Theater in New York (1998), and the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles (2003). The musical’s British version was performed at the Apollo Hammersmith Theatre in London’s West End (2002) and the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto (2004).
- 13.
South Korean mainstream media utilized the rhetoric of “global success” by overstating the musical’s international travels. Early in 1997, before the New York City premiere, domestic mass media ubiquitously bragged that “this Korean-brand musical” was about to be launched “on Broadway.” According to one mainstream newspaper, “The Last Empress’ New York premiere has to be recognized not just as an ordinary international tour event; it has to be seen as ‘the first Korean musical’s export’ on Broadway, the heart of the musical theatre” (Dong-A Ilbo, 9 May 1997). This use of the term “Broadway” recasts the play’s few nights of special visiting-tour, off-Broadway, as an extended Broadway run.
- 14.
Younghae Noh, 63.
- 15.
The musical numbers and lyrics quoted here are from the unpublished English version of the script, translated by Georgina St. George.
- 16.
Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) is one of the mainstream public networks in South Korea.
- 17.
N.n, “About Empress Myoungsung and the Korean History Drama”, Korea Broadcasting System, 2001, accessed 1 February 2017 from http://www.kbs.co.kr/endprogram/drama/myungsung/about/plan/plan.html.
- 18.
Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 77.
- 19.
In an interview, director Kang mentions that filmic representation of historical trauma is essential for producing a successful “Korean-style blockbuster” because it resorts to “uniquely Korean sentiment” that grabs people’s attention. See Woo-sok Kang, “2006 K-Film Previews: Kang Woo-sok’s Hanbando,” Screenanarchy, 24 May 2006, accessed 4 February 2017 from http://screenanarchy.com/2006/05/2006-k-film-previews-kang-woo-suks-iuoe-hanbando.html.
- 20.
Hee-jae Kim, Hanbando, Scenario Book (Seoul: Random House Joongang, 2006), 82–5.
- 21.
Taylor, The Archive, 143–4.
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Lee, H. (2018). The Female Body as the Site of Historical Controversy: Ghostly Reappearance in South Korean Historical Fiction. In: Wong, J. (eds) Asia and the Historical Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7401-1_6
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