Performing the Nation in Global Korea

Transnational Theatre

H. Lee, Hyunjung Lee

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137453587
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

This book illustrates how local awareness of Western cultural hegemonic entities such as Broadway and Shakespeare have been implemented within South Korean theatre in the global era. With a focus on performances that targeted global audiences, Lee explores the ways in which Korea's nationalistic desires for global visibility are projected on stage.

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Introduction: Contradictory Tides between the National and the Global

Abstract: The introductory chapter provides a historical overview of how the concept of Western cultural hegemony, as an epitome of the modern, has wrestled simultaneously with demands for modernization (globalization) and efforts to reclaim and justify the value of tradition and national identity in the Korean context. This socio-historical background – which hinges on questions of how the Korean concept of Western (modern) theatre was shaped and forged by various domestic discourses about modernization and nationalism at pivotal moments in modern history – is considered in terms of how the desire to modernize has always interacted and negotiated with the need to retain and promote traditional ways and identity.

Lee, Hyunjung. Performing the Nation in Global Korea: Transnational Theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137453587.0004.

South Korea in the 1990s

Our journey starts in the present moment, as South Korea is branded with the so-called “K-Pop” craze, a global fad that operates on a continuum with Hallyu, the “Korean Wave.” The enormous and sudden explosion of Hallyu-led K-Pop fandom is connected with various other Korean cultural phenomena that are strongly supported by the workings of capital, government power, and nationalistic ideology. Sudden increases in the use of portable devices and social-networking services are important players in this scenario; in addition, in South Korea there are intellectuals, entrepreneurs, artists, cultural producers, government, and ordinary citizens whose never-fading hopes to witness the country raising its cultural profile on a transnational level continue to support the intensity of this enthusiasm.

Part of this book redirects this current scenario back to South Korea in the 1990s, and explores this era as a comprehensive background in order to contextualize the hype of today’s Hallyu-driven cultural phenomena. The 1990s happens to be one of the crucial periods of South Korea’s modern history: during these critical years leading up to the 2000s, the country achieved democracy, became one of the most economically and technologically advanced countries (resulting from the compressed modernization of the previous decade), and then endured the national downfall precipitated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervention (which was a result of the larger Asian financial crisis).

Also in the 1990s, the nation began to nurture two important elements as it faced the early onset of globalization: its awareness in the field of culture and its development in transnational terms. Cultural producers, whose rationales were strongly infiltrated by nationalistic goals and aspirations, actively began to imagine and move beyond the national border to seek international audiences and consumers. Modified versions of these nationalistic ideologies and stirrings, which are still embedded within Hallyu as well as the ever-intricate complex between the national and the transnational, can be traced back into the 1990s. By doing so, I reveal that these are corresponding rationales that work both similarly and differently.

Looking at this period and beyond through the lens of theatre and performance not only improves our intellectual understanding but also generates more complete and immediate pictures of what we see and experience in our daily realities, even if these happen to be influenced by the K-Pop frenzy in various spaces of the transnational. Accordingly, most of the productions selected for this book were first staged in the mid-1990s. But I also consider how these productions have been developed or modified throughout the 2000s, based on my close observations of whether and how they reflect and accommodate one or more contemporary paradigms.

In my view, theatre is the most humanly constructed dynamic terrain that is pertinent to living society and its history; within that terrain, we can contextualize and historicize disparate cultural phenomena that happen between the national and the global by applying our critical speculation to actual bodies and bodily movements. The term “transnational” in this context refers to a physical movement that transcends the national boundary. By situating the paradigm of transnationalism within the grounds of South Korean theatre, this book provides a way to examine how cultural developments in contemporary South Korea have reoriented its domestic performing arts field within a framework of globalization. The contextual overview of South Korea in the mid-and-late 1990s explicates how the notion of transnational can be, paradoxically, locked within the limits of the national. At the same time, the cases I examine in this project illuminate how the idea of transnationalism has been vaguely and arbitrarily endorsed as simply more terminology that can be used to justify an advanced state of the nation within the South Korean discourse of globalization.

The role of South Korea in the production and distribution of the so-called transnational theatre works addressed herein illuminates how the meaning of transnationalism has been shaped, misrepresented, and/or appropriated by different social circumstances from the 1990s and onwards, as the country has begun to actively perceive and embrace its cultural location and its relationship to the outside world – whether it be the West or the neighboring East Asian region – under the encroaching influence of globalization. Thus my treatment of the intersection between transnationalism and theatre in this project literally refers to geographical movements of performances, usually in the form of touring shows or international festivals. Through performance, these theatre productions visualize and embody the intricate ways that the concept of Western cultural hegemony, as an epitome of the global, has wrestled both with demands for globalization and efforts to reclaim and justify the value of tradition and national identity. My reading of the performances as underpinned by socio-political settings helps to explicate the extent to which South Korea’s global behaviors and desires have long been interconnected with its awareness of national identity and heritage.

The 1990s was South Korea’s period of intensive globalization, the so-called segyehwa (1994–1997) – the nationalistic policy discourse declared by the Kim Young-sam administration (1993–1998). This “Korean way of globalization” was followed by the national crisis predicated by the IMF intervention (1997–2000), which was driven by the concurrent Asian economic crisis. This intense globalization discourse operated under a vision of developmentalism that championed greater efficiency for society as a whole (government, corporations, and citizens) as a vehicle for South Korea’s continuous growth – a vision that also sought national reform as a way to achieve such efficiency. This developmental nationalism demanded that South Korea, through globalization, leap forward and become one of the world’s advanced nations. Segyehwa discourse, predicated upon the argument that the nation was crucially in need of globalization, was “held by not only the corporations but also [by] government, [the] public, families and individuals; [the idea] was transmitted to the whole society through columns of major newspapers and special feature broadcasts.”¹

It is also important to note that the developmentalist rhetoric of segyehwa proclaimed, ambitiously, a masculinist ideology that urged South Korea to become a world-class superpower. Such an ideology is embedded in a deep-seated desire to let the nation appear as “bearers of world culture, which means in fact bearers of the culture of dominant groups in the world-system.”² In addition, segyehwa’s emphasis on “globalization in a Korean way” highlighted the importance of reconstituting Korean traditions as well as identity. Accordingly, traits conventionally associated with weakness (backwardness, vulnerability, and unreasonableness, for example) had to be eliminated.

Despite the popularity of segyehwa’s full-blown rhetorical gestures as a national discourse, the policy failed in November 1997, ten months after South Korea became a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), when the country was forced by international pressure to rely on IMF support, and its economic structure was brought under that entity’s control. The IMF intervention, initiated by a shortage of foreign funds, was declared over by the South Korean government in August 2000. The final years of the Kim Young-sam government, however, saw an enormous, nationwide economic crisis. The IMF financial bailout and subsequent IMF-mandated restructurings of corporate life brought about mass layoffs and early retirements, which in turn created a huge sense of failure and depression throughout the country. Between 1997 and 2000, the per capita GNP dropped from $10,000 to $6,000; the number of unemployed increased from 1.5 million to 5 million; the banks’ interest rates soared above 25 percent; and hundreds of firms and businesses went bankrupt every day.³

Although the idea of national development was exposed as a myth as citizens witnessed their government’s powerlessness in the face of nationwide frustration, many South Koreans recognized the economic crash as a result, at least in part, of the encroachment of globalization and the policies of the IMF. Therefore, nationalism remained an effective motivator in the lives of individual people. All of these elements – the IMF intervention and its aftermath in the post-segyehwa era, as well as the inherent workings of nationalism in South Korea – form the setting for the performances discussed in this book.

Development of the cultural industry in South Korea was regarded as a possible strategy to bring about recuperation from the national depression brought on by the IMF intervention. The administration of Kim Young-sam’s successor, Kim Dae-jung (1998–2003), became actively involved in the cultural sector and emphasized both the field of culture and cultural tourism as new areas for industrial/financial development. More important, however, was the country’s increasingly enthusiastic embrace of its own popular culture and of the growing export of Korean popular culture to East and Southeast Asia (later flourishing as Hallyu). These exports led to the gradual reconceptualizing of the cultural geography of Asia as a new stage upon which Korea should launch a unique and remarkable national brand. Consequently, the importance of South Korea’s connections with neighboring Asian countries began to include the necessity of creating a new, pan-Asian cultural identity within Korean domestic discourse. This idea was quickly recognized by the general public as vital for national well-being and prosperity. Therefore, East Asia’s increasing visibility as the backdrop of Korean national success forms one of the crucial social contexts of the performances discussed in this book.

Historicizing the contradictions: the two ways of the “New”

The combination of global assertions exercised by hegemonic cultural entities (herein: Broadway musical theatre, Shakespeare, ballet, and the West as the epitome of the modern/global) and the traditional native cultural markers folded into Korean stage productions cannot be conceived as an isolated, historically detached phenomenon, nor can the manifestation of this combination be labeled as unique to Korea. Instead, we must cope, on numerous levels, with the stresses and strains of this process. The socio-historical background hinges on questions of how, at pivotal moments in modern Korean history, the concept of Western (modern) theatre was shaped and forged by various domestic discourses about modernization and nationalism. This background must be considered in terms of how Korea’s desire to modernize has always interacted and negotiated with the need to retain and promote traditional ways and identity. This double-bind situation, in which local theatre artists compromise two fundamental aspects (the West/modern and the national/traditional), also occurs in other Asian societies; as a phenomenon, it can be traced back to the early twentieth century, when Western (modern) theatre was first developed as an institution in Asia.

Upon its introduction to the region, Western theatre was generally received as an epitome of the advanced, modern world. Plays by authors as disparate as Shakespeare and Ibsen were translated and adapted by local elites who used the texts as tools of modernization. More recently, with Asian societies undergoing rapid social and economic changes, pursuit and imitation of Western cultural hegemony have not only become intertwined with discourses on national cultural development but have also clashed and even conspired with regional attempts to reclaim traditional performing arts.

Modern theatre (kŭndaekŭk), al...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: Contradictory Tides between the National and the Global
• 2  Navigating the National and the Global: The Last Empress, the Musical
• 3  Mediating the NationalRegionalGlobal Triad: Nanta and Nonverbal Performance
• 4  An Alternative Image of Nationhood within the Global: Musical Seoul Line 1
• 5  Conceptualizing Korean Shakespeare in the Era of Globalization
• 6  Conclusion: Choreographing Nationalism in the Global Context
• Bibliography
• Index