In Search of Korean Traditional Opera: Discourses of Changguk

Chapter four

104 ChaPTeR FOUR women’s national Drama Yŏsŏng Kukkŭk The position of ch’anggŭk at the end of colonial rule in 1945 has been described by drama historian Suh Yon-Ho as an unenviable one: Ch’anggŭk reached liberation with a public image tarnished by many problems , such as the indiscriminate formation of too many troupes toward the end of the colonial period, the creation of rough-and-ready repertory on the basis of old legends, the neglect of the maintenance and transmission of a proper basis in traditional p’ansori singing, a deterioration to meet excessively vulgar taste, and a participation in the ranks of those who served the government in compliance with Japanese colonial policies. (Suh Yon-Ho 1994, 99) While ch’anggŭk performers struggled on, chiefly presenting the romantic “historical dramas” of the previous few years, it would have been difficult in 1945 to foresee the major resurgence of ch’anggŭk that would take place a few years later. But by the mid-1950s, ch’anggŭk was even more popular than it had been in the late 1930s, albeit in a new guise: all-female yŏsŏng kukkŭk, or “women’s national drama.” The very name of the genre would come to invoke complex and emotive issues of gender and nationhood. By making women conspicuous in a public context soon after liberation, “women’s national drama” provided a focus for questions of gender relations in the new nation and, in so doing, became what Victor Turner calls a “social drama,” a public enactment of social tensions (1982, 9–12). In this chapter, I consider what mutual illumination might be shed by the social drama of yŏsŏng kukkŭk and by recent thinking on gender and nationalism in Korea, focusing on the question of how yŏsŏng kukkŭk is or can become both a “women’s” and a “national” drama. national Music and national Drama Since liberation there have been two Koreas, but only one of them has maintained ch’anggŭk to the present. The fate of ch’anggŭk in North Korea Women’s National Drama 105 is difficult to know in detail. Large numbers of artists active in South Korea chose to move to the North in the late 1940s and during the Korean War, including not only the socialist actors and writers who would lay the foundations for “revolutionary drama” (Suh Yon-Ho 1991, 86) but also exponents of traditional arts such as the Chosŏn Sŏngak Yŏn’guhoe’s ch’anggŭk star Chŏng Namhŭi (Yi Chunghun and Yi Chŏngŭn 1996). In the socialist aesthetics of North Korea, p’ansori was not highly valued, both because its roots lay in “feudal” society and because its overly complex singing style made the words hard to understand, but ch’anggŭk was seen as more “advanced” because of its more highly developed dialogue and gesture, its tighter plot structures, and its expanded theatrical apparatus. Thus, the only source I have come across to rank ch’anggŭk above p’ansori as a “musical drama on a higher artistic plane” is an encyclopedia published in Pyongyang, which (like Pak Hwang) praises ch’anggŭk for maintaining performance activity through the most severe years of Japanese colonial oppression and helping to promote national pride and hatred of the enemy through classic Korean tales (Kwahak Paekkwa Sajŏn Chonghap Ch’ulp’ansa 1995, 208–209). This relatively positive evaluation enabled ch’anggŭk performance to continue in North Korea until the 1960s, but the p’ansori-style singing was still considered a liability, and eventually ch’anggŭk was supplanted by musical dramas called minjok kagŭk (national opera) using simpler music derived from folk songs (minyo; ibid., 250). Then, in 1971, came the famous “revolutionary opera” Sea of Blood (P’ibada), said to have been composed by “the great leader Comrade Kim Jung Il” (Kim Chŏngil) himself, and from then on, the model for all North Korean musical drama was “Sea-of-Blood-style opera” (P’ibadasik kagŭk). (According to Cho Sanghyŏn, who was a member of the National Changgeuk Company of Korea at the time, reports of the lavish production of Sea of Blood also inspired South Korean president Park Chung Hee [Pak Chŏnghui] to fund the hasty completion of the current National Theater building in 1973 [interview, 1997].) Sea of Blood...