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Gender Politics of South and North Korean Drama in Liberation Period

Jun Jeenee 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This thesis aims to examine drama works which were introduced in both South and North Korea from the national liberation to the Korean War. This approach may overlook any distinctiveness of different regimes between South and North bloc, but we can consider for a fact that contemporary people of theater in those days could not be separated completely from politics, regardless of their ideological orientations, and they were all motivated in common by the construction of Korea as national country. Moreover, drama works released in South and North Korea during the period were results from the efforts of creative subjects to illuminate audience by seriously thinking about the mission of drama during transitional period, and the drama of both regimes may be discussed together in that we can find out a common point where gender politics work as a means to place female figures. In main discussion, this study suggested that both regimes share a common point in that they project dual views on female figure as comrade as well as subject to correction. On the way to a combination of national discourses and gender discourses during liberation period, the dramatists of South and North Korea exclude or coerce fallen women to repent from their old way of life, while removing corporality of female figures they desire to embrace as comrade and rejecting their sexuality. On the other hand, these dramatists insert utterances of longing for strong body and power of men repeatedly into text of their drama, ultimately praising masculine sexuality. In other words, their contemporary dramas called women for industrial sites and cultural business, but it is men that took actual leadership for people, and the ideal community visualized by the dramatists was nothing but a completely hierarchical and men-driven community based on gender gap. As a result, on the way toward men-driven national country under the logic of mobilization during post-liberation transitional period, women who reveal shameful past of colonial days as well as negative aspects of their contemporary days had to follow the order of disciplines and illumination. Incidentally, any responsibility for sufferings of women who represent the tragedy of colonized nation and the confusion of liberated space was fully passed to those women, while male subjects could be relieved from any burden of responsibility for their daughters and sisters but could stand for the future of new Joseon. In rigid national discourses of contemporary drama, women became re-colonized and re-alienated without facing a real liberation for them. However, it is necessary to review the strategy for embracing and excluding them was dramatically successful. Desires for full control over sexuality in the name of national callings resulted in driving out profiteer's wife and hello girls. In many dramas, fallen women attribute any responsibility to themselves ultimately and punish themselves to act as if they were a heroine of tragedy, creating melodramatic excess. The traces of female figures and a gaze of compassion about them, which are not captured by a drama censorship system called North Korea's ‘Habpyeonghoe’(合評會) but are found in dramas of South Korea, resulted in remaining shades on a grand way toward new national foundation which contemporary dram texts pursued.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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