2026, Vol., No.88

A Study of Kim Ujin’s “Jayugeukjang Iyagi”

Kim, Donghyun | 2026, (88) | pp.13~52 | number of Cited : 0

The Vital Rhythm: Creative Principles in Kim Woo-jin’s Expressionism

LEE MINYEONG | 2026, (88) | pp.53~84 | number of Cited : 0

The Intersection of Colonial Melancholy and Voyeurism The Representation of Kim Woo-jin and Yun Sim-deok in the Film Death Song (1991

Yun-Jong Lee | 2026, (88) | pp.85~119 | number of Cited : 0

Understanding Stanislavski’s Concept of Inner Action: On the Basis of the Chain Structure of Action

Lee Eunhyang | 2026, (88) | pp.121~162 | number of Cited : 0

This article clarifies the notion of “inner action” in Stanislavski’s acting theory, a concept that remains ambiguous and has been interpreted with different emphases in previous Korean studies, by explicating the organic process through which action is generated within the actor and by defining what inner action is within that process. To do so, this article analyzes the key passage and related descriptions of inner action in Part 1 (Woe from Wit) of Stanislavski’s An Actor’s Work on a Role, including the case of an actor performing the role of Sofia in the same part. The findings are as follows. The organic process of action is formalized as a four-stage chain structure: creative desire/aspiration → impulse → inner action → outer action. Creative desire and aspiration constitute the originating motive and energy of the organic process of action; they are concretized as a creative objective that evokes impulse and directs subsequent action toward convergence with that objective. Impulse consists of two essential aspects: energy and object. Its energy is a natural energy that activates the actor’s means of execution, while its object refers to the concrete physical and fundamental-psychological tasks that the actor must prepare in order to realize the creative objective. The integration of impulse’s activating energy and its directedness toward these tasks enables the transition to action. Inner action is defined as action in a state of potentiality, where the actor, embodying the role, perceives the means of execution (tasks) formed by the impulse and strategically selects a feasible action appropriate to those tasks. Outer action then emerges as the action in its actuality by physically embodying inner action within the actor’s own bodily conditions. Consequently, the creative desire and aspiration function as the internal condition and starting point, impulse as the pivotal turning point toward action, inner action as the point at which action is initiated, and outer action as the culminating point where action is realized.

Cha Beom-seok and the April 19 Revolution : Focusing on Cha Beom-seok’s Activities Before and After the April 19 Revolution and the Revision of Without the Pain of Breaking the Shell

Baek Doosan | 2026, (88) | pp.163~216 | number of Cited : 0

From ‘Theatrical Novelty’ toward 'People's Memory’: Kim Jiha's Performances in 1970s-80s Japan

KIM Moran | 2026, (88) | pp.217~255 | number of Cited : 0

Food as a Dramatic Device in the Plays of Kim Myung-hwa: Focusing on First Birthday, Cafe Shinpa, The Fall of Wanggung Restaurant, and Chimhyang

Park Sang Jun | 2026, (88) | pp.257~299 | number of Cited : 0

Censorship, Propaganda, and the Cinematic Multiple Agent:Im Kwon-taek’s “Suspicious” Anti-Communist Films, Jagko (1980) and Abengo Airborne Corps (1982)

Jaehoon Jeong | 2026, (88) | pp.301~338 | number of Cited : 0

A close analysis of Im Kwon-taek’s early 1980s films Jagko (1980) and Abengo Airborne Corps (1982) — both officially classified as “anti-communist films” in their time — reveals that these films in fact produce signification that is complex and multilayered, and that does not readily conform to the label of “anti-communist film.” When read in tandem, with careful attention to the revisions and transformations that occur at the intersection of filmmaking and the censorship apparatus, a close relationship between the two films comes into view: Abengo Airborne Corps directly repudiates the heterodox view of the Korean War that Jagko had attempted to articulate. Reading these films alongside contemporaneous censorship documents, this paper examines how an open-ended oscillation, circulation, and superimposition of signification — one that admits of no definitive endpoint — comes to emerge. In doing so, it adds new layers of context to the existing critical discourse that seeks to move beyond the prevailing binary and periodizing auteur narrative — one that frames the period around 1980 as a moment of rupture, in which Im Kwon-taek shed his identity as a director of cheap genre films and state-commissioned films (including anti-communist films) and was finally reborn as an auteur-director — arguing that, at the juncture of the early 1980s, both Im Kwon-taek’s desire as a director and the meaning of his film texts were undecidable, contradictorily layered, and irreducibly complex. Against this context, the paper argues that Jagko and Abengo Airborne Corps can be characterized neither simply as “anti-communist films” nor as “anti-anti-communist films” resisting anti-communist propaganda — but rather, speaking figuratively, as a “cinematic double agent,” or more precisely, as a “multiple agent” whose true allegiance remains unknowable. The paper further pursues an understanding of auteurship that does not presuppose the director as the last instance in which the meaning of a film text is determined, arguing that inbon(ism) — the concept Im Kwon-taek habitually presents as the core meaning of his films, which posits the human being as the essential ground of all value, or humanism understood accordingly — is a kind of empty signifier, metaphorically a “code name” assigned to a multiple agent who belongs to no ideology, and that it is into this ideological void that nationalism emerges as an infiltrating ideology.

The Representation of Labor and the Aesthetics of Resistance: A Study on the Transformation in Labor Documentaries since the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987

Juyeon Bae | 2026, (88) | pp.339~370 | number of Cited : 0

This article examines the modes of representing labor and the aesthetics of resistance, focusing on labor documentaries produced after the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987. Since the late 1980s, labor documentaries have often been explained in terms of a shift from political practice to aesthetic practice. However, such discussions are limited in that they either separate politics from aesthetics or overlook the aesthetic practices of early labor documentaries. This article seeks to understand the transformations in labor documentaries from the late 1980s to the present as aesthetic practices shaped by changing modes of representing capital and power. In particular, it argues that the modes of labor representation have themselves changed in response to the transformation of capital representation. In other words, as the forms of violence exercised by the state and capital against labor have shifted from visible and direct to invisible and prolonged (‘slow violence’), the modes of representing labor in resistance have likewise undergone transformation. To this end, this article examines labor documentaries produced by university-educated filmmakers around the time of the 1987 Great Workers’ Struggle as well as the works of the Labor News Production Collective, two documentaries connected to the crisis of labor unions and the labor movement in the 1990s, and documentaries since the 2000s addressing issues of precarious labor and industrial accidents. The documentaries discussed here were selected not because they represent the overall tendencies of nearly four decades of labor documentaries, but because they reveal scenes of struggle surrounding visibility and invisibility. Through this analysis, this article argues that the aesthetic practices of contemporary labor documentaries should not be understood simply as a weakening of resistance or as purely self-reflexive aesthetics, but as the result of sustained critical engagement with the problem of representation.

“Housewife Audiences” as Cultural Agents in 1980s Korean Theatre:Patrons, Critical Interpreters, and Creators

YU YEONJU | 2026, (88) | pp.371~410 | number of Cited : 0

An Empirical Reconsidering the Lives and Art of Hereditary Performers: A Review of Lee Gyeong-yeop’s Mudang and Performers (Yeoksagonggan, 2025)

Song Sora | 2026, (88) | pp.413~423 | number of Cited : 0

This article reviews Lee Gyeong-yeop’s Mudang and Performers (Yeoksagonggan, 2025), examining the significance of the author’s effort to reposition hereditary mudang communities and hereditary performers as central subjects in the history of Korean traditional performing arts, while also considering the issues that remain for further study. In particular, this review focuses on two points. First, the book does not confine mudang and hereditary mudang communities to the conventional categories of ritual specialists or socially despised groups; rather, it reconstructs them as multilayered historical actors by taking into account perceptions of status, public organizations, social attitudes, and their diverse responses to such conditions. Second, through its analysis of the modern experiences of hereditary performers, performer networks, and their composite artistic practices, the book persuasively demonstrates that tradition and cultural heritage are not fixed survivals of an original form, but historical products continually reconstituted through the practices of hereditary performers. At the same time, the book’s major cases largely rely on particular regions, lineages, and figures for whom relatively rich materials are available, which means that the extent to which its arguments may be generalized still requires further examination. For example, it remains necessary to ask to what degree cases such as the family of Bak Jin-myeong, the Yeosu Akgongcheong, and Jo Ung-seok represent the broader conditions of hereditary mudang communities in late Joseon and modern Korea, and to what extent striking figures such as Gang Jun-seop and Jang Wol-jung-seon can stand for hereditary performers in general. These questions call for regional and chronological comparison, as well as further investigation of lesser-known figures. In addition, an important task for future research will be to explore how these discussions may be extended to the contemporary transmission of tradition within the systems of intangible heritage and the environment of digital media. Even so, this book deserves high praise for broadening the horizon of related scholarship by illuminating the lives and artistic worlds of hereditary performers in a multidimensional way. It is a work that merits close attention not only from scholars of Korean shamanism but also from researchers interested in traditional performing arts and historical folklore more broadly.

Without the Pain of Breaking the Shell(1961 National Theater Performance Version)

Cha Beom-seok | 2026, (88) | pp.425~596 | number of Cited : 0

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2026, Vol., No.88