In Search of Korean Traditional Opera: Discourses of Changguk

Chapter three

73 ChaPTeR ThRee Ch’anggŭk in Colonial Korea While there may still be room for differing opinions regarding the Japanese role in the original creation of ch’anggŭk, there can be no doubt that the genre as we know it today took shape, in all essentials, under Japanese colonial rule. Some of the performances given at the Wŏn’gaksa and the private commercial theaters before annexation in 1910 appear to have amounted to ch’anggŭk insofar as they involved multiple actors representing different characters and singing the dialogue in p’ansori style; but they probably lacked many of the features that later came to be regarded as essential in ch’anggŭk, and it is questionable whether they would be recognized as ch’anggŭk by today’s audiences. As far as we can tell, they presented excerpts rather than complete dramas, used little or no stage scenery, took their words and music from existing p’ansori material without adding new dialogue, and were accompanied only by the barrel drum puk that was also used in p’ansori. When performances of this kind have been reconstructed in recent times (for instance, by Kim Ilgu at the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts in 1995), they have not been announced as ch’anggŭk but as punch’ang (divided singing) or ipch’ech’ang (embodied singing). By the end of the colonial period in 1945, however, not only had the term ch’anggŭk itself been introduced, but ch’anggŭk was being performed in a manner resembling that of today: as a complete drama freely adapted from p’ansori (or newly created from another source) by a dramatist and a director, with multiple sets representing different locations in the story, and accompanied by an ensemble of traditional Korean instruments. More than one writer speaks appropriately enough of this period as accomplishing the “establishment” (chŏngnip) of ch’anggŭk (Pak Hwang 1976, 85–92; Yu Minyŏng 2002). That “Korean traditional opera” could acquire these defining characteristics during a period when the Japanese authorities were supposedly suppressing all manifestations of a separate Korean identity is an apparent anomaly that has implications for ch’anggŭk’s status in postcolonial Korea, as will be seen in the next two chapters. In this chapter, I try to explain the anomaly itself by placing ch’anggŭk in a broader context of colonial Korea that ultimately shows that it isn’t an anomaly at all. 74 Ch’anggŭk in Colonial Korea Here again, I find myself at variance with Pak Hwang, whose explanation is that ch’anggŭk was “established” by the heroic and patriotic efforts of p’ansori singers in the face of persistent Japanese attempts to suppress it (1976, 130–157). Clearly, it is true that the Japanese colonial regime in Korea was often harsh and hostile to expressions of indigenous culture and that many Koreans made brave struggles and sacrifices in resisting this oppression. But neither the oppression nor the resistance was monolithic. Against the colonial government’s long-term goal of assimilating Koreans to Japanese culture must be set the economic interest of Japanese companies in profiting from Korean culture (for instance, through record sales), the intellectual interest of Japanese scholars in researching Korean folklore and traditions, and even the political interest of the government itself in mobilizing popular Korean arts for propaganda purposes. All of these provided strong inducements for Koreans to collaborate rather than resist, and this collaboration must be recognized alongside oppression and resistance as an essential part of the historical context in which the “establishment” of ch’anggŭk during the colonial period becomes intelligible. Ch’anggŭk in the wake of the wŏn’gaksa A widespread view of Japanese colonial cultural policy holds that “most of the Korean performing arts were prohibited [though] on some occasions the Japanese allowed performances under colonial supervision” (Jongsung Yang 1994, 35). I believe this view contains both an exaggeration and an understatement . It is true that some Korean performing arts were prohibited for some of the colonial period, but an extensive documentary record proves that many traditional arts, perhaps chief among them p’ansori, were performed on a regular and commercial basis throughout the colonial years. From the advent of the recording industry around 1907 until the 1930s, the majority of records made in Korea were of traditional music (Hae-Kyung Um 1992, 86), and when broadcasting appeared in the late...