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Existential Resistance and Bad Faith in Oh Hak-young’s Postwar Dramatic Trilogy

  • The Journal of Korean drama and theatre
  • 2026, (89), pp.91~123
  • DOI : 10.17938/tjkdat.2026..89.91
  • Publisher : The Learned Society Of Korean Drama And Theatre
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Other Arts and Kinesiology
  • Received : July 5, 2026
  • Accepted : September 8, 2026
  • Published : September 30, 2026

DUYEOLKIM 1

1국립공주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examines existential resistance and bad faith in Oh Hak-young’s postwar dramatic trilogy: The Meaning of the Chicken (1957), Life Is Like a Chorus (1958), and The Flower and the Cross (1958). Existential resistance refers to the subject’s attempt to choose and construct the meaning of their own existence, whereas bad faith denotes an attitude of evading responsibility for one’s free choices by presenting one’s actions as the inevitable outcomes of external circumstances, innate nature, or desire. In The Meaning of the Chicken, Sang-hwa attempts to create value through painting amid the loss of meaning caused by war. His refusal to sell his paintings resists the reduction of art to economic value. Yet it also constitutes bad faith insofar as he disregards his family’s economic crisis and absolutizes artistic transcendence. Likewise, his departure from home represents both an attempt to reclaim subjectivity and an evasion of responsibility for others. In Life Is Like a Chorus, Sang-hwa rejects marriage as an oppressive institution. However, while resisting objectification by the gaze of the Other, he paradoxically reduces Aran to an object of his desire, objectifying her body and denying her freedom. He further displays bad faith by justifying his sexual choice as the inevitable expression of natural male desire, thereby denying his own freedom and responsibility. His realization following Aran’s death also constitutes bad faith insofar as it rests on his appropriation of Aran as a symbol for his own existential awakening. In The Flower and the Cross, Sang-hwa’s resistance extends to legal judgment and death. He recasts his already scheduled execution by hanging as an active exercise of self-judgment, but this judgment culminates in a declaration of his own innocence rather than an acceptance of responsibility for Aran’s death. This constitutes bad faith: he effaces the facticity of his own violence while absolutizing transcendence through his declaration of innocence. Sang-hwa’s final stance thus represents not the fulfillment of existential freedom but a contradiction in which freedom and responsibility, his own choices and bad faith, and resistance and self-absolutization collide. Oh Hak-young’s trilogy thus portrays the existential determination of a postwar subject who refuses to submit to meaninglessness, objectification, and absurdity. At the same time, it demonstrates how freedom, when detached from responsibility for the Other’s freedom and life, can turn into violence and bad faith.

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