Howard, Keith

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Keith Howard

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

Sun Jung: Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-Pop Idols. 221 pp. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. ISBN 978 988 8028 66 5 (hardback), 978 988 8028 67 2 (paperback).

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereSuk­Young Kim: Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea. xii, 387 pp. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. $65. ISBN 978 0 471 11708 6.Keith HowardBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 74 / Issue 03 / October 2011, pp 526 ­ 527DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X11000711, Published online: 13 October 2011Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X11000711How to cite this article:Keith Howard (2011). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 74, pp 526­527 doi:10.1017/S0041977X11000711Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 29 Oct 2012formulate an approach to them in their admirable introduction should serve as amodel for future volumes in this series. Space does not allow for more detailedcomment, but it is interesting to note a possible echo of Kim Su-Yŏng’s lastpoem in the poem “Those who have suffered long”: “Those who have sufferedlong will understand/the sharp-edged blades of grass bending low to theground/with the soft rays of the setting sun”, which does, after all, sound very“Korean” and also very fine.Brother Anthony of Taizé (An Sonjae)SUK-YOUNG KIM:Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea.xii, 387 pp. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. $65.ISBN 978 0 471 11708 6.doi:10.1017/S0041977X11000711This, to my knowledge, is the first thorough account of theatre and film in NorthKorea. Kim focuses much of her attention on the five core “revolutionary operas”(in Korean, hyŏngmyŏng kagŭk), and on an account of mass spectacles (particularlythe Arirang Festival, held since 2002) and the rehearsals for these. A further refine-ment of the subtitle might be in order, for this is a book about ideology more thanthe theatricality of performance, and about how ideology is all-pervasive, not just intheatre, media, and staged performance, but also in the way people go about theireveryday lives. It is largely observed from a distance, since as a South Korean,Kim is mainly reliant on filmed recordings, literature, and interviews with NorthKorean refugees.The volume is lavishly illustrated (though with photographs from anonyoussources, covers of journals, and poster art) and thoroughly referenced. The high pro-duction quality matches, surely, the lavish staged performance that is North Korea.Kim, like Daniel Gordon’s film, “A State of Mind”, demonstrates how rehearsal fora mass gymnastics display is as important as the performance itself; more, Kim con-siders that the North Korean state and its people perform to the world – in the streetscenes that greet visitors to the capital, in clothing, behaviour, eating and talking,thereby engaging in a collective life that couples public activity to constantsurveillance.Kim tells us that film has been the preferred state genre for high-level creative pro-duction. In this, North Korea followed Soviet policy, and the recognition from Leninonwards that film allowed wider circulation than any touring theatre troupe. Filmallows life-like representation, fitting the Soviet concept of socialist realism.Revolutionary operas and theatre productions are filmed and sent around the countryas celluloid. The focus on film in Kim’s opening chapters notably allows her to accesstwo South Korean commentators on the North, the director Sin Sang-ok and hiswife and actress Choe Eun-hui, who were abducted to the North in 1978 and madea number of films there. Kim points out that, whereas from Aristotle onwards wehave considered the mimetic to require any staged representation to try to imitate rea-lity, film in North Korea, at least in terms of ideological content, exceeds everyday life,becoming in its “teleological vision” (p. 47) a reality to be emulated.Cinematic practices also sit behind revolutionary operas, with blackouts thatchange time or space and backdrop projections of scenery. But the five operas con-sidered, all created between 1971 and 1974 as Kim Jong Il rose to prominence,526 R E V I E W Sembody a unified state ideology. They are “immortal”, allegedly written or inspiredby the senior leader, Kim Il Sung, and developed or directed by Kim Jong Il in away that stamps the leadership’s creative credentials on artistic production. Theycreate images that “saturate the city”, situating Pyongyang as an ideal city “in thebosom of the Supreme Leader”. They transform family life, “depriving traditionalpatriarchs of masculinity” and substituting “omnipresent state patriarchs”. Theyare “shaped by the need to promote a military spirit”, and feature women as prota-gonists. These heroines have no eroticism about them, are often elderly, and wearpre-colonial style Korean costumes – costumes that Kim tells us are oxymoronic,since they date from a feudal period when women lacked power or public presence(p. 238). I would simply see nationalism at work here rather than the convolutedaccount of colonialism and militarism that Kim gives.Note that Illusive Utopia only mentions five revolutionary operas. There areothers, perhaps not so ideologically sound, and their omission hints that perform-ance itself is less the concern than ideology. The actors’ voices we hear are onlythose who have written and published accounts (with the occasional refugee),and, not surprisingly, they speak the ideology. I wonder whether this can be con-sidered the full picture. Again, ideology is seen as a constant and unchangingdimension throughout the 65+ years of North Korean existence. In terms of artisticpolicy, I would personally discern shifts and evolutions.Chapter 6, on public performance and mass spectacles, underscores Kim’s focus.She sees Pyongyang as a “Stalinist theme park” and the national image as beinghighly choreographed. For this to work, she argues that the state requires touriststo be silent and compliant, and to visit sites that demonstrate the ideological hierar-chy rather than freely to traverse the country. Her discussion becomes intensely per-sonal as she criticizes the North’s human rights abuses and nuclear ambitions, the“hardly fathomable” food rationing, and the brutality of capital punishment. Sheabhors the regime’s total control, which ensures there is “hardly any distinctionbetween concentration camps and the rest of North Korea” (p. 273).Mass spectacles complete the account. They are seen as distinct from Europeanand Chinese mass games, in that they marry gymnastics to artistic performance. Thestadium they are given in is explored as a stage, the proscenium area now the centralfield for gymnastics and performance, and the backdrop along one complete sidecomprising hordes of choreographed card-waving children and youth who producetotally unified images and slogans. No mention is made of how the spectacle actu-ally works and, in commenting that the film version has too few audience members,Kim forgets her earlier comments on how film functions as a medium for distri-bution throughout the country.Knowing how difficult it is to obtain a broad and representative coverage of NorthKorean materials, I appreciate much of the detailing that Kim has provided through-out this very readable account. She usefully challenges us to rethink many of ourrather stale ideas about artistic production in North Korea. I don’t, however, seewhat justifies her explicit and consistent use of the current South Korean romaniza-tion system (rather than the McCune-Reischauer international standard or NorthKorean romanization), which will surely cause offence. And I have one naggingquestion: given the observation that many good artists from South Korea in theearly years of the divided peninsula defected northwards because it offered bettertraining and opportunities, are actors, artists and performers really no more thanideologues?Keith HowardR E V I E W S 527

Review of Suk-Young Kim, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film and Everyday Performance in North Korea

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereSun Jung: Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K­Pop Idols. 221 pp. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. ISBN 978 988 8028 66 5 (hardback), 978 988 8028 67 2 (paperback).Keith HowardBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / FirstView Article / September 2012, pp 60 ­ 62DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X11000723, Published online: 13 October 2011Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X11000723How to cite this article:Keith Howard Review of Sun Jung 'Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K­Pop Idols' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Available on CJO 2011 doi:10.1017/S0041977X11000723Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 29 Oct 2012SUN JUNG:Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain,Oldboy, K-Pop Idols.221 pp. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. ISBN 978 9888028 66 5 (hardback), 978 988 8028 67 2 (paperback).doi:10.1017/S0041977X11000723This volume will likely appeal to two distinct readerships: the cultural studies frater-nity, intrigued by the main title, and those interested in Korean popular culture andthe rise of hallyu, the Korea Wave. The former will revel in the theoretical concen-tration, which is at its most dense in the opening chapter, while the latter will zoom inon the discussion of specific cultural productions. Within the latter, Yonsama standsfor Bae Yong-Joon and the drama “Winter Sonata”, Rain (Pi, the stage name of JungJi-Hoon) for pop music, and Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy (2003) for film. Oldboy wonthe Grand Prix at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2004, and was praised bythe jury president, Quentin Tarantino. The concepts of masculinity shift from “soft”in the case of Bae Yong-Joon to “global” with Rain and “postmodern” in “Oldboy”,while a second thematic thread is superimposed to consider concepts of “glocaliza-tion”, regionalization and globalization, within which Bae’s Japanese fans broaden tobecome Rain’s Asian and the Euro-American fans of Oldboy.Chapter 1 opens with a summary of the situation, detailing how hallyu beganwith the “han/hal-” Chinese character for “wave” and became the “han/hal-” forKorea, and with the TV drama “Sarangi muŏtkille/What is Love”, screened onChinese Central Television in June 1997. Hallyu grew with films – Shiri (1999),My Sassy Girl (2001) and My Wife is a Gangster (2001) and with singers such asBoA (who, although mentioned before “Winter Sonata”, arrived on the scenemuch later, after the unmentioned CLON and H.O.T. had risen to popularity inTaiwan and China). Jung moves away from Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybriditytowards Koichi Iwabuchi’s notion of the “culturally odorless” non-nationality ofJapanese popular culture, a notion Jung renders in Korean as “mugukjeok”. She use-fully distinguishes mugukjeok from Hollywood and American shallow internationa-lized culture, as a “transcultural hybridity . . . which is not only influenced byodorless global elements, but also by traditional (national) elements” (p. 3). Bydoing so, she emphasizes that Korean cultural production is similar but different,thereby silencing critics who argue Korean pop is a mimetic copy ofEuro-American pop, but also setting up a discussion of how non-Korean masculi-nities – metrosexual, cute, and cool – have been absorbed into a hybridized version.And, through this, she arrives at “transculturalism”, which Wolfgang Welsch a dec-ade ago contrasted with the classical concept of single cultures and with other con-temporary accounts of interculturality and multiculturality.The theory framed within Chapter 1, verging at times on a literature survey, movesthrough Appadurai, Meyrowitz, Alasuutari, Drottner, Livingstone, Chua Beng Huatand many more, touching on cultural studies, anthropology, reception studiesand consumerism, before arriving on masculinity. Masculinity is cast within threestereotypical images of Korea taken from Moon Seung-Sook: as patriarchal andauthoritarian, as the gentleman scholar, and as military and aggressive (p. 26).These three, Jung finds, coexist as heterogeneous and contradictory masculinitiesbut also stand alone as manufactured images. Hence, in chapter 2, Bae Yong-Joonembodies soft masculinity, soft-spoken and polite, bespectacled, and wearing ascarf tied in myriad different ways. He creates a postcolonial image of nostalgia60 R E V I E W Sand retrospection – a “kind of consumption of the simulacrum of Japan’s past” –which has great impact on Japanese women. His fans reject alternative images thatare presented in, for example, a photo album where he is stripped to the waist,and in the Korean film take on Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Untold Scandal, wherehe is filmed naked in coitus. Here, soft masculinity is a “transcultural amalgamation”of South Korea’s gentleman scholar (influenced by Chinese Confucianism), ofJapanese bishōnen (pretty boy) masculinity and of the global metrosexual.The pop icon Rain, the focus of chapter 3, to Jung symbolizes a compressed ver-sion of the second thematic thread, interpreted within regional pop-consumerismand bought into by the Asian “new rich”. Rain presents a global masculinity throughhis muscle-clad tanned body, and on stage, stripped to the waist, is an embodimentof cool. Korea promotes his global ambition, making much of his Madison SquareGardens concert and his role in the Hollywood film Speed Racer. However, Jungnotes his “world tours” are Asian-centred and, initially, he was part of a glocaliza-tion process, taking American cultural forms under the guidance of his local man-agement company and repackaging them for South Korean audiences. Over time,he broke through to a regionalized identity after acting in a KBS TV drama in2003, building his fan base with his third album, “It’s Raining”; here, Jung usesthe words of Singaporean fans to interpret. With his fourth album, produced in2006, he entered a globalized phase, securing his role as a generic pan-Asianmale idol in the blockbuster Speed Racer, where he lacked nationality or ethnicity.In sum, then, Rain epitomizes the desire for Korean popular culture to be global, butwithin this he, as global metrosexual, meets the gentleman scholar while simul-taneously as the cute boy-from-next-door, he revels in a cool macho side.Jung turns, in chapter 4, to Oldboy, interpreting the hero, Dae-Soo, as savage butcool, lacking humanity as he seeks revenge. It is a film characteristic, she feels, ofthe ever-fluctuating postmodern era, harking back to a pre-modern time betweenbarbarism and civilization. For what I consider to be an acted out version of a car-toon script, I find Jung heavy on the interpretation of symbolism. She moves from acritique of contemporary technology (omnipresent concealed cameras and micro-phones, mobile phones that force their keepers to act in pre-programmed ways,and gadget-filled penthouses) to a vision of neo-Orientalist reception, whereDae-Soo is fantasized by Euro-American audiences as a machinic Other who dis-gustingly eats a live octopus and flaunts with incest. I wonder; I note other comicbook heroes such as Superman and Spiderman struggle with inner transgressiveselves without inhabiting anything neo-Orientalist. Finally, a truncated chapter 5begins by moving from the mugukjeok notion of non-nationality to a chogukjeoktransnational interpretation of contemporary boy bands with “manufactured versatilemasculinity” (p. 163). These work across national boundaries by mixing singers andlanguages, and they switch effortlessly from masculine to cross-dressing feminine,from pretty boy to sexual predator. After four pages, Jung’s theme switchesabruptly, and a final four pages summarize the whole book, stitching and amalga-mating a postlude to a conclusion.Overall, Jung has provided a useful and convincing study, showing us just howfar Korean popular culture has come. I am particularly aware of this since, just fiveyears back, I edited a volume on Korean pop music that I must now admit seemsoutdated. Again, Jung’s theorizing on Oldboy, marrying a diverse array of Koreanauthors to a constellation of Western theorists, takes us in directions that others writ-ing on Korean film have not yet gone. This is welcome. However, I sometimes won-der about romanization, where Jung’s preference for the South Korean governmentsystem leads to occasional puzzles such as the regularly repeated beulleokbeoseuteo –I challenge anybody other than a Korean to recognize that this should be pronouncedR E V I E W S 61as (and means) “blockbuster”. I also wonder why the emotion or personal state ofhan is rendered as haan, and why Jung regularly refers to the “IMF Crisis” and“IMF economic catastrophe” rather than telling us she is describing the 1998South Korean economic collapse. These, though, are minor points that should notbe allowed to mar what otherwise is a very fascinating book.Keith HowardSOUTH - EA S T A S I AOxford–River Books English–Thai Dictionary.1084 pp. Bangkok: Oxford University Press and River Books, 2010.(Second edition.) £45. ISBN 978 0 19 956291 6doi:10.1017/S0041977X11000735For much of the twentieth century the most authoritative English–Thaidictionary was the New Model English–Thai Dictionary, secretly compiled inBangkok’s Bang Khwang prison in the 1930s by So Sethaputra, a long-term pol-itical prisoner who had gained a BSc in Geology from Manchester University inthe preceding decade. So’s dictionary, which first appeared in 1938, was latersuccessfully marketed in a number of different sizes and formats, from atwo-volume “library edition” packed with illustrative sentences, to variouspocket-sized editions. Although the dictionary has been updated since its firstappearance, later editions preserved many quaint or dated examples of usage,some barely disguising the compiler’s contempt for the military government ofthe day.In 1991 Narisa Chakrabongse, owner of Bangkok publishing company RiverBooks, engaged the Translation Centre at the Faculty of Arts, ChulalongkornUniversity to produce an up-to-date, high-quality English–Thai dictionary thatwould reflect contemporary usage and serve the needs of Thai users of varyinglevels of proficiency. The project took more than twelve years to complete andresulted in a dictionary that provides accurate and idiomatic Thai equivalents ofmore than 110,000 words and phrases.The layout of entries is generally clear, although of necessity the Thai font sizeis smaller than one would like. Each entry includes a pronunciation guide in IPAand Thai script followed by a Thai translation or explanation, and, in manycases, examples of usage. A distinctive feature of the dictionary is the use ofboxed notes on a variety of topics which give related vocabulary and usefulexamples of the words in context. Among topics covered in this way are “age”,“clock”, “dates”, “illnesses”, “letter-writing”, “might”, “numbers”, “should” and“weight”.Maintaining a consistent standard in a lengthy project involving a large numberof participants is always a challenge. In places in this dictionary there are oversightsthat should have been picked up at the proofreading stage, if not earlier. The in-text“weight” box, for example, includes the English names and weight limits for inter-national boxing divisions, but no Thai name or transcription; the foreign learner ofThai has to go to the main body of the dictionary to discover that words like “fly-weight”, “bantam weight” and so on, borrow the English word. A different problemoccurs in the “numbers” box, where the Thai user will find that the English names62 R E V I E W S

Review of Sun Jung, Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-Pop Idols

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Review of Suk-Young Kim, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film and Everyday Performance in North Korea

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