KJCKorea
Journal Central

<Deceived by Love, Despaired by Money>(1936) and <The Power of Mother> (1937) are the most successful pop drama in the late 1930’s in colonized Joseon. These works are called kisaeng–domestic dramas(妓生-家庭劇) dealing with problematic situation after kisaeng’s marriage. The paper is to show those characteristics and those places in the history of popular arts, comparing with ‘Shinpa domestic dramas’(新派-家庭劇) in 1910’s and ‘tragic love dramas at the red light district’(花柳悲戀劇) in 1920’s-1930’s. The narrative of kisaeng–domestic dramas following the style of melodramatic representation, reveals excessive rhetoric, caused by contradictory situation of depressed ‘truth’ and desire to express. In the dramas, kisaengs are the good struggling to maintain chastity and the persons holding the kisaeng down are the bad. The dramas focus on traditional individual moral such as chastity in women and love for family in men, compared to ‘Shinpa-domestic dramas’ focusing on social moral such as fidelity and empathy. The dramas highlight newly optimistic emotion such as pride and hope, compared to ‘tragic love dramas at the red light district’ focusing on pessimistic emotion such as grief. In kisaeng–domestic dramas, the bond daughter-in-law between father-in-law represents the patriarch conspired by the colonial policy of Japan. In this respect, The kisaeng-domestic dramas as melodrama is not only the myth of forces upholding patriarchal ideologies but also the moral rhetoric revealing the colonization strategy of Japan.

<Deceived by Love, Despaired by Money>(1936), ‘kisaeng-domestic dramas’, ‘Shinpa domestic dramas’, <The Power of Mother>(1937), ‘tragic love dramas at the red light district’