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Korean theatre needs more support in the UK market

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While there is no shortage of interest from creatives, if non-British theatre is to move beyond a series of endless beginnings, international productions need the faith of producers and investors, says producer Junyoung Kim

https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/korean-theatre-needs-more-support-in-the-uk-market-junyoung-kim

London likes to think of itself as a global stage, but when it comes to welcoming musicals not born in English, the doors are more often politely ajar than thrown open. Over the past three years, thanks to Arts Council Korea’s invitations during the pandemic, producers and educators from the UK have been flown to Seoul to see a new wave of Korean musicals. Showcases in London have followed. And yet, for all this activity, the path into the British system remains as treacherous as ever – less a red carpet and more an obstacle course.

The barrier, we are told, is language. But the truth is both more structural and more complicated. The difficulties faced by Korean producers are almost identical to those confronting their counterparts in Japan and China. Translation is the obvious hurdle, but even when words travel across borders, dramaturgy, theatrical custom and local expectation rarely do.

This is hardly surprising in a theatre culture that has prided itself on developing its own writers for generations. The London Royal Court’s legacy of nurturing home-grown voices remains intact, and although international work now slips more frequently into British repertoires, the statistics tell their own story. A 2013 survey found that translated plays accounted for just 3.2% of productions in the UK. More recently, the University of Kent’s Translating Theatre project confirmed that the figure still sits below 5%.

The selection criteria for British programmers are as clear as they are unforgiving: artistic ambition, craft, social resonance, diversity and inclusion and, most of all, commercial viability. Success ‘back home’ will not cut it. Stories must be reshaped, language retooled, form redesigned. All of this demands time, resources and local experience – things that cannot be achieved faster by flying back and forth between Seoul and London, collecting air miles or relying on sheer determination.

The case studies tell mixed stories of success. Maybe Happy Ending, a Korean original, was reimagined in English in New York with a new creative team and went on to Broadway, where it swept six Tony awards. Marie Curie, another Korean musical, was staged at London’s Charing Cross Theatre with British actors and fared less well, criticised for thin dramaturgy and lacklustre music. Meanwhile, Korean producer Chunsoo Shin was not exporting Korean intellectual property at all when he made the decision to lead-produce The Great Gatsby at the London Coliseum, but was making a bold attempt to play with Western property on Western terms. The reception was mixed, but it highlighted a crucial point: strategy matters as much as artistry in shaping outcomes.

Public subsidy helps – up to a point. The publicly funded Daegu International Musical Festival and the K-Musical Roadshow have brought Korean work to foreign producers and investors, building networks that matter. But, too often, these efforts stall at the showcase stage. To progress, they need co-production frameworks and private capital. Korean government funding remains stuck at seed-money level – a bottleneck shared across much of Asia.

From the rehearsal rooms of London this autumn, the obstacles are even starker. I am currently preparing, in my capacity as producer, two showcases: the play India Blog and the musical The Goddess is Watching. Both originated from Yeonwoo Stage, a Korean theatre company that has presented only original works since its founding in 1977. Having led the company for the past 25 years, producer Insoo Yu – who has already introduced these productions to Japan and China – is now taking the helm in London to lead the process locally.

Thanks to talented British actors and creatives, rehearsals are smooth and technical preparation efficient. But the real challenge lies elsewhere: persuading producers, artistic directors, tour bookers and investors to sit in the stalls at an industry showcase designed to gather expert perspectives on localisation. At this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a panel on making musicals asked the same blunt question: “How do you get the right people to actually turn up?”

Yu, who is currently leading the development process in London, reflects: “British actors and creative staff show remarkable curiosity and enthusiasm towards the originality and freshness of Korean works. However, producers and investors remain comparatively indifferent, making it difficult to sustain ongoing project development and establish co-production partnerships locally.”

A showcase, after all, is unfinished by definition. No stars, no familiar songs, no recognisable narrative structures. An invitation is no guarantee of attendance. Imagining Phoebe Waller-Bridge materialising in the back row is a fantasy best reserved for the pub. The cold reality is that international work succeeds not only on the strength of its craft but on whether the right eyes are in the room.

Another persistent problem is our obsession with the West End and Broadway as the only legitimate destinations for shows. Their symbolic weight is undeniable. But skipping over regional theatres or the Edinburgh Fringe in pursuit of a glittering debut is less strategy than vanity. A more sustainable route is incremental: build audiences in smaller houses, refine work through touring and grow into larger markets. The belief that there is ‘no success without the West End or Broadway’ weakens resilience and narrows possibility. This is not uniquely Korean; Chinese and Japanese producers fall into the same trap.

What is needed is a long-term system of localisation and collaboration: co-production models that are legally and financially sound, adaptation that goes beyond translation into genuine recreation and showcase pathways that do not end with polite applause but move forward to contracts and investment.

The obstacles that I face with my own showcases are not mere teething problems – they are signals of what must change if non-English theatre industries are to move beyond endless beginnings. London may yet prove a fertile ground for Korean or Japanese musicals, but not through wishful thinking. It will be because producers – those of us who dream of international success and who stage showcases in pursuit of it – have learned that the hardest ticket to secure is not for the public but for the industry itself.

Looking ahead, more international works will inevitably follow into London, driven by the ambitions of Korean, Chinese and Japanese producers who aim to move beyond their relatively small domestic markets, and by government policies in those countries that actively support overseas expansion. Importantly, investment is no longer coming from governments alone; private capital is also beginning to play a growing role in supporting these ventures.

And if you can persuade those decision-makers to come, stay seated and remain past the interval? That is almost as miraculous as getting a British audience to laugh at a subtitled joke.

Artist Zadie Xa on Art Night festival, sea animals and highlighting minority stories

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https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/artist-zadie-xa-art-night-festival-interview-a4170631.html
Ben Luke – Evening Standard

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When I walk into a yard behind Zadie Xa’s East End studio, she’s in the middle of a fascinating process. With her husband, artist Benito Mayor Vallejo, she’s just revealed some unmistakable shapes from fibreglass moulds: the dorsal fins of orcas.

These cetacean curves are part of a rich, complex new performance and installation, Child of Magohalmi and the Echos of Creation, that Canadian-Korean Xa is developing for Art Night, the annual one-night-only visual arts extravaganza. This year it is happening in Walthamstow and Xa joins a great line-up, featuring established names like Barbara Kruger and Oscar Murillo alongside emerging artists such as Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings.

There’s a big buzz around Xa: in May, a performance by her was part of the Venice Biennale opening, and once Art Night is done, variations of the project travel to Yarat in Baku, before heading to Tramway in Glasgow, and then on to De La Warr in Bexhill-on-Sea.

For now, though, the orcas are headed for Walthamstow Library’s reading room. They will be part of a subaqueous world with conch shell sculptures which are speakers for a sound work, video projections, and performers donning masks and wearing clothes that Xa has designed and made.

The orcas were inspired partly by a recent filming trip to her native Vancouver. Killer whales were a staple of her childhood imagination and “a mythologised animal within local indigenous cultures”, she says. “Subconsciously, whenever I think about that animal, I think about my home.”

She’s particularly fascinated by a small, endangered pod off the west coast of the US and Canada. A “grandmother orca” in the pod, named Granny, was thought to be 105 years old before her death in 2016 and Xa is interested in orcas’ matrilineal family structures. “They all learn their survival and social skills through their mothers and grandmothers,” she explains.

She’s long been preoccupied with matriarchies, and the Magohalmi in her title is the central figure of an old Korean creation myth — Grandmother Mago, who created “geological formations, bridges, fortresses, lakes… out of her excrement and mud”. Her mother would tell her Korean folk tales as a child. “So for me it was a nostalgic entry point into feeling like I could [explore] aspects of historical Korea.”

She was inspired by the research of the academic Helen Hye-Sook Hwang. The story had been passed down orally and it was only in the Eighties that it was rediscovered.

“Throughout history [Magohalmi’s] name and her memory has been washed away or really caricatured,” Xa says, “because male scholars didn’t find this an interesting story.” She sees the parallels in “women’s stories or ‘minority’ stories being washed away or erased because they’re not deemed important”, she explains. “It was something I felt passionate about highlighting.”

She weaves these disparate elements together, linking not just Magohalmi with Granny, but the reverberations of cosmic music that gave birth to the goddess with the orcas’ use of echo-location. “The underpinning of my story for Art Night is thinking about the environment and specifically the plight of these whales,” she says.

The orcas have suffered terribly from what Xa calls “all these obnoxious things humans do” — overfishing, fish farming, chemical and noise pollution. But, influenced by Art Night curator Helen Nisbet’s quirky idea to take East 17’s song It’s Alright as inspiration — this is Walthamstow, after all — Xa says the work is not pessimistic.

“I can be really nihilistic and think everything’s going really terribly,” she says. Instead, she thought about the strength in familial love, “in my case with the women in my family” — Xa says she doesn’t have a relationship with her father’s family.

There’s hope in Xa’s story: Magohalmi was written out of history, but has returned. “She’s basically saying, ‘Let me tell you what happened: they tried to write me out, but it’s not happening, because I’m here.’” And though it’s not didactically expressed, Xa’s work is a call to bring the environment back from the brink. “How are we able to move forward?” she asks.

Aside from this urgent eco-feminist message, the project reflects Xa’s defiant exploration of her Korean diasporic identity. Her work is full of colour, playfulness and visual thrills, inspired by Korea and perceptions of it. “In some ways I feel embarrassed about how garish I am,” she says with a laugh.

Growing up in Vancouver, racism made her recede into the background, she says. Now 35, and living here in London, “I’ve flipped that and I want to be hyper-visible and aggressive with it. This is just the way I feel comfortable with it, and it’s in no way that I need to convince myself how great it is to be a person who’s Asian. But I’m really excited to be at a point in my life where I can finally celebrate it.”

Art Night 2019 is part of Waltham Forest London Borough of Culture and takes place across venues in Walthamstow & Kings Cross this Saturday, June 22 (artnight.london)

Inside the hidden life of Kim Jong Un

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/inside-the-hidden-life-of-kim-jong-un/2019/06/13/0aee892c-8621-11e9-a491-25df61c78dc4_story.html
By Krys Lee

June 14

Krys Lee is the author of the novels “Drifting House” and “How I Became a North Korean.”

THE GREAT SUCCESSOR
The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un

By Anna Fifield

PublicAffairs. 308 pp. $28

Few heads of state inspire as many jokes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. After nicknames like “Kim Fatty III ” and “Fatty Kim” went viral in China, Beijing cracked down on their use. In the United States, the presidentially bestowed nickname “Rocket Man” has a derogatory ring, partly because of the failure of multiple North Korean missile launches. Kim’s socializing with the NBA’s former enfant terrible Dennis Rodman also has set him up for ridicule. But in “The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un,” Anna Fifield forcefully demonstrates that the North Korean leader is far more savvy, ambitious and ruthless than his ludicrous nicknames suggest.

Writing a biography of Kim is a notoriously difficult undertaking. False information abounds, and testimonies of North Korean escapees and refugees can be unreliable. To overcome these hurdles, Fifield has cross-checked a wealth of facts, relied on extensive primary and secondary sources, and engaged in old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting.

The infamously secretive nation goes to great lengths to protect the life story of its leader. When traveling abroad, for instance, Kim brings a private staff to “forensically clean” dishes, scrub hotel rooms and cart in portable toilets “so that he won’t leave any samples from which health information could be extracted.” And when a relative exposes family secrets to foreign media, as we now know, that person is assassinated.

Fifield, currently Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post, has widely covered North Korea, and “The Great Successor” is a hard-earned, comprehensive portrait of Kim and his country’s uncertain future.

Hereditary succession began in North Korea under the direction of its first leader, Kim Il Sung, who ruled from 1948 until his death in 1994. Handing the leadership to his son, Kim Jong Il, was arguably North Korea’s biggest break from traditional communism and required decades of planning. Steps included removing from political dictionaries the definition of hereditary succession as “a reactionary custom of exploitive societies,” creating patriotic songs that incorporated the heir, and hanging portraits of father and son in public places throughout the nation.

The succession of the grandson, Kim Jong Un, looked more unlikely. His grandfather was a revered Korean war hero, while Kim Jong Un had no such illustrious background. He had two half siblings and two full siblings, but with the help of his determined mother, Ko Yong Hui, Kim Jong Un emerged as the favorite to lead the nation.

In 1996, at age 12, Kim Jong Un embarked on a relatively ordinary student life in Switzerland, under the alias Pak Un. Based on interviews with his friends and his aunt Kim Yong Suk and uncle Ri Gang, who raised him in his first few years in Bern, Fifield draws an intriguing composite portrait of a lonely teenager who studied democracy and the French Revolution and played basketball passionately. After he was summoned back to Pyongyang, as his father Kim Jong Il’s health deteriorated, Kim Jong Un’s private life became hazier.

Once Kim Jong Un took power he needed to demonstrate his break from the miserable rule of his father and respond resourcefully to international sanctions. As a young, inexperienced leader hoping to extend his family’s reign, Kim presented to the people a combination of terror and hope. He cracked down on border crossings, the flow of information and religious practices. To demonstrate his willingness to terrorize the nation, he executed his uncle Jang Song Thaek in public and had his half brother Kim Jong Nam assassinated in Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Fifield describes North Korea’s economic shifts: the development of numerous legalized markets and a rise in entrepreneurism. Where once travel permits were mandatory and cellphones banned, there is now widespread use of mobile phones, and a growing private transport industry has revolutionized the economy. State-run companies are increasingly managed according to market principles. Operations are driven by profits, and managers have the freedom to hire and fire workers.

But bribery is still a way of life. Much of the economy resides in a “gray zone” — trading operations may not be legal, but they’re not exactly illegal, either. State firms once focusing on specific products, such as the cigarette-maker My Hometown, now produce a range of goods to alleviate the pressure from sanctions. Power outages in prime real estate are common. Few beyond state-employed hackers can access the Internet. And many people have a vested interest in maintaining a system that benefits them.

Still, Kim has shown himself in some ways to be a new leader breaking with North Korea’s ingrained culture. His wife, Ri Sol Ju, appears regularly in public, unlike her predecessors. She is certainly the first to appear publicly arm in arm with her husband. “In a country where even the wives of top cadres wore the shapeless socialist outfits that made everyone equally drab,” Fifield writes, “Ri cut a strikingly modern figure.” She was seen in “a jacket with red polka dots — and often sported a pearl brooch instead of the mandatory Kim pin worn by everyone else.” She even “wore platform peep-toe pumps.”

Kim’s appearance is modeled on that of his revered grandfather, but he has been more forthright with the public. He has openly acknowledged the people’s economic hardship, has allowed once-forbidden images to air on TV and publicly said in 2012 that a launched satellite had failed to enter orbit, a rare admission for a North Korean leader.

In Pyongyang, Western food and fashion mingle with stodgy monuments. Plastic surgery is commonplace for the elite, and bikinis are fashion statements of modernity. Why long for New York when, as Fifield dubs it, you have “Pyonghattan”?

“The Great Successor” is essential reading for anyone seeking insight on one of the world’s least-understood leaders. Though he may be young, Kim has forced South Korea, China and the United States to take him seriously. The book makes a convincing argument that with Kim at the helm, North Korea is painfully forging its way toward a more prosperous, stable future, whether or not the West likes it.

UN Security Council Resolution 2397 on North Korea

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https://usun.state.gov/remarks/8238

December 22, 2017

In response to the November 29, 2017 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch by North Korea, United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 2397 imposes strong new sanctions on North Korea’s energy, export, and import sectors with new maritime authorities to help shut down North Korea’s illicit smuggling activities. UNSCR 2397 builds on UNSCR 2375 (2017), which included the strongest sanctions ever imposed on North Korea, and prior resolutions. This resolution imposes the following measures:

1. Refined Petroleum Products (OP5): Reduces UNSCR 2375 annual cap on refined petroleum exports by 75% to allow a maximum of 500,000 barrels/year to North Korea.

  • In 2016, North Korea imported 4.5 million barrels/year of refined petroleum.
  • After the September nuclear test, the Security Council capped refined petroleum exports to North Korea at 2 million barrels.
  • By reducing this cap to 500,000 barrels, North Korea’s import of gasoline, diesel, and other refined products will be cut by a total of 89% from summer 2017.

2. Crude Oil (OP4): Strengthens UNSCR 2375 freeze on crude oil by establishing a 4 million barrels/year or 525,000 tons/year annual limit. Increases transparency of crude oil provided to North Korea by requiring supplying member states to provide quarterly reports to the 1718 Sanctions Committee on amounts of crude oil provided to North Korea.

3. Commitment to Future Oil Reductions (OP27): Commits the Security Council to reduce further petroleum exports to North Korea following another nuclear test or an ICBM launch, sending a strong new political signal to North Korea about future Security Council responses.

4. Countering Maritime Smuggling (OPs 9-15): Provides additional tools to crack down on smuggling and sanctions evasion, including a new requirement for countries to seize and impound ships caught smuggling illicit items including oil and coal.

5. North Korean Overseas Workers (OP8): Requires countries to expel all North Korean laborers earning income abroad immediately but no later than 24 months later (end of 2019).

  • The North Korean regime is believed to be earning over $500 million each year from heavily taxing the nearly 100,000 overseas North Korean workers, with as many as 80,000 working in China (about 50,000) and Russia (about 30,000) alone.
  • Exempts the repatriation of North Korean defectors, refugees, asylum seekers, and trafficking victims who will face persecution and torture when repatriated by the North Korean regime.

6. Ban DPRK Exports (OP6): Bans all remaining categories of major DPRK exports.

  • Previous Security Council resolutions banned North Korea’s export sectors covering around 90% of its export revenue (e.g., coal, textiles, seafood, iron).
  • Banning the remaining major export sectors – including food, agricultural products, minerals machinery, electrical equipment – will cut off $200 million or more of annual export revenues.
  • Revenues from these exports in 2016 constituted nearly 10% of total exports or $264 million.

7. Ban DPRK Imports (OP7): Bans North Korea from importing heavy machinery, industrial equipment, and transportation vehicles, which constituted about 30% of North Korea’s 2016 imports worth nearly $1.2 billion. Exempts the provision of spare parts for civilian passenger aircraft for air safety reasons.

8. Protects Humanitarian and Diplomatic Activities in North Korea: Imposes new measures aimed at the North Korean regime and the elite by targeting industrial and other major economic activities while preventing North Korea from exporting food and agricultural products. Provides a number of exemptions aimed at protecting the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the North Korean people and not impeding the work of diplomatic and consular missions operating in North Korea.

9. Sanctions Designations (Annexes): Adds 16 new individuals and 1 entity connected to the financing and development of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs to the UN’s sanctions list.

Links:

A journey through death in Yoo Sun-hoo’s After 4: Over the Moon

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A journey through death in Yoo Sun-hoo’s After 4: Over the Moon


Published: August 15, 2017
A journey through death in Yoo Sun-hoo’s After 4: Over the Moon
ZOO Southside, Edinburgh
August 9, 2017

David Mead

★★★★

The Fringe has the lovely habit of coming up with the unexpected, shows that you only drop in on because there’s a hole in the schedule, but that turn out to be something special. Hidden away in the intimate studio at ZOO Southside most afternoons is one such.

In Korea, when people die they say that they have ‘crossed the river’ or ‘gone over the moon’. Hoo Dance Company’s After 4: Over the Moon is a meditation on death, created and performed by Yoo Sun-hoo. An 80-year old woman has died. Yoo conjures up the four rivers that the woman must traverse on her journey through death (the ‘After 4’ of the title) for her soul to be free, and so she can be reincarnated into a flower. As she comes to each waterway, she meets four envoys of death, each neatly heard in music and song rather than seen.

The dance and music come together perfectly to create a spectacle that’s poetic and sensitive. An air of ritual pervades throughout. But while, Yoo draws on dance from ceremonies and Jindo purification rites, and from that taught by her master in Korea, she adds her own movement to it to create something contemporary. It’s not traditional per se, although the roots are clear.

Contra-bass player JC Curve’s score is as much part of the experience of After 4 as the dance. The four live musicians of E-Do are outstanding, responding perfectly to the mood and dance on a variety of traditional and electronic instruments including the 11-stringed geomungo, chulhyungeum (an iron-stringed zither, a sort of cross between a guitar and geomungo), daegeum (long bamboo flute) and Korean drum. Most fascinating, though, is the circular, metal, rav drum, originating in Germany and Switzerland, and in which steel tongues vibrate to create a wonderfully harmonious sound.

Starting with the Black River, Yoo appears in a costume of white hemp, traditionally used for shrouds, but with a modernist touch. A flower in her hair and another in her teeth reference the blooms place in graves. There’s a shamanistic air as she slowly reaches and stretches, her body contorting painfully in an outpouring of anguish. The mood is heightened by the chanting of a singer.

A simple bell announces the next river; the next stage of her journey. The Invisible River sees her move under a simple white sheet, her body creating ghostly amorphous forms in the fabric. The folds create patches ever-changing moments of light and dark. It’s here that the rav drum, played by Lee Kyung-gu comes into its own. After the sheet is pulled away, receding like an ebbing tide, dust is tossed in the air, marking her arrival at the Ash River. A sense of approaching happiness and journey’s end is apparent in the choreography and accompanying flute.

The final crossing is of the Soul River, represented by a long, pink fabric. Four rivers, four angels of death, four dances, but at last the woman can be free. After 4 concludes with a sense of happiness. She has been reincarnated. She smiles. We breathe.

After 4: Over the Moon continues at 2pm at ZOO Southside to August 28. Click here for details.
Running time 70 minutes

The musicians of E-Do have their own concert on August 21, also at 2pm at ZOO Southside. Details here.

Mind Dramaturgy: Lee Kyung @ Edfringe 2017

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http://vilearts.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/mind-dramaturgy-lee-kyung-edfringe-2017.html

Lee K. Dance – supported by Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of Korea
Mind-Goblin
UK Premiere
Award-winning Korean choreographer Lee Kyung Eun exorcises the spirit of our confusing world in her intense and visceral solo piece
Dance Base, 16 – 27 Aug 2017 (not 21), 17:40 (18:10)
Mind-Goblin (2)
In this solo performance, choreographer and dancer Lee Kyung Eun explores Korean shamanic ritual and the nature of the individual in the chaotic world, one of a showcase of five Korean productions arriving at the 70th Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In a physically intense half hour, Lee Kyung Eun examines goblins of both the mind and body. Interrogating the idea that her mind and body is a universe of its own, she becomes simultaneously the possessed spirit and the shaman who practices the rite of exorcism. Her body catches itself, stretches out, searches for space, exploring her territory, investigating and listening to herself. Voices of different languages ​​mingle with the throbbing music of Jimmy Sert’s sound design, an incantation and a supplication that chimes with the ritualistic movement.

The power of the body is central to Lee’s work, and through her career she has rewritten the history of Korean dance, rebelling against the typical female dancer, and creating a new character, provocative, androgynous, conceptual and popular.

The Korean rituals that inspired Lee are designed to expel the Dokkaebi, powerful but foolish spirits that can also resemble a grotesque and humorous looking goblin. The rituals can involve hunting the spirits by making loud metallic crashing sounds, applying blood-soaked towels to bamboo canes around the house, and never looking behind yourself – to avoid seeing the spirit and become the object of his vengeance. In this performance, the foolish and confusing world is the Dokkaebi, and the entire performance the exorcism.

Lee said, “Authentic art with the spirit can easily communicate with anyone”.

Lee K. Dance is a professional contemporary dance company established by the choreographer Lee Kyung Eun in 2002. Based on the art philosophy that “Authentic art with the spirit can easily communicate with anyone”, Lee K Dance continues to evolve a distinct identity through its collaborations with other genres based on its passion for creation, its open mind, and its flexible yet powerful dance techniques.

1. What was the inspiration for this performance?
This goblin (a Dokkaebi) has interesting things that appear differently in the stories and histories of the East and the West. In the West, Dokkaebi is like a ghost like Dracula in the West, but Dokkaebi, which appears in oriental and especially Korean folklore, is also a friendly and affectionate friend to humans. By putting together the different viewpoints of these two worlds, we collide with each other the parts that we want to conceal in the inner world (mind), and this also reveals the process of recognizing and harmonizing myself as a win-win situation. Perhaps it may reveal the East and the West philosophy as a process of win-win cooperation through Dokkaebi gut(performance of exorcism).
2. Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?
It is the inner scenery where every ordinary person fights through life. The struggling process is shown as one body, one body when it comes to the world. It is not the nature of life that has only one human being whose environment for living is removed.
The manner in which the body interprets and expresses the spirit and coexistence of the five elements (fire, water, wood, gold, and earth) in oriental philosophy will be a fairy tale space where the audience can look at themselves. I hope that the process of reviving art through the body will allow the audience to have a chance to discuss how the image of the heartbeat can be imaged beyond the imagination of the choreographer.
3. How did you become interested in making performance?
I was always interested in the usual Oriental philosophy or traditional themes, such as the goblins, Korean shamanic ritual, and the nature of the individual in the chaotic world. Then, Anita Matieu, director of Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, commissioned the production.
SIDance and the Festival in France co-produced this piece and it was premiered in France in May 2016 through a one-year production process, and premiered Korea in October of the same year.
4. Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?
First, I did a research on the subject of the goblin. He has focused on visualizing the goblins of the Dokkaebi gut (exorcism), the five elements and yin and yang, the inner idea and abstraction. I made a detailed approach to the imagined image through artistic approach and movement research.
5. Does the show fit with your usual productions?
My choreography theme approaches the authentic self – story with the subject of ordinary human being. This work is also consistent with the theme, especially based on the Oriental philosophy, the body began with the premise and tried to experiment with intense artistic expression.
6. What do you hope that the audience will experience?
The situation in which a human being struggles for 30 minutes on stage may be a thumbnail of life for 30 years or 300 years. I want to experience the catharsis through fairy tale and acceptance with the feeling of seeing the gut (exorcism), and to be a chance to contemplate life naturally like water.
7. What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
It is a picture of the human body itself, not a special or distant story. In order to realise the same situation as the audience, it is a strategy that hopes to project the audience through an authentic performance, eliminating the accessories and standing on the stage with one empty body in the empty space. How to solve also comes in a given situation. Is not life so alone? This is a strategy.
Mind–Goblin is part of a showcase of Korean shows at the 70th Edinburgh Festival Fringe, supported by Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of Korea – consisting of MEDEA on media, Behind the Mirror, TAGO: Korean DrumⅡ, Mind–Goblin and SNAP.
 
Lee Kyung Eun was awarded Performer Prize from the Korean Association of Dance Critics and Researchers for the piece Mind-Goblin in 2016, and Best New Dancer from the Contemporary Dance Association of Korea for her debut Wavering Heart in 1996. Lee was acknowledged nationally and internationally for her talents as a choreographer when she was awarded the Gold Prize at the 4th Korean Choreographer Festival and when she received first place at the 8th International Solo Tanz Theatre Festival in Germany. She was also awarded Best Choreographer at the 2003 Dance Festival for the Critics’ Choice of Young Artists. She received 2nd Grand Atelier Choregraphes-Compositeurs at the Royaumont Foundation. She has performed at SIDance, MODAFE, SPAF, the Tokyo Dance Biennale (Japan), the APAP/Dumbo Festival (US), Fondation Royaumont (France), Sziget Festival (Hungary), Kaay Fecc/Makinu Bantu (Africa) and in Germany. Her major works include This is Not a Dream, Chunmong (A Spring Dream), Between, OFF destiny, One, Two, Five, With Momo, Hide the Eye, Tears and Eye.

Company Information

Choreographed and performed by Lee Kyung Eun
Sound design by Sert Jimmy Lighting design by Gang Young Ku
Dramaturgy by Ahn Kyungmo Costume by Lee Kyung Eun
Co-produced by SIDance and Les Rencontres chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis
Listings information
Dance Base, 14-16 Grassmarket, Edinburgh EH1 2JU (Venue 22)
16 – 27 Aug (not 21), 17:40-18:10
Previews 16 Aug: £10 (£8 concs)
17 – 27 Aug: £12 (£10 concs)
www.dancebase.co.uk | 0131 225 5525

 

Supported by Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of Korea.

A memoir: Shin Sang-ok, Choi Eun-hee and I

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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2016/10/180_215463.html

Film director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee hold a press conference upon their escape from North Korea to the United States in 1986. / Korea Times file

Film director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee hold a press conference upon their escape from North Korea to the United States in 1986. / Korea Times file

By An Hong-kyoon

My phone rang. The caller was the press officer at the Korean Embassy in Washington. “Mr. Shin Sang-ok and Ms. Choe Eun-hee are scheduled to hold a press conference. Our embassy wants you to act as their interpreter. Would you do it for us?”

Elated by the surprise request, I replied to him in one breath. “Of course I will.”

“The Watergate Hotel conference room at ten in the morning of the15th [May, 1986],” the press officer continued in a relaxed voice, obviously relieved that I had accepted his request. “More than a hundred American and foreign reporters are expected to attend the press conference.”

My thoughts ran back to the January, 1978 media report that Choe Eun-hee, whom her fans dubbed the “Liz Taylor of Korea,” mysteriously disappeared in Hong Kong. In July of the same year, her estranged husband and the renowned film director, Shin Sang-ok, disappeared, also last seen in Hong Kong. Several years passed and people learned that they were in North Korea, making movies for Kim Jong-il. Kim boasted that Shin and Choe came to North Korea on their own volition. In the mid-1980’s, Shin and Choe showed up in cities like London and Belgrade, and their words and demeanor appeared to attest, beyond question, their allegiance to Kim Jong-il.

Film director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee pose as they enter South Korea in May 1989.

Then there was a bombshell. On March 13, 1986, the world learned that Shin and Choe had sought refuge in the American Embassy in Vienna, Austria. For over two months thereafter, people heard nothing.

Then came the May 12 call from the Korean Embassy. I could hardly believe my fortune. I would hear their story, tell the world their story, and above all, I would meet them in person.

Then the day arrived. I sat with the Shin couple in a small ante-room adjacent to the main hall. They were charming, but their smiles were stiff and wary. The subdued air was intensified by the presence of two white bodyguards towering behind them. I wondered momentarily if their press conference was voluntary.

As we entered the conference room, cameras flashed, and a large crowd of reporters rushed about, vying for better spots. Following a brief photo session, the conference began with many questions flying all at once. Shin gestured them to calm down. Choe would tell them her story first.

The couple appears on a Japanesemedia outlet in1984

She began by narrating the scene of her abduction. A group of men grabbed and placed her on a speed boat in Repulse Bay of Hong Kong. She screamed, “Where are you taking me?”

“To Kim Il-sung’s bosom!” one abductor shot back. She used the Korean word, Pum, a word that is reminiscent of the warm heart of a mother.

“Kim Il-sung’s what?” a reporter in the front row shouted.

Alarmed by the question, I repeated, “Kim’s bosom.” Suddenly a question flit through my head. “Does bosom refer only to female breasts?”

Choe continued, in minute detail, of her life in captivity in North Korea. In turn, Shin did the same as if to convince the world that, contrary to some rumors and Pyongyang’s claims, they had been taken to North Korea against their will.

People read stories on the couple’s escape from North Korea, which appeared in the Hankook Ilbo in 1986.
/ Korea Times

As the long narrations continued, the American reporters grew impatient. They wanted to hear about Kim Jong-il and what the Shin couple had thought of the North Korean dictator. If those reporters expected slanderous and quotable words from them about Kim Jong-il, they were disappointed. Shin and Choe did not attack the person of Kim. When pressed, Choe said Kim Jong-il was a man capable of committing “stupendous” acts. No reporter asked them if they feared Kim Jong-il’s reprisal. Or if they felt they were indebted to their captor for the generous treatment the evil man had bestowed on them.

The press conference lasted three hours. Two security guards reappeared from nowhere, and director Shin and Choe were hurried to a dark van. I hardly had time to say goodbye to them.

Seven months later, I received a Christmas card from them with a pleasant greeting. Although the card was postmarked Atlanta, Georgia, I later learned that the couple had actually been living in a townhouse all this while in Reston, VA, my own neighborhood.

Then there was a call from Shin on a spring day in 1988. They had decided to move to Hollywood to pursue film production careers in America. “Would you be available for dinner tomorrow?” He suggested a Chinese restaurant in our area.

When my wife and I arrived at the restaurant, Shin and Choe were already seated at a table far inside the spacious dining room, discreetly apart from other diners. Both looked bright and carefree. Their regained freedom had done wonders for the charming couple, letting their guard down finally.

“Sorry we had to wait for so long to meet you again,” Shin began apologetically. “We had to ponder about our future, what to do, where to live, and how.” He paused for a moment. “American friends had suggested we live in seclusion ― in retirement, and I almost decided to do just that. I thought of painting.” He paused again. “But Choe yeosa thought otherwise.” Yeosa is a Korean term for “lady” or “Madame.” I got the hint: she wanted to be addressed as yeosa, signifying her independence. “Choe yeosa insisted that we stay in America and make movies, and I agreed.” Shin smiled at his lovely wife. I thought it was more on the part of Choe yeosa who had engineered their bold escape from the North.

Shin said he knew the Korean people would wonder why he and his wife would choose America for home. “Of course we love Korea and want to go home, and our fans want us to come home.” But he said, “We are not comfortable with the Korean authorities. Shortly after we had sought refuge in the American Embassy, the Seoul government said it would leniently embrace us back to Korea. Leniency for what? We were taken to North Korea by force, and the South Korean government had the nerve to treat us as if we were North Korean collaborators.” Shin spoke calmly, but his indignation was scarcely concealed.

In an even tone, Shin continued. “We are not safe in South Korea. North Korean agents roam the streets of Seoul at will. Kim Jong-il once boasted to us that he could bring anyone he requested to Pyongyang from Seoul.” With a deep sigh, he said, “And Kim Jong-il has set millions of dollars on our heads.”

There was a pause as we munched sweet-and sour pork. Shin turned his head toward his wife. “Choe yeosa, when I saw you for the first time in Pyongyang at Kim Jong-il’s party, I thought you had completely sold your soul out to the little, bushy-haired dictator. You behaved so fresh with him.”

“Are you kidding?” Choe mischievously retorted. “People don’t call me Korea’s best actress for nothing.” We all laughed together.

I turned to her. “Madame Choe, I saw you for the first time in Daegu during the Korean War. You were playing Ophelia on stage.”

“Oh, you did?. I was a green novice then, and I hardly knew what I was playing. I had a role in Death of a Salesman, and I had no idea what mortgage meant in the script.”

While travelling in Eastern Europe, Choe continued, they had come across a tiny Catholic church. “We entered it and got married…with a solemn ceremony.”

“Over my objection,” Shin quipped, “I don’t believe in such formalities.” He looked at her with a smile that betrayed his ritualistic adherence to his creed.

The conversation turned to their plan for Hollywood. Shin had a lifelong dream to produce an epic movie on Genghis Kahn. One of his proposed desert battle scenes would employ over 3,000 horses, a record in motion picture history. He had written the script based on Aaoki Okami ― The Blue Wolf ― authored by Yasushi Inoue of Japan.

“Sitting up straight in the prison cells, I went over the script hundreds of times in my head, writing and polishing it mentally. The North Korean jailers had laughed at me when I requested a pen and paper.”

Shin was inspired by a character in the story, Quryang, a maiden warrior who, risking her life, withstood Genghis Khan’s attempt to take her by force. She triumphed when the Great Khan begged her for her love.

Over dessert, Shin abruptly asked me if I was familiar with General Dean. I told him I knew who the general was. Shin said his first project in Hollywood would be General Dean’s story, the anti-hero hero commanding general of the ill-fated U.S. 24th Infantry Division, that was smashed by columns of the North Korean Army in Daejeon.

Retreating soldiers reported that General Dean was last seen at a city crossroads with a bazooka on his shoulder¸ facing an approaching enemy tank. He then disappeared for many months. President Truman awarded him a medal of honor in absentia. In December, 1951, the world learned that the general had been held as a POW in the North. He returned home to a hero’s welcome after the armistice. He denied he was a hero.

“There is little information about his captivity in North Korea,” Shin said.

Oh, yes, I replied. General Dean had written an autobiography. I would find a copy, I promised Shin. I also told him that the current commanding general of the U.S. forces in Korea was an old acquaintance of mine. I had first met him in 1958 when he served in Korea as a green platoon leader. He is now a full general. He would gladly provide us with all the resources and assistance ― foot soldiers, tanks and bazookas. Shin’s face lit up with excitement.

It appeared that the move would be Shin’s way of returning the favor to the American establishment which had embraced Shin and Choe since their dash to the American Embassy in Vienna and were now providing a refuge from Kim Jong-il.

Walking toward the parking lot, Shin told me that after settling in Hollywood, he and Choe would travel to Seoul. They had to appear before a court and settle their legal case. After all, they had been in North Korea and had helped Kim Jong-il make movies in clear violation of the South Korean National Security Law. All had been pre-arranged, Shin said, and they would be given Korean passports, signifying their complete freedom at last. Nothing would then hamper their future, nothing, he appeared to reaffirm himself.

Waving at their automobile as they drove off, I wondered what Hollywood looked like.

In the late Fall of 1988, Shin wrote me a letter. He and Choe had settled in a Los Angeles suburb. I noticed that Shin signed his name Sheen Sang-okk. I later learned that the new name spelling had been advised by certain U.S. intelligence officials as a security measure.

Several months later, I wrote Shin that I had discovered where General Dean’s son, William, Jr., a retired Army colonel, lived.

In the spring of 1989, Shin and I met Colonel Dean at a hotel restaurant in San Antonio, Texas. He was an unassuming gentleman with a ready smile. He listened carefully to my account of Shin’s captivity in North Korea. While I had no way of fathoming his thoughts, he surely would have thought of his own father’s incarceration in the North as a POW. Colonel Dean was delighted with Shin’s plan to produce his father’s story, and was happy to transfer the copyright of his father’s book. We all shook hands and parted. A contract would be drafted and signed in due time.

The following month, Korean media reported that Shin and Choe had arrived at Kimpo Airport in Seoul to a tumultuous welcome by his fans. Customs inspectors found in their possession a large amount of material on the Korean War.

“They are for General Dean’s story,” I assured myself.

Then in the late fall of the year, I learned from a newspaper account that Shin, in Korea at the time, had announced a plan to produce a new film, Mayumi, in Korea. There was no mention about General Dean’s story. I was puzzled at first. Why the change of heart? Betrayal! I thought.

“Mayumi” was a code name for a young North Korean female terrorist who blew up Korean airliner in midair over the Indian Ocean. Again, what prompted Shin to change his plan? I could only speculate: a certain powerful element, most likely a South Korean intelligence establishment whose wishes Shin was not in a position to resist was behind it, and with ample funds. Eventually, Mayumi was produced. It turned out to be a box-office dud in Korea and overseas.

Another year passed. In September of 1990, I received a fax from Shin. A wealthy Japanese businessman had promised to invest in the production of The Blue Wolf: the Genghis Khan Story. “Please join me,” he wrote. “I know how to make movies but I know nothing about America. And you have a passion for the arts and a knack for motion pictures. I would expect you to run the office American style.”

Without a second thought, I told my wife that I was going to Hollywood. “You are crazy,” she cried out. I packed up and headed for Dulles Airport. My wife, behind the wheel, did not say much.

Shin and Choe lived in a small but attractive house in Beverly Hills. Its front yard was full of roses. An elderly maid, whom the Shins had brought from Korea, moved around like a family matriarch. There were two adorable children playing. They seemed to be deeply attached to the maid. They were the offspring of one Oh Su-mi, once Shin’s actress lover. The maid had raised the two toddlers while their father, Shin, spent eight years in North Korea. Choe was now their surrogate mother, and the children looked at their “stepmother” bashfully.

Shin delegated to me the power to sign bank checks for the office, a sure sign that he trusted me. But when I requested an employment contract, Shin declined. “We work together with an honor-bound trust, not by a signed paper.” That was not a good sign. I suggested that we retain a law firm, a public accountant, and a PR firm. Shin objected on the grounds that we did not have legal problems, we did not have any income presently, and a PR firm would be expensive. I told him that that was the “American way” to run a business. He did not answer. I took it as his acquiescence and retained a law firm, and so on. Shin instructed me to deny health coverage for office employees, but I did arrange coverage for them. If there were signs of discord between us, I did not sense it at that time.

Shin was a reticent, secretive person. He shared little with me about himself, his intentions, and what he expected of me. I wondered if this was his personality, or the result of the trials he had suffered in North Korea. He kept me in the dark about the details of his production plans. He shared little information with me about his Japanese patron and the investment the latter had promised.

Yet at certain unguarded moments, he told me revealing things. He considered North Korea a haven for film makers. Kim Jong-il provided everything, money, cast and staff, location sites, even a cargo train to blow up, and a helicopter to fly over to create snow-storm scenes. Above all, one did not have to worry about the prospect of box-office success. An audience would be mobilized, and told when to cheer.

“You know,” he once said over lunch, “I chiseled my name on the wall of my cell just to mark that I was there.” I recalled a scene from The Count of Monte Cristo. “I hope they don’t raze the prison.”

Shin remarked with an impish smile.

“When I went overseas, my minders wanted me to bring them gifts. The souvenir items most craved were sunglasses. I wondered if those bastard comrades wanted to look like Kim Jong-il.”

In mid-November of 1990, Shin and I traveled to Calgary, Canada, to look for location sites for a cavalry battle scene for Genghis Khan. The final cavalry charge scene of Kagemusha by Akira Kurosawa of Japan was previously shot in the open field of Calgary. “Kagemusha” meant “a body double” for a warlord. Calgary, however, was dropped because, besides its cost estimates, its topography hardly resembled that of the Great Steppes of Central Asia.

Mongolia, seemingly the best location site for The Blue Wolf, was out of the question. The Mongolian government would not allow a motion picture about its greatest khan drift one inch from its official history. Quyrang, the khan’s warrior-lover did not exist in the orthodox Mongol history as The Blue Wolf script portrayed her.

In the spring of the same year, Shin flew to Tokyo to confer with his Japanese investor. He looked content when he returned. One day soon after, Shin told me with a straight face. “I chose Natasha Kinski for Quyrang’s role.” He continued, “And I want you to go to Italy and meet with Sophia Loren. Tell her we need her for the role of Genghis Khan’s mother.”

I was dumbstruck. The task Shin purported to assign me was nothing like asking a movie star for an autograph. “Is this man serious?” I thought to myself. Did this man make a hollow commitment in order to placate his Japanese patron? To my relief, Shin never brought up the subject again.

Then Shin said he wanted to explore Tajikistan for locations. It was one of such occasions when the director spelled out brilliant ideas as if in passing. Besides the cost factor, the Central Asian region provided an excellent environment. After all, Genghis Khan and his horde rampaged and conquered the desert and steppes of Central Asia. In early 1991, the mysterious and closed land was wide open, thanks to Gorbachev’s perestroika.

I called the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC and spoke with a representative of Sovexporfilm, the Russian state corporation charged with film trade. Through his good offices, his Moscow headquarters sent a letter of invitation for Shin, Choe and me. The Soviet Consulate in DC quickly issued us our visas. Russians were eager to do business with the capitalist world.

Choe, however, was not allowed to go. Her fervent desire to travel together with Shin to Russia had been quashed by the South Korean Consulate in Los Angeles. Why was anyone’s guess.

I traveled to Moscow on February 9, 1991 and met with Boris, a lawyer from Sovexportfilm, who was our contact man and escort throughout our travels in the Soviet Union.

The following day, Shin arrived at the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. He was one of the last passengers to show up at the waiting area. Wearing a pair of sunglasses and a hat tipped way down, he walked in our direction quietly. Shin and I sat down on a corner bench while Boris went outside to hail a taxi. Shin, his head bowed down, did not stir. My heart started to pound faster and faster. What could I do if North Korean agents and their KGB comrades surrounded us? There was prize money on Shin’s head, and North Korea had been in the Soviet orbit until recently.

I noticed a tall and well-built Asian man in a long and loose trench coat and wearing a hunting cap walking briskly toward us. My heart froze. Shin remained motionless. I stood up. The man handed me his business card: First Secretary J.H. Choi, Embassy, the Republic of Korea. “Welcome to Moscow. Our ambassador would be happy to meet with you tomorrow.” He walked away. He looked like a core intelligence officer.

The following day, the first South Korean ambassador to Russia, and my high school classmate, greeted us cordially, but Shin appeared distant to our host. Meeting alone with me in his office, First Secretary Choi stressed that I stay in touch with him wherever Shin and I traveled. “Nothing to worry,” he assured me. When we parted, Shin failed to bow back to Choi.

Our two-day meeting with the executives of Sovexportfilm was pleasant and productive. They appeared sincere and eager to do business with us. Their figures for all the logistic support for our film was less than one-third that of Calgary’s. One executive suggested in jest that a Red Army cavalry regiment could be mobilized for combat scenes. Shin nonchalantly answered he would study the offer.

During a tea break, Shin asked if a replica of the best actress prize for the 1985 Moscow film festival could be made. The award Choe had won for her role in the North Korean film Salt had to be left behind in Pyongyang when they fled to the West. He was told that that could not be done.

Our first stop was Alma Ata, present day Almaty, of Kazakhstan. The city had a large ethnic Korean community. Obviously pre-warned by the South Korean embassy, several leaders of the Korean community came to our hotel to pay a courtesy call to Shin. They identified themselves with South Korea and praised Shin for his heroic escape from the North.

Our next destination was Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the famed hub of the ancient tea trade along the silk road. During the flight, I struck up a conversation with an Uzbek who sat next to me. When he heard the purpose of my trip, his expression turned incredulous. “Genghis Khan of all people, why?” he asked me. “You know, he burnt down our city in 1219. His soldiers killed our noblemen by breaking their spines by bending them backward.” He grew angrier. “Do you know what that evil khan and his hordes left behind? Ashes and their semen in the wombs of our women.” He turned his back on me.

Rhaman, the director of Vatan Film Studio greeted us in the Tashkent airport. Vatan was the best-known film producer in the region. We toured his studio, huge but run down. Its warehouse was full of art work, film sets, and props, mostly of bows and armors. Shin again did not say much, and he showed little interest in what he was seeing. Strange, I thought.

In the evening, Rhaman took us to an ethnic Korean festival entitled Transit, a musical that portrayed the story of ethnic Koreans being forcibly removed from the Soviet Far East to Central Asia in the mid-1930s. When an MC announced Shin’s presence, many people flocked to greet him. Elderly women hugged him. Shin was their hero, and he personified the image of their ancestral home called Korea. He tranquilized the nostalgia of the Korean diaspora.

The following day, Rhaman drove us eastward near the Afghan border to trace the routes that Genghis Khan’s Mongol horsemen had rampaged. Suddenly, Boris shook Rhaman’s shoulder. “Hey, we are in Kyrgyzstan. We have no visas to enter here.” Rhaman did not flinch and kept on driving. He couldn’t care less about what the Kremlin said. Moscow’s grip on its citizens was apparently waning fast. Indeed, the Soviet Union would fall half a year later.

Soon, the snow-covered Tian Shan Mountain range came into view. The Mongol’s ancestral spirits dwelled on the summits. Its sheer majesty humbled me. We all got out of the car and sipped the ice-cold water from the stream at the bottom of the steep-walled valley. Shin remained in the car, his head bowed and pensive. What was he thinking? I wondered.

In Bukhara, we saw gigantic mud-brick walls. A good location site for a cavalry assault, Rhaman suggested to Shin. Shin smiled back meekly. In town, we visited a timeworn mosque mantled in a rich patina of age. “This mosque,” intoned a village elder, “was saved from the Mongol invaders. We buried it underground before they came.” We were told, ad nauseam, of the Mongol atrocities in Urgenchi, Khiwa and other towns we visited. The Great Khan certainly was not popular in this part of the world.

Back at Vatan Film Studio in Tashkent, Rhaman and Boris wanted to hear from Shin. Would there be a contract for the production of The Blue Wolf? Shin was noncommittal. I was not surprised by his reaction. Throughout the trip, Shin remained aloof to the mission he had set out for. He acted more like a bored tourist.

We flew from Moscow to Tokyo and met with the Japanese investor. Shin told his patron that the trip to Russia had been highly productive. He had found excellent location spots and had nearly reached a contract agreement with the Russians.

The Japanese investor did not seem convinced.

Back in the Hollywood office, my misgivings about Shin and his intentions deepened. A disturbing thought lingered in my mind: Was Shin genuinely serious about producing The Blue Wolf film? Yes, at least in the beginning, I concluded. He envisioned producing a Hollywood epic. He fondly talked about Elia Kazan, John Ford, and Robert Wise. He liked to be compared with Akira Kurosawa. He believed his Genghis Khan was his raison d’etre. It deserved an Oscar.

However, his dream ended as just that, a dream. The funds he was promised shrank rapidly as Japan’s economic bubble burst. He discovered that the sheer scale of his imagined production outweighed his ability.

Shin was angry and disheartened, but his ego was too big to forsake his dream. So he kept on acting, literally acting. He was in denial about pursuing a phantom objective.

I decided that there would be no The Blue Wolf, ever. One day in mid-May, 1991, I tendered my resignation to Shin. He replied that he would not stop me from leaving.

I packed and returned home to Virginia.

Taehwa Market in Ulsan is flooded after typhoon Chaba struck the region, Wednesday. The typhoon caused five deaths with one person missing, as well as property damage on Jeju Island and southern coastal areas. Yonhap

Open letter to the people of Busan supporting the work of Busan International Film Festival Director Lee Yongkwan

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THE ATTACKS ON BIFF
Tony Rayns
http://filmalert101.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/tony-rayns-writes-open-letter-to-people.html

As one of BIFF’s foreign advisors, I’ve spent the past year in London watching events in Busan with mounting disbelief. My incredulity began when Busan Metropolitan City Council demanded that a documentary essay-film about the Sewol ferry disaster should be withdrawn from the 2014 festival. When the festival very properly rejected this interference in its programme selection, the City Council stepped up its attack by demanding the resignation of the festival’s director Lee Yongkwan.

Lee Yongkwan, Director of BIFF

Lee Yongkwan, Director of BIFF

And when Mr Lee very properly refused to resign, the national government suddenly decided that it needed to rethink its subsidies to Korea’s film festivals – and it was no doubt entirely coincidental that this entailed making a drastic cut to its support for BIFF. And then, in December, the City Council launched a criminal prosecution of Mr Lee for alleged fraud, citing “irregularities” in his handling of fees paid to sponsorship brokers. It’s reported in the film-trade magazine Screen Daily that the City Council has made it known privately that it will drop the charge if Mr Lee resigns.

There’s an old English saying: “cutting off your nose to spite your face”. It means doing damage to yourself in an effort to prove yourself right. This old phrase seems remarkably relevant to Busan City Council – and, presumably, to its political friends in the presidential Blue House.

I first visited Busan in 1995 at the invitation of Mr Kim Dongho and his team, who were then busy trying to create Korea’s first film festival. Mr Kim asked me to meet the city’s mayor and some councillors to explain to them (from the point of view of a foreigner who works with both films and film festivals) what a film festival is and why I thought they should support the BIFF project. The then-mayor Mr Moon asked me some pointed questions and I did my best to answer them clearly and persuasively. As we know, the city council did eventually decide to support the festival, and it was launched in 1996.

I’ve been back to Busan every year since then, some years more than once, and have watched both the festival and the city grow. Obviously the city would have grown and developed anyway in the last twenty years; the whole of the country has been transformed since the end of military governments. But I don’t think it can be disputed that BIFF has been one the main engines of the city’s growth. By basing itself in Haeundae, the festival prompted major improvements to the city’s transport infrastructure: a subway-line extension, a bridge across the bay. By attracting countless foreign visitors, the festival helped turn the city from a rather dingy and parochial port into a spectacular, cosmopolitan metropolis. The name “Busan” was known to few people around the world twenty years ago, but it’s now known to many millions – and that, too, is largely due to the festival. Such changes are worth vastly more to the Korean economy than the government and city council have spent on subsidising the festival.

This is why I’m incredulous: the government and city council seem hell-bent on damaging one of Korea’s proudest and most cost-effective achievements. Is that what they were elected to do? Are voters happy about the tactics and actions of their elected officials? It seems incredible to me.

Looking at this situation from Western Europe, on the other side of the world, I’m obviously not going to comment on the legal issues. Those are matters for Korea’s own cultural bureaucrats and lawyers. But the events of the past year raise two big questions which are universal, and I’d like to modestly express my thoughts about both.

The first is the question of competence and professionalism in the running of the film festival. It’s transparently clear that the Busan Metropolitan City Council’s problem with Mr Lee Yongkwan is political. The current council is right-wing, and it sees Mr Lee as its political enemy. It takes this political opposition as a valid reason to try to force Mr Lee out of his job. The council must think that Mr Lee could easily be replaced with someone more to their liking: someone who would not protest against political interference in the programme choices. This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen bureaucrats thinking this way in many other countries, including my own. But this kind of thinking is hopelessly ignorant of the way that festivals need to be run and need to interact with their audience, both at home and abroad.

Big film festivals are complex institutions. At the most basic level, they need to find the right balance between film as a business and film as an artform – or between the interests of the film industry and the cultural specificity of the medium itself. This means being able to talk to both business people (producers, financiers, distributors) and creative people (directors, writers, actors) in terms that they understand and respect. This perhaps sounds easy enough, but it’s not: understanding the aesthetics of cinema is often not compatible with the nuts and bolts of getting films financed and shown. It’s quite rare to find a festival director and a programming team who are competent to have both kinds of conversations. BIFF has been lucky to be led by Kim Dongho and his successor Lee Yongkwan.

Festivals also need to strike the right balance between the domestic and the foreign, and between crowd-pleasing populism and specialist interests. The days when “cinema” was easy to grasp are long gone, along with Hollywood cinema’s one-time automatic dominance in the world market. “Cinema” now means many things to many audiences. Some viewers want glossy entertainments which give them emotional and experiential kicks, but others prefer more thoughtful and refined films which are more obviously artful. And some are most interested in documentaries, or animation, or experimental films, or even films which cross the boundaries between the movie-theater and the art-gallery. From the very start, BIFF has been sensitive to the differing needs of its many audiences, and has explored all areas of filmmaking with commitment and enthusiasm.

Of course, the obligation to be both generalist and specialist extends to political matters too. I never thought I would agree with film director Park Chanwook about anything, but he was absolutely correct to point out that it was the city council’s attempt to block the screening of the Sewol ferry documentary which made the issue political, not the festival’s initial decision to choose it for the programme. The documentary was one of some 300 films screened by BIFF in 2014, and screening it did not imply that the festival was promoting the film more than other documentaries, or that the festival director and staff endorsed the film’s point of view. It’s very simple: the festival’s job is to present many points of view, some of which will inevitably seem contentious or offensive to some people. That’s how democracies work.

Thinking about the city council’s concerted attacks on Lee Yongkwan, I can’t help being reminded of the last time that selfish and narrow-minded politicians interfered in the running of a Korean film festival. Does anyone else remember the disaster of the Chungmuro Film Festival in Seoul, hijacked by politicians for what they thought was their own interest? That festival died in its infancy, unable to survive the conflicting pulls of politicians who thought that they could use it to promote themselves and their political parties.

If Busan Metropolitan City Council were to succeed in forcing Lee Yongkwan to resign, what would happen next? No doubt some opportunist hack could be persuaded to take on the job of festival director, even if it entails constant grovelling to the city council, but many of the festival staff – including the specialist programmers, for sure – would resign in sympathy with Mr Lee, leaving the shiny new director to build a new team of fellow-opportunists. At the same time, BIFF’s many friends around the world would boycott the festival, probably also orchestrating a campaign of protest against the city council’s political stupidity. Many filmmakers would refuse to supply their films, journalists and critics would stop taking the film programme seriously – and BIFF would soon go the same way as the Chungmuro Festival. As I said, this is “cutting off your nose to spite your face”. Is that really what Korea’s right-wing politicians want? Do they think that these tactics will endear them to the film community at home and abroad? Do they sincerely care at all about Korea’s status as a constitutional democracy?

These considerations bring me to the second big question raised by what’s been happening in Busan. Korean politics changed profoundly in 1993 when the late Kim Youngsam was elected president, and so did Korean society and the Korean economy. Almost everything that we think of as characteristic of modern Korea has developed since 1993, from the global fame of Korean film and television to the country’s ultra-fast broadband network. At the same time, Korea has become a genuinely pluralist society. Women and minority groups have made their voices heard as never before, the lowering of trade barriers has given Korean consumers access to foreign products and culture as never before, and political differences have been debated openly. These are all hallmarks of a modern democracy. They were worth fighting for, and they are worth defending.

Here’s a brief anecdote from my own experience. One of my closest Korean friends studied film-making in London and found himself dissatisfied with the standard of teaching at the school. His graduation film was an attack on the school. It included documentary sequences in which fellow-students discussed the shortcomings of some of their teachers by name. It ended with a fantasy scene in which the protagonist dynamited the school building. The question arose: would the school include this film in its graduate screenings? Yes, it did screen the film. The school’s director told me that some members of his staff had objected, but he felt it was important to give the graduating student his voice. He didn’t run away from the criticism, as a coward would, but instead faced up to it.

I had very little first-hand knowledge of the “dark days” under military governments in Korea (my first visit to the country was in 1988, when the worst was over), but I know from Russia, China and Singapore amongst other countries how authoritarian governments work. They don’t believe in debate and don’t tolerate opposing points of view. Their first instinct is not to meet opposition with counter-arguments but to silence it. When Busan Metropolitan City Council tells BIFF not to screen a documentary that’s critical of the government, it’s a textbook example of an attack on free speech and an impulse to silence opposing voices. Apparently Korea’s right-wing politicians haven’t noticed or understood the changes since 1993. Apparently they are nostalgic for the “dark days” of censorship, of silencing dissenting voices and of strict social control. I’ve always thought that Korea has a very bright future, and I’ve said so in public many times, but the pig-headed political tactics of Busan’s city council mark a step back into the past. It makes no sense to me.

Tony Rayns

Tony Rayns is a London-based film-maker, writer, critic and festival programmer with a long held interest in the films of East Asia. He has been a program consultant to the Busan International Film Festival since its inception.

It’s Time To Stop Ignoring South Korean Abstract Art

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Korean monochrome painting, or tansaekhwa, originated in a deep ambivalence about painting.
By Barry Schwabsky
http://www.thenation.com/article/its-time-to-stop-ignoring-south-korean-abstract-art/

Globalization has been the talk of the art world for years now, but the international perspective is of a shallow sort—a smorgasbord of names shorn of any sense of culture or history. Ask someone to name a Korean artist, for instance, and the answer will likely be Nam June Paik, who was born in Seoul in 1932. But after his university years in Tokyo, Paik lived in West Germany and then the United States from 1956 until his death in 2006. Someone else might mention Lee Ufan, an artist of Paik’s generation who likewise went to Japan to study and now divides his time between there and Paris. And there’s Do-ho Suh, a prominent midcareer installation artist whose work has appeared in many biennials as well as one-person shows across the United States and Europe. But the list might stop there.

In 2009, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston attempted to offer an alternate view, presenting what was billed as “the first major museum exhibition in the United States to focus on contemporary art from South Korea.” The exhibition featured a dozen artists described as representing a generation that has “emerged since the mid-1980s” (though many of them were younger than that implies). The focus on young artists, justified on the grounds that South Korea “has opened up under the influence of globalization” (­to quote from the publisher’s description of the accompanying catalog), suggests that their work’s immediate international context outweighs their cultural background.

There is finally an opportunity to look a little deeper. This fall, New York City gallery-goers are being newly introduced to an older generation of Korean abstract painters, and it’s clear there’s a lot of catching up to do. Through December 23, Galerie Perrotin is presenting the work of Chung Chang-sup (1927–2011), while, also through December 23, Blum & Poe is featuring Yun Hyong-keun (1928–2007). The Tina Kim Gallery recently mounted the second-ever American solo exhibition of Ha Chong-hyun, an artist born in 1935 and still going strong. Chung and Yun had a few US exhibitions in the early 1990s but not since—in Yun’s case, mainly thanks to the support of Donald Judd, who’d met him and admired his work on a visit to Korea. Ha’s first US show took place just a year ago, at Blum & Poe. All three exhibitions are impressive; those of Yun and Ha are enough to convince me that they are major artists who should have been widely exhibited in museums years ago.

I don’t think I’ve seen the international art market swarm this quickly around a genre since the boom in Soviet unofficial art in the late 1980s. Except for Lee Ufan, who has been better known for his association with the Japanese Mono-ha movement, the artists here—all of them associated with the school of monochrome painting known as tansaekhwa—have until now been practically unknown outside Korea and Japan. They were not included in Barbara Rose’s otherwise comprehensive 2004 exhibition “Monochromes: From Malevich to the Present” (at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid), nor are they mentioned in the “revised and augmented” 2006 edition of Denys Riout’s 1996 book La peinture monochrome: Histoire et archéologie d’un genre.

Why are these Korean painters suddenly appearing (or reappearing) on the New York scene? To reply “It’s the market” isn’t really an answer; instead, it’s a way of avoiding the question of how and why the market abruptly became interested in artists whom it had ignored for so long. One attraction is that ready-made label: tansaekhwa (sometimes rendered dansaekhwa). The word means “monochrome painting,” but it’s usually translated as “Korean monochrome painting” to distinguish it within the genre that came into existence in Russia when Malevich painted his white-on-white canvas in 1918 and Rodchenko painted his trio of red, yellow, and blue works in 1921, and which then reemerged in Europe and the United States in the 1950s with Robert Rauschenberg, Piero Manzoni, and Yves Klein. But what exactly is Korean about tansaekhwa has been questioned right from the start. According to the art historian Joan Kee, the most prominent Anglophone scholar of tansaekhwa, the idea that the movement expresses something quintessentially Korean was first proposed by Japanese critics and only subsequently taken up—and then often contested—by Koreans themselves.

The timeline of the American discovery of tansaekhwa begins in 2013, when the University of Minnesota Press published Kee’s thoughtful and solidly documented book Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method. It’s the kind of text that would ordinarily have earned good reviews in academic journals but little wider notice. The following spring, the New York gallery Alexander Gray Associates mounted “Overcoming the Modern: Dansaekhwa—the Korean Monochrome Movement,” organized by the curatorial team of Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath; it seems not to have received much attention. The same can hardly be said of the next American group show, the much larger “From All Sides: Tansaekhwa on Abstraction,” which Kee curated for Blum & Poe in Los Angeles in the fall of 2014. The Los Angeles Times critic David Pagel extolled it as “resplendent”; in Artforum, Kavior Moon noted how the works “pushed the material and conceptual limits of painting, often to visceral effect”; and in The Huffington Post, veteran critic Peter Frank proclaimed the show “truly radical.” (The invaluable selection of primary documents translated in the catalog for “From All Sides” is my source for many of the quotations in this article.)

But it wasn’t only the critics who took notice. The New Yorker recently reported that until 2014, the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by Ha Chong-hyun was $13,303, and that of the eight works by the artist offered between 2007 and 2013, half didn’t sell. Since then, nine of Ha’s works have been auctioned (in Asia, but often to Western buyers) for six figures each. “To be honest, it was not possible to make a living making this kind of work in Korea,” he told The New Yorker’s Natasha Degen and Kibum Kim. “I was so tired and it’s such welcome news.” You’re going to be hearing a lot more about tansaekhwa in the near future, and hopefully the major surviving artists associated with it—along with Ha and Lee, I can mention Park Seo-bo and Chung Sang-hwa—­will reap at least some of the benefits.

* * *

Tansaekhwa deserves the attention of anyone with a genuine interest in painting, in part because it originated in a deep ambivalence about painting. In South Korea, education in painting runs on two separate tracks: “Oriental” (ink) and “Western” (oil). The tansaekhwa artists, born and partly educated in the prewar period of Japanese occupation, may not have been trained under this system, but it’s worth considering their work not so much as a synthesis of these supposedly separate Asian and Euro-American strands, but in opposition to both—as well as in opposition to the very dichotomy between them. Lee speaks of Yun’s works not as paintings but as “unpaintings.” For his part, Chung Chang-sup has explained, “Painting without painting, creating without creating, this is what I will.”

“Creating without creating” means, I take it, giving up a certain artistic control in favor of allowing impersonal processes to occur. This is what happens in a number of works titled Return, made in 1977. In them, Chung mounted hanji paper onto canvas, leaving a border of canvas around the paper (thereby demonstrating that both Korean and Western materials have been employed). Ink has been applied to the paper from its edges, soaking into it in irregular rivulets, so that the painting’s “empty” center—­which isn’t really empty, because the blank paper has a tonality of its own, while its thinness allows the weave of the underlying canvas to show through—is surrounded by a jagged black repoussoir, as if it were made of ripped paper. It looks like light tearing its way through a wall of darkness.

The later works on view are mostly from the series Meditation and dated 1996. They are more like painting without painting than creating without creating—which is to say, they are painting with other than the traditional means, Asian or Western. Neither ink nor paint is employed. Instead, Chung made these works solely using a pulp made from the inner bark of the mulberry tree, which is known as tak. Rather than transforming this substance into the delicate sheets of hanji used for calligraphy, or even the sturdier sheets used in traditional Korean architecture as well as for craft objects, Chung applied the tak pulp to canvas, working it in a quasi-sculptural fashion to create a texturally variegated “impasto” that in each piece frames a central square or squarish zone in which the paper has been pressed completely flat. The edges of the central square are in part very crisply defined, but in other passages may fade almost imperceptibly into the more roughly worked surround, suggesting that the geometrical form is as much a mental construct as a visible one. The colors of the works range from pure white to earthy browns; as Chung himself put it, these tones “are subtly faded and blurred into yellowish tint or bluish gray in the sediment of time.”

The dense matter of the paper forms a kind of wall—most prominently in a 1994 Meditation consisting of a vertical grid of 12 square panels without the impressed central zone found in the 1996 works—but it’s a wall that breathes. “Through the screen of tak paper,” Chung explained, recalling the walls of the house in which he’d grown up, “one can distinctively sense the wind, light and the flow of time outside his or her room, which allowed us to experience both feelings of being inside and outside.” It was clearly his intention to evoke such experiences in his art. The nostalgia they hold for Chung may be imperceptible to a Western viewer—or, for that matter, to a new generation of Koreans who did not grow up with traditional architecture—but the warmth and, to a certain extent, the idealization with which Chung conveys those experiences remains accessible.

* * *

Because of a certain harsh edge, a freedom from idealization, the work of Yun Hyong-keun has to my eye a greater force than Chung’s. Unlike Chung, Yun used materials exclusively from the Western tradition—oil on canvas—though in tension with the Korean history of ink painting. In his mature paintings, he worked with just two colors, ultramarine and burnt umber, though he applied them in so many overlapping washes that in most cases no particular color is discernible. Yun himself spoke of “a concentration of navy and the color of dirt…. I do not tire of this color, and although it looks black, it is a mixture of the colors of dirt and water; it is a bitter color, like that of rancid ink.”

All but two of the 12 paintings on view at Blum & Poe feature a linen ground whose beige or buff tonality gives a distinctive atmosphere. In a 2007 painting that has a whiter and finer cotton, on which the painted form shows up with a sharper edge, the black has a more graphic impact. But on the linen, Yun’s infinitely variable “rancid ink” color seems blacker than black—­deeper, more beguiling, like that immensity in which Giacomo Leopardi once imagined his thought voluptuously drowning.

Blocks of this inky darkness loom up—often just two, sometimes three or four—with unpainted intervals between them, sometimes in the larger portion of the canvas but more often in slivers, as well as above them. The effect is dramatic, at times almost minatory, and the blurring at the fringes of the dark zones makes the force behind this striking effect somehow hard to locate. Likewise, the intersection of the columns of murky paint with the lateral edges of the canvas—and always its bottom one—often has the paradoxical effect of dissolving the edge, of blurring the boundary between painting and wall. Yun once said, “I want to hang my paintings on dirt walls”—that is, walls that might be similar in color to the paintings themselves. His work feeds off a tension between marking and not-marking, between making distinctions and effacing them; but it thrives on the discomfort in this ambiguity—or, rather, this ambivalence.

The two most recent paintings by Ha Chong-hyun in the exhibition at Tina Kim—a kind of mini-retrospective that follows his work from 1972 through this year—might look, at first, to be cousins with Yun’s glowering columns of stygian blue and umber. Ha’s Conjunction 15-214 and Conjunction 15-215, both from 2015, are composed of columns of thick oil paint (white and black, respectively) on brownish hemp, like burlap. But the thickness of the paint, a stark contrast to Yun’s dense layering of evanescent veils, makes all the difference. With Yun’s paintings, it’s hard to tell whether the paint has been applied from the top and brushed down to the bottom edge or vice versa. I’d bet on the former, which would mean that the viewer’s sense of forms rising up was in contradiction to their true genesis, a sort of illusionism. In Ha’s case, no doubt is possible: We can see that the paint has been pushed upward from the bottom. What the painter has actually done and what the paint appears to do are in unison. And in place of Yun’s blurred distinctions, Ha’s paint is clearly set off from the surface (and never intersects the lateral edges, only the bottom).

However, there’s a hidden dimension to these paintings, which might be more evident in some of the others on view. Ha uses coarsely woven hemp not as a support in the traditional sense, but as a sort of membrane: He pushes the paint through it from behind, then manipulates it on the recto. The “conjunction” indicated by the title he’s given to all of his works since the mid-’70s is this meeting of paint and fabric as two separate entities. He’s written of his fascination with how these “two unique substances…came into conflict with each other.” In other paintings, Ha has left intact the evidence of the paint’s having been squeezed through the surface, even as he further worked it in a remarkable variety of ways—although usually in ways that produce, as Kee puts it, “a viewing experience made unstable by competing allegiances to pictorial composition and materiality.”

Unlike Chung’s or Yun’s work, Ha’s maintains no overt allusion to the Korean ink-painting tradition. He uses, sometimes against themselves, materials associated with the West; yet in their parsimony, their atmosphere, their material force, his paintings aren’t so distant from Chung’s or Yun’s. Still, on the evidence of this show, Ha is an artist of greater range than Yun or Chung. Like them, he has chosen for himself a strictly circumscribed paradigm—­emphasized by the fact that all three artists give the same or similar titles to their works once they’ve arrived at their fixed position: Chung’s are Meditation, Yun’s are Umber-Blue or Burnt Umber & Ultramarine or similar, and Ha’s are always Conjunction. But Ha’s paradigm seems more capacious: He allows himself more ways of working his paint and a broader range of tones, though always earthy or somewhere on the gray scale. What might be most surprising to viewers coming to these works with Western monochrome painting in mind is the artists’ determined avoidance of pure or primary colors. To Barnett Newman’s rhetorical question “Who’s afraid of red, yellow, and blue?”, the tansaekhwa painters might well have replied, “We’re not afraid; we just couldn’t care less.” In a fascinating 1977 roundtable discussion between Korean and Japanese artists, “On Color in Contemporary Painting,” the sculptor Shim Moon-seup speaks with disdain for the work he’s encountered by the French Supports/Surfaces group, whose experimental approach to painting one might have thought would be sympathetic to their tansaekhwa contemporaries. Shim understands that “their motive is to treat color like a material object” but finds that despite themselves, they are “immobilized by it,” finally dismissing them as mere “drapers.” By contrast, Lee has praised Yun for evoking “a scene that does not lead one to perceive either color or form in particular.” Park Seobo agrees that “it is not suitable for a color to bring out its distinctiveness in an imageless structural expression,” while Ha seems to choose his paint colors above all to set off that of his burlap, which he happily describes as of “a color that is extremely limited, even monotonous to the point of squelching the imagination.”

Instead of asking why tansaekhwa is suddenly “hot,” it might be better to ask why it took so long for the Western art world to notice it. The answer to that question probably lies in this quest for an area of indiscernibility: The force of this art lies in understatement. In any case, as Ha reflected in 1977, “Being unable to sell or being ignored by collectors is different from being unappreciated. There is an audience as long as someone comes to see the work.” Tansaekhwa painters have had plenty of time to cultivate the strength to persist while being ignored. I hope they’ve also developed the very different strength it takes to persist in the spotlight, because the time when they’ll need it seems to have arrived.

Embeddedness essay

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CONTEXTS AND TRANSFORMATIONS: KOREAN FILM AND VIDEO SINCE 1950

Actors do not behave or decide as atoms outside a social context, nor do they adhere slavishly to a script written for them by the particular intersection of social categories that they happen to occupy. Their attempts at purposive action are instead embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations. – Mark Granovetter, ‘Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness’. The American Journal of Sociology, 1985 p487

The term ‘embeddedness’ is borrowed from ocnomic historian Karl Polanyi who argues in The Great Transformation 1944 that human economy is not autonomous but subordinated to and constrained by institutions such as in politics, religion and social relations. The term is one of the core concepts of economic sociology as such it is salient to this series and our attempts to trace the history of artist moving image practices in Korea where early forms of mass media were employed as a means of social control and artists films with seemingly individual expressions were embedded within these social conditions. So much so that it is very difficult to find personal forms of expression in the medium of film until early 2000. Largely dependent upon film technologies supplied by the US and Japan, the Korean Film Industry has slowly developed from its beginnings during 1950s and the Korean War, through to the introduction of audio-visual education at Ewha Womans University with help from the US Information Service, to early 2000 when filmmaking classes opened in numerous universities and the Korean film industry established its current position as one of the central film and media industries in Asia.

As interest in new filmic languages grew during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of film groups and collectives were established. Amongst the most important of these were Cinepoem coterie (est. 1964), Film 70 (est. 1968), the Small Gauge Film Club (est. 1970), Image Research Group (est. 1972) and Kaidu (est. 1974). Many artists and filmmakers sought to find new modes of expression through utilising newly available 16mm and super 8mm cameras. At the time, only films made by government-recognised production companies could be screened in cinemas, so these collectives instead held their screenings at foreign cultural centres.
Due in part to censorship in Korea at that time, as well as the absence of established networks for presenting experimental film, many of the artists who had begun experimenting with film and had produced pioneering works in the 1960s and early 1970s such as Kim Ku-lim, Lee lk-tae and Han Ok-hi later returned to other art forms. The late Kim Jumsun, who took part in experimental filmmaking workshops at the Goethe Institute during the 1970s, stated that it was very difficult to access information on contemporary western visual art and film during this time. One of the pioneers of video art in Korea, Park Hyun-ki (1942-2000) first came across the work of Nam June Paik, who primarily worked outside of Korea, in the archives of the American Cultural Centre the in 1970s. Throughout this period the European cultural center played a key role as alternative cinema space for screenings, discussions and workshops.

Until the relaxation of censorship at the end of 1980s, the majority of the South Korean population had their access to international mass media strictly controlled. Without personal wealth, or good political connections, it was extremely difficult for Korean artists to become part of international networks, and gain access to contemporary critical theories that would nurture their practice. A figure such as Kwon Joong-woon, who studied in New York during the 1990s, is therefore critical to the development of artists’ moving image practice in Korea. Having discovered media theory during his time in the US, Kwon returned to Korea and went on to lecture at several universities and established the Korean Experimental Film Institute / 실험영화연구소. Kwon’s work examined the history of American avant-garde and looked into the possibility of filmmakers utilising new media technology, as explored in Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema 1970. In 1997 he published New Media Aesthetics and tried to create a form of continuity in the production, screening and archiving of work for artists based in the Korean Experimental Film Institute. Lim Chang-jae and Park Donghyun among others established their practice at this institute are still working in this field.

In the 1990s there were several production-based organisations such as the Underground Creative Group – Pajeok / 지하창작 집단 – 파적 and CP16R, which was connected to Culture School Seoul now Seoul Art Cinema). These groups attempted to find an alternative meaning of cinematic expression, focusing on either ‘independent film’ / 독립 영화 or ‘experimental film’ /실험영화 and issues of production, screening, distribution or funding. Emerging around the same time, they provided a sense that film was beginning to become important in the Korean cultural scene. Despite this up until the late 1990s, political and sociological interest and engagement was always deemed to be more important than personal expression in these alternative filmmaking projects.

During this period, the predominant view was that an alternative formal expression and exploration would detach independent films from the public. This led to a separation of ‘experimental film’ from the sphere of ‘independent film’ in Korea, leading to a number of film festivals no longer including video art and experimental films in their programmes.

Although there were various forms of experimental filmmaking practiced by artists / filmmakers such as Lim Chang-jae and Kim Yoon-tae, it’s a common perception that a significant proportion of experimental film began with the 1st Experimental Film Festival held in 1994 under the title ‘Ecstatic Visions: The Aesthetic of New Media Film’. The festival featured films by Hwang In-tae, Bae Ho-ryong, Lim Chang-jae, Kim Yoon-tae shown alongside work by Kenneth Anger, Robert Breer, Su Friedrich, Doug Hall and Jane Campion. This confirmed for many the suspicion that experimental films made in Korea from the 1990s onwards were ‘western’ in conception, rather than works emerging from a process of self-invention within the specific sociocultural context of Korea. Memory of Surface, Surface on Memory, Lee Jang-wook’s graduation film, became the centre of this debate along with works by Yang Min-su, Koo Donghee, and Park Donghyun. These artists had returned to Korea from prestigious art schools abroad — The Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University.

In the 1990s various events helped to introduce moving image into the context of contemporary art. These exhibitions opened this area of practice to a new generation of artists, from the Whitney Biennial in Seoul at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, 1993 to the – Taejon EXPO (1993), from ‘The City and Moving Image / 도시와 영상’ exhibition at Seoul Museum of Arts in 1998 to the first screening of video art at the Art Sonje Center in November 1998.

By 2000 the film industry, both independent and commercial, had become fully acknowledged as a key component of Korea’s creative economy, and universities began to provide training for people to work in the burgeoning film industry. In 2004 EXiS (International Experimental Film & Video Festival in Seoul was launched with a survey of the history of Korean experimental film. At the same time, Spacecell, the first artist run film lab in Asia, was founded to support the film community, and has been organising handmade filmmaking workshops since 2004.

Several celebrated artists have emerged in the last decade such as Kim Kyung-man who has used the documentary film as a means of political expression, the video and installation artist Byun Jae-kyu explores the subject of memory and place in photography and Park Min-ha who focuses on the problems of materiality and space through the use of special effects borrowed from the mainstream film industry. Other artists / filmmakers such as Park Chan-kyong, Jung Yoon-suk, Im Heung-soon, to name but a few, are all primarily working within the arts yet exploring the potential of documentary film as a way to engage with contemporary politics and to reinterpret Korean history. They have looked at different social issues from Korea’s recent past, such as the Jijon Clan case of the first serial killer that shook Korean society during the mid-1990s, to the development of the Cheonggyecheon area of Seoul, which has come to symbolise the modernisation and industrialisation of post-war Korea. Many prominent Korean artists now see film as their primary artistic medium, from the recent work of Park Chan-kyong, Yeondoo Jung, Koo Donghee and Im Heung-soon to the collaborative practice of Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, who represented the Korea Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015.

Hyun Jin Cho, George Clark and Hangjun Lee, September 2015.

EMBEDDEDNESS: ARTISTS FILMS AND VIDEOS FROM KOREA 1960S TO NOW 18-19 September 2015
Organised in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Centre UK, EXiS and supported by LUX.
Booklet edited by: George Clark with Hang jun Lee and Hyun Jin Cho.

Thanks to: Scott Miller Berry, Judith Bowdler, Ben Cook, Maria Palacios Cruz, Electronic Arts Intermix, EXiS, Independent Film & Video Association in Seoul, Indiestory, Joan Kee, Kabsoo Kim, Yoonha Kim, Korean Film Archive, Sook-Kyung Lee, Lightcone, Andrea Lissoni, LUX, Samantha Manton, Je Yun Moon, Junho Oh, Sangnyang Park, Hanseung Ryu, Seulki Shim, Maria Montero Sierra, Ji Hyun Song & Unseong Yoo.

RELATED EVENT: LUX SALON WITH HANGJUN LEE Monday 21 September, 19.00

Hangjun Lee will discuss experimental film and video practices in Asia from the 1930s to now. Lee will present various key works including pioneering documentary films in 1930s by Liu Na-ou from China as well as introduce artist film lab movements such as Spacecell (South Korea, founded in 20041, Lab Laba-Laba (Indonesia, founded in 2014).

Hangjun Lee is the Program Director of EXiS, independent curator and filmmaker. He programmed Letterist Cinema, film performance and expanded cinema events and retrospective programmes of Ito Takashi, Okuyama Junichi, Michael Snow among others. He initiated Asia Forum 2009 at EXiS, an annual platform for Asian experimental moving images. He curated numerous screening programmes for international venues including Guling Avant-Garde theatre (Taipei), Green Papaya Art Project (Manila), Nanjing independent film festival (Nanjing) and OX warehouse (Macau). Recently he curated the opening commemoration screening programme Cinematic Divergence 2013, live film and improvised music festival Mujanhyang (anechoic) 2014 both for National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul. He performed with many musicians such as Jerome Noetinger (France), Hong Chulki (Korea), Dickson Dee (Hong Kong), Martin Tetreault (Canada), Sandra Tavali (Taiwan), Kracoon (Indonesia) to develop live filmic language as filmmaker. He edited Anthology of Asian Experimental Moving Image 2009 and has written for several film and art publications in Taiwan, China, South Korea.