Articles

• Charles K. Armstrong, The Origins of North Korean Cinema: Art and Propaganda in the Democratic People’s Republic
• Sonia Ryang, Technologies of the Self: Reading from North Korean Novels in the 1980s
• Sung-deuk Oak, North American Missionaries’ Understanding of the Tan’gun and Kija Myths of Korea, 1884-1934
• Stephen Epstein, On Reading North Korean Short Stories on the Cusp of the New Millennium
• Keith Howard, Lee Hye-ku and the Development of Korean Musicology
• Daniel Bouchez, Eulogy: In Memory of Li Ogg

Book Reviews

The Origins of North Korean Cinema: Art and Propaganda in the Democratic People’s Republic Korea
Charles K. Armstrong

Ever since Lenin declared that, for the Bolsheviks, “Cinema is the most important of all the arts,” film has played a key political and aesthetic role in Marxist-Leninist states. The DPRK has probably emphasized film even more than other regimes in this revolutionary tradition, and the current leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong Il, has long been active in the production and dissemination of North Korean film. This article outlines the origins of the North Korean film industry during the Soviet occupation of 1945-1948, tracing the transition from film of the Japanese colonial period to a new socialist cinema that emerged with the assistance and encouragement of the Soviets. However, despite the Soviet presence, from the very beginning North Korean film demonstrated an aesthetic style and political content that was determinedly independent of the USSR. This is most evident in the DPRK’s first feature film, Nae Kohyang (My Hometown), which purports to show an independent, anti-colonial popular revolution led by Kim Il Sung in Manchuria, a theme which prefigures much of North Korean cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.

Technologies of the Self: Reading from North Korean Novels in the 1980s
Sonia Ryang

In this paper I discuss the concept of self in North Korea by using Foucault’s notion of the technologies of the self. With reference to the 1980s popular novels, I analyze the way protagonists are encouraged and disciplined to cultivate a higher existence through self-inquisition and self-management. A society like North Korea’s offers an interesting milieu where the alternative notion of self can be proposed in contradistinction to the bourgeois Western notion of self. Although this paper reflects only the initial stage of my research, it should cast new light on research on North Korean society in general.

North American Missionaries’ Understanding of the Tan’gun and Kija Myths of Korea, 1884-1934
Sung-deuk Oak

The purpose of the study is to examine North American missionaries’ understanding of two founding fathers of ancient Korea, Tan’gun and Kija. They understood Tan’gun as the third person of the Korean Trinity and the first Shaman-king who worshipped the original monotheistic god Hananim. They identified themselves with Kija, a cultural reformer and adaptor, who conformed higher civilization to the Korean context. They accepted Hananim as a Christian term for God based on the Tan’gun myth. The integration of Christian monotheism with Tan’gun nationalism provided the Korean Church with the spiritual power to fight against Japanese imperialism and Shintoism. This study revises the stereotyped image of missionaries as cultural imperialists.

On Reading North Korean Short Stories on the Cusp of the New Millennium
Stephen Epstein

This paper analyzes a selection of short stories that appeared in the North Korean literary journal Choson munhak in 1998 and 1999 and discusses recurrent themes and subject matter in order to highlight both current literary trends and the larger social concerns they reflect as the DPRK entered the new millennium. Although North Korean writers remain as firmly committed as ever to the maintenance of the chuch’e ideology and a belief in the value of literature as a tool for propaganda, repeated references to the kanghaenggun (“forced march”) and its attendant issues in these tales give evidence of the psychological toll that has been enacted upon the DPRK. While many stories suggest general “objectively” definable problems within society, the solutions depicted are highly specific, often requiring a moment of epiphany that is highly “subjective” and dependent on individual characterization; this article argues that it is in fact precisely for their idiosyncratic solutions that recent DPRK short stories reveal all the more clearly deep-rooted structural problems in contemporary North Korean society.

Lee Hye-ku and the Development of Korean Musicology
Keith Howard,

When I began my own studies of Korean music, I quickly noticed what I was initially tempted to consider a curious Korean musicological methodology. Lee Hye-ku [Yi Hyegu], born in 1909, is largely responsible for the dominant approach, since amongst Korean scholars he has done the most to establish the academic discipline of Korean musicology (kugakhak). His approach is historical in orientation and comparative in its use of notations and recordings. As my research progressed, I began to recognize that Korean musicology was a vital and important part of the local promotion of national identity. Whereas musicology - and its sub-discipline of ethnomusicology - is marginal in Western discourse, cold and removed from daily life in the obscurity of its analysis, I came to realize that Korean musicologists commanded - and still command - respect. This paper explores “difference,” the distinctiveness of Korean musicology, as developed by Lee Hye-ku and his students. After an overview of the historical perspective adopted, I delineate and critique the different elements of musicological studies.