Travel and Performance in Late Chosŏn Korea

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

This panel examines the performances of various kinds that Korean scholar officials experienced while traveling in Korea, China, and Japan in the eighteenth century. The scholar officials traveling as envoys were officially and unofficially presented with performances of entertainment by government courtesans and professional entertainers in both Korea and abroad. The enjoyment of performance, in this sense, constituted the privileges of scholar officials who possessed sufficient political, social, and cultural capital to support their travels. Their travel accounts, however, reveal that the performances they watched simultaneously offered a field of cultural production in which the dominant political and cultural values were reconsidered and destabilized.

Kim Dongjun examines the entertainment culture created and appreciated within particular groups of literati to explore the change in cultural values in the prosperous urban setting of Seoul. Hyun Suk Park examines courtesan performance presented to Korean envoys in Pyongan Province. She focuses on the martial entertainment, which entailed cross-dressing by courtesans, to argue that courtesan performance in this case contained code-breaking elements undermining the dominant hierarchies of gender and social status. Lee Changsook examines the records of Chinese theatrical performances viewed by Korean envoys visiting Qing China, arguing that their increased interest in the performances reflected a change in their political perspectives on the legitimacy of Qing China. Lastly, Kang Hyesun examines the performances presented by Korean professional entertainers to Korean envoys traveling to Japan and to Japanese officials, focusing on the cultural interactions instigated at the sites of performance.

Area of Study

• Northeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Hyun Suk Park, University of California, Berkeley

Chair

• Moonkyong Kim, Kyoto University

Individual Presentations

• Excursion Destinations and Literati Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Seoul - Dongjun Kim, Ewha Womans University

• Courtesans in Military Uniforms : Chosŏn Korean Courtesan Performance and Diplomatic Missions to Qing China - Hyun Suk Park, University of California, Berkeley

• Chosŏn Korean Envoys and Cultural Performances in Qing China - Changsook Lee, Seoul National University

• Performances by Professional Entertainers for Envoys of Chosŏn Korea Traveling to Tokugawa Japan - Hyesun Kang, Sungshin University

Discussants

• Jiwon Shin, Arizona State University

• Sookja Cho, Arizona State University