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Sports and Classism -Song Yeong's “Self-Defense Martial Art”-

  • The Journal of Korean drama and theatre
  • 2024, (82), pp.11-38
  • Publisher : The Learned Society Of Korean Drama And Theatre
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Other Arts and Kinesiology
  • Received : July 14, 2024
  • Accepted : July 28, 2024
  • Published : August 31, 2024

LEE MINYEONG 1

1경북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Song Yeong‘s “Self-Defense Martial Art” is considered a masterpiece of KAPF’s theory of art popularization. The satirical technique of capitalist's a satire of oneself was evaluated as an important achievement of the work. However, no one was interested in self-defense martial art, the core material of the work. Unlike ATBD(of Germany) and PROT(of Japan) which focused on agitprop theater, “Self-Defense Martial Art” is judged to be a work aimed at the effect of “a propaganda drama that can organize the subject of the struggle”, not “the agitation theater that can be put into the scene of the struggle”. The self-defense martial art, which was used as a central material, was a kind of bourgeois sport based on induction that the Japanese imperialism wanted to foster as a national sport. Therefore, the artist aims to change the audience’s perception by revealing the essence of bourgeois culture hidden in the words of health or mental cultivation by using self-defense martial art. Furthermore, it also suggests the direction of proletarian culture to respond to this bourgeois culture. Therefore, Song Yeong’s “Self-Defense Martial Art” was a work created in consideration of the specificity of colonial Joseon in the international trend of the proletarian art movement leading to RAPP, NAFP, and KAPF. In a situation where a quick revolution is impossible, the slow revolution caused by the penetration of consciousness and the method of cultural revolution such as the so-called Gramsci style “the war of position” were the revolutionary strategies of colonial Joseon taken by Song Yeong and KAPF in the popularization of art.

Citation status

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

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