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Mapping Utopia in the Post-ideological Era: Lee Yun-taek's The Dummy Bride1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2007

YOO KIM
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Abstract

Written by Lee Yun-taek, arguably the most prolific and influential of contemporary Korean dramatists, The Dummy Bride (1993) is of considerable significance to the Korean political theatre's search for a new dramatic idiom in the increasingly apathetic post-ideological era. Although the issue of modernization of tradition has been a constant preoccupation with a number of other Korean playwrights in the 1990s, Lee's exploration of the relationship between tradition and contemporary social reality strikes a much more political note under the influence of Brecht and Artaud. His incorporation of the utopian realm of imagination into everyday life does not offer a stable sense of resolution to the audience. Swerving away from the ‘decontextualization and museumization’ of tradition and cautiously guiding against the excessive optimism of madang theatre, a dominant form of political theatre in the 1980s, his unique theatrical aesthetic stands as a vigilant rehearsal for how to dream without disregarding or succumbing to a frustrating reality.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , October 2007 , pp. 296 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2007

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References

NOTES

2 Wan-sang Han, Geesikin gwa Hyunsil Insik (Intellectuals and the Understanding of Reality) (Seoul: Chungnyunsa, 1986), p. 30.

3 Kenneth M. Wells, ‘The Cultural Construction of Korean History’, in idem, ed., South Korea's Minjung Movement: The Culture and Politics of Dissidence (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), pp. 11–29, here p. 11; original emphasis.

4 Although the implications of the Korean ‘success story’ are still controversial and open to further academic scrutiny, it is clear that Korean society at the outset of the twenty-first century has been gripped by an overriding sense of crisis on three distinct but interrelated fronts: democracy, globalization and unification. It is in this sense that in 2002 Lee Hong-koo, a former prime minister, reacted as follows to the political travails of the past fifteen years: ‘Korea is going through a crisis of transition in the following three dimensions – post-industrialization, post-Cold War and post-democratization. In all three dimensions, Koreans had been too preoccupied to achieve success and had little time to prepare for the challenges which will follow that success. For such a failure to prepare for the “post” or transition period and its problems, Koreans are paying exorbitant amount of penalties now’. Hong-koo Lee, ‘How to Institutionalize Liberal Democracy in Korea’, in Young-rae Kim, Ho-chul Lee and In-sub Mah, eds., Redefining Korean Politics: Lost Paradigm and New Vision (Seoul: Political Science Association, 2002), pp. 13–16, here p. 13.

5 Hyung-a Kim, ‘Minjung Socioeconomic Responses to State-Led Industrialization’, in Wells, South Korea's Minjung Movement, pp. 39–59, here p. 55.

6 The reform policy, implemented in the mid-1990s by the civilian government of Kim Young-sam, a dissident-turned-president (1993–7), miserably failed to sever long-standing collusion between government and corporate power. His attempts to consolidate democracy were marred by political corruption, massive foreign debt and a series of financial scandals, and further hampered by the 1997 financial crisis. Korea's lack of foreign currency, combined with currency crises in Thailand and Indonesia, made the nation accept the IMF bailout programme, which was a fatal blow to the government's globalization policy. The following Kim Dae-jung government (1998–2002) tried in vain to improve profitability through economic restructuring and massive layoffs, resulting in serious social instability.

7 Songok Han Thornton, ‘The “Miracle” Revisited: The De-radicalization of Korean Political Culture’, New Political Science, 27, 2 (June 2005), 161–176, here p. 176.

8 For further information refer to the company's website, http://stt1986.com/STT_NEW/default.asp

9 Yun-taek Lee, Laughing, Drumming and Dying: Lee Yun-taek's Notes for Writing and Directing (Seoul: Pyungminsa, 1994), p. 424.

10 Babo means ‘fool’ in Korean and gaksi means a newly married woman or a doll in the traditional Korean puppet theatre. The script of The Dummy Bride has yet to be translated into English. All translations in this paper are mine.

11 Lee, Laughing, Drumming and Dying, p. 318.

12 Ibid., pp. 23–5.

13 Lee defines and employs the concept of ‘deconstruction’ as ‘a revolutionary energy’ with strong social commitment, which is capable of ‘making a fissure in closed society and culture’. The term ‘deconstruction’ in the context of Lee's work is different to Derrida's notion of ‘deconstruction’, which has been often criticized as politically ineffective or ahistorical. Lee, Laughing, Drumming and Dying, p. 22.

14 Ibid., p. 271. In a recent interview Lee labelled himself a ‘postmodern realist’, adding that his work, particularly The Dummy Bride, may be categorized as ‘magical realism’, as are the works of Jorge Luis Borges or Gabriel García Márquez. Interview of Lee Yun-taek with the author (14 February 2007).

15 Kwang-ok Kim, ‘The Role of Madangguk in Contemporary Korea's Popular Culture Movement’, Korea Journal, 37, 3 (1997), 5–21, here p. 12. Madang theatre is also called madang-guk (madang means ‘open ground’ and guk means ‘theatre’).

16 Nam-hee Lee, ‘Between Indeterminacy and Radical Critique: Madang-guk, Ritual, and Protest’, positions: east asia cultures critique, 11, 3 (2003), 555–584, here p. 562.

17 Bang-ok Kim, The Aesthetics of Open Theatre: From Traditional Drama to Postmodernism (Seoul: Munyemadang, 1997), p. 256.

18 Lee, Laughing, Drumming and Dying, p. 271.

19 Ibid., p. 110.

20 Yun-taek Lee, The Dummy Bride, in Lee Yun-taek: Plays 3 (Seoul: Theatre and Man Press, 2006), 61–97. Quotations are taken from this edition and given, as here, in parentheses in the text.

21 The popular rebellion in the city of Gwang-ju in 1980, which urged an immediate revision of the oppressive constitution, was brutally suppressed by then General Chun Doo-hwan. Later, the attempts to investigate the massacre led to general-turned-president Chun's 25 month-long exile in the Baekdam temple in 1988. The unjustified political collusion in 1990 stands as a betrayal of the spirit of the June Democratic Movement of 1987.

22 The Samchung Training Camp was established after emergency martial law in 1980, by the Special Committee for National Security Measures under the pretext of social reorientation. A total of 60,755 people were arrested and sent to the camp by 1981 and many innocent men and women were killed and injured as a result of brutal training.

23 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993), p. 46.

24 Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Black and Red Printing Cooperative (Detroit: Black and Red, 1970), paragraph 25.

25 For instance, Yun-cheol Kim pointed out that the fatal weakness of the play was the implausible relationship between the Dummy Bride and the other characters (Kim, cited in Lee, Laughing, Drumming and Dying, p. 319). Even the most favourable critic, Nam-seok Kim, tried to read the heroine's ‘hidden motivation’ as ‘the healthy sexual desire’, which is not suitable for interpreting Lee's dramatic practice. Nam-seok Kim, The Aesthetic Origin of Lee Yun-taek's Plays (Seoul: Pooreunsasang, 2006), pp. 161–2.

26 Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 25.

27 Ibid., p. 21.

28 Ibid., p. 35.

29 Lee, Laughing, Drumming and Dying, p. 270.

30 Antonin Artaud, ‘“Mise En Scène” and Metaphysics’, in Lizbeth Goodman and Jane de Gay, eds., The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 98–101, here pp. 99–100. In interview (14 February 2007) Lee Yun-taek said that he had both the Artaudian inner impulse and the Brechtian view of the world.

31 Jackson, Fantasy, p. 35.

32 Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 33.

33 Gil-soo Kim, ‘<Babo-gaksi> Discourse 1: Centring on the Theatrical Aesthetic of Contrast’, Drama Nonchong, 9 (1997), 31–71, p. 33.

34 Jeon Song, ‘Babo-gaksi: An Apocalyptic Warning about the World and the Possibility of Redemption’, Korean Theatre Review, 18, 12 (1993), 49–52, p. 52.

35 Yu-mee Kim, ‘Babo-gaksi: The Fin-de-siècle Madness Dilutes the Meaning of the Folk Tale’, Korean Theatre Review, 24, 11 (1999), 107, p. 107.

36 Jackson, Fantasy, p. 33.

37 Lee, Laughing, Drumming and Dying, p. 270.

38 Jackson, Fantasy, p. 41.

39 Interview with Lee Yun-taek (14 February 2007).