KJCKorea
Journal Central

The aim of this paper is to trace the activities of changgeuk troupes, interpret trends in creative changgeuk, and clarify how ‘the people’ and ‘women’ were represented and mobilized in changgeuk during the liberation period. During the U.S. military administration period, the Joseon Classical Music Research Association and the National Theater Company were newly organized and performed creative changgeuk works based on contemporary realities. The Joseon Classical Music Research Association, formed in Gwangju region, performed Builders(1945) in various regions, but disappeared when a similarly named group organized in North Korea. the National Theater Company, formed in Seoul, performed Cheongsan Flows Naturally, and So Do People(1946) which dealt with the conflicts of farmers in a light and dramatic style, reused featuring Park Gwihee in a female-portraying-male role that had been popular during the late Japanese colonial period. During the establishment of the government period, changgeuk was called ‘national opera,’ historical and legendary works were performed. These works can be divided into two categories: those featuring women fighting against Japanese occupation and those reenacting popular works from the late Japanese colonial period. the National Theater Company’s Princess Seonhwa(1948) featured a female protagonist, while the Joseon Changgeuk Company’s Righteous Woman Nongae(1948) and the Kim Yeonsu Changgeuk Company’s The Imjin War and Gye Wolhyang(1949) emphasized the attitude of women who performed acts of loyalty on the battlefield. Works based on the fall of the nation or related to China, which were popular during the late Japanese colonial period, were also performed. The National Theater Cooperative performed The Spirit of Goguryeo(1948), a renamed version of General Ilmok(1944), while the National Theater Company performed The Great Wall(1950), based on the legend of Maenggangnyeo. In the latter half of the period, women’s gukgeuk appeared and presented historical tales that reproduced the image of men saving the nation, which can be divided into adapted works and works based on ancient history. The Women's Gugak Association’s The Sun and the Moon(1949) was an adapted work that depicted the image of a male figure who won love through his wisdom in solving riddles. The Women's Gukgeuk Comradeship's The Golden Pig(1949) was based on ancient history and depicted the Joseon prince ‘Sun’ defeating foreign forces symbolized as the ‘golden pig’ and saving the ‘Wolji Kingdom of Han(韓).’ Women's changgeuk received support from the military as a performance that reenacted the image of men saving the country. Women's changgeuk became a national opera that imagines the role of the people and women in the (quasi) wartime situation between the Pacific War and the Korean War.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Choi Inhoon’s play, Dungdung Nakrangdung, through a psychoanalytic approach, focusing on the ethics in Queen’s repetition of Becoming the other. Dungdung Nakrangdung explores the possibility of an ethical subject focusing on the queen, taking the ending of the folk tale ‘Prince Hodong’ as a starting point. The queen is a person with multiple identities as Princess Nakrang’s twin sister, Hodong’s stepmother, and the mother shaman of Goguryeo. The queen deviates from her symbolic role and tries to identify with Princess Nakrang, the object of Hodong’s desire. Through playing with Hodong, the queen gradually becomes the subject who desires Hodong, and continues to repeat the repetition while enduring the pain of failing to become the other. The driving force for this repetition is in Jouissance, and the queen gazes at the gap of the Real and pushes the fantasy to the end. In this way, the queen enjoys and traverses fantasy, which leads to death drive. The queen is an ethical subject in that she pursues pure desire and the Real as the subject of the death drive until the moment of death. The Real that the queen aims for is embodied as the point of gaze and structure of the mise en abyme. This draws out the traces of the Real or the drive of the subject toward the Real, and at the same time makes the audience think about the ethics of drive. Dungdung Nakrangdung shows a new ethical subject through the queen’s narrative that shows drive and traversing fantasy in the repetition of becoming the other.

Jeong Bokgeun uses shame as an affect to reveal the multifaceted effects of social oppression, such as state and patriarchal violence, bodily norms, and stigma, on the individual's inner self and body. The characters in Poisoned Chalice, Such a Song, and Silbimyeong face catastrophic outcomes like psychological fragmentation and madness due to shame-aversion. However, their speech and actions in a disordered and mad state reveal that their catastrophe was imposed by violent state power. The shame-proneness characters in Guardian and For You Who Are Drifting feel vicarious shame for others' wrongdoings and choose death as a form of atonement. Their deaths awaken others to new moral and ethical values. Both works take on a ritualistic form, inviting the audience to participate and collectively expand its meaning to the community and society. The House Trapped in a Trap exposes the shame imposed on a woman who was sexually assaulted and her family by society. The daughter-in-law, Jeong-won, who was gang-raped, and her mother-in-law, who was a Japanese military “comfort woman,” are connected by the history of sexual violence, and the work shows their process of transforming their shame into resistance. They demonstrate that it is the perpetrators and society that should feel shame, and that society must be transformed so that victims can no longer remain silent. In conclusion, Jeong Bokgeun presents the emergence of a new democratic subject challenging state violence and oppressive norms in the 1980s. This subject expands to include not only male heroes in vast public squares but also women and minorities fighting against private issues such as everyday sexual violence. Jeong Bokgeun's perspective resonates with feminist movements of the 2010s, such as the #MeToo movement and the revision of the Sexual Violence Punishment Act, and holds contemporary significance.