Tempo Doeloe: Wieteke van Dort and the Performance of Colonial Nostalgia in the Indies Diaspora

Jeffrey Gan 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2021 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.14 No.2

Now dispersed over several continents, Indos trace their common heritage to the racial mixing produced by the Dutch colonization of the Indonesian Archipelago. One of the major themes evident in postcolonial, transnational Indo culture is a performed nostalgia for tempo doeloe: the landscapes, social relationships, sounds and flavors of the zenith of the Dutch East Indies shortly before the Japanese occupation and nationalist revolution. Taking a recording of Indo comedian Wieteke van Dort’s performance of “Arm Den Haag (Kassian)” and its subsequent virtual remediations as a guide, I propose a rubric for defining tempo doeloe within a diasporic context. I assert that tempo doeloe is a quality that escapes categorization within extant Anglophonic literature and, citing KUNCI Study Forum & Collective, I propose that tempo doeloe is best understood as a rasa; a flavor, a feeling, and mode of relationality which is developed and strengthened through practice—a theorization which holds important somatic implications for a diasporic audience.

“The Truth Shall Not Sink”: Korean Documentary Film and the Fall of Park Geun-hye

성경숙 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2018 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.11 No.2

From their earliest beginnings during the years of the Korean War, Korean independent documentaries have attempted the bold task of illuminating, analysing, and defining the public issues that relate to social groups excluded or overlooked by official power rather than attempting to reflect on private anxieties or concerns. In its early history, however, it had to contend with obscurity and a severe lack of funds. Following the renaissance of Korean film production in the late 1990s, the Korean documentary has taken on a newly significant status. After an extended introduction to the history of this important genre, this paper will deal with the controversy surrounding the screening of the documentary The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol at the Busan International Film Festival. It will examine the way in which the major issues raised by this documentary became entwined in the growing scandal and eventual public disgrace of the first female president of the Korean republic, Park Geun-hye.

Reality Effects for a Dangerous Age: Projecting North Korean Youth on the International Screen

Douglas Gabriel 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2020 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.13 No.2

In an effort to reshape its international reputation, North Korea has in recent years sought to market abroad a run of documentaries and dramas featuring students and children. This essay explores the ways in which North Korean and international commentators have argued that the films in question reflect one or another reality. For the North Korean commentators, the works encapsulate life in the sŏn’gun or “military- first” era instituted by Kim Jong-il in the late 1990s. For the international commentators, they provide a platform on which the North Korean youth reveal themselves as not wholly supportive of the system under which they are made to live. While the films have in each case been pressed into the service of an operative politics of truth, attention to their profound ambiguity unsettles the assumption that the reality of life in North Korea can invariably be reduced to a dichotomy between the suppressed citizenry and the totalitarian state.

The Changing Role of Cultural Studies in South Korea

이기형,황경아 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2018 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.11 No.2

In this article, we chart the main characteristics and key problematicsin youth studies and cultural studies in contemporary South Korea. Inparticular, we delve into the radically altered conditions of youth underneo-liberal rule in order to grasp the pressing youth question fromseveral inter-connected and strategic standpoints. In doing so, this workendeavors to present some crucial concepts and key discursive strategiesthat can help reformulate youth and cultural studies as viable forms ofsocial intervention.

Hallyu across the Asian Continent: Building New Silk Roads through Popular Culture

Nissim Otmazgin 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2023 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.16 No.1

Research on the global diffusion of South Korean popular culture, or Hallyu, is generally characterized by a strong focus on the consumption and practice of Hallyu in different parts of the world and its discursive and cultural meaning. Very few studies, however, have examined the possible geopolitical consequences of the massive transfer of Hallyu- related commodities and practices. Focusing on the circulation of Hallyu in the Middle East, this paper analyzes the mechanisms for cultural spread and its intended and unintended consequences, with particular emphasis on the role of fans and fandom in this process. This paper suggests that the transnational circulation of Hallyu has an impact not only on the institutional aspect of transnational relationships, e.g., the creation of transnational cultural markets and the consequential collaboration between all pertinent parties involved in this process (companies, agents, promoters, distributors, retailers, fans, and others) but also on the dissemination of lifestyle commonalities and concepts, which are based on the experience of consuming the same cultural products by different people in different countries.

Review of Steve Choe, Sovereign Violence: Ethics and South Korean Cinema in the New Millennium (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016)

김호중 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2022 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.15 No.2

(Intimating) Intimacy and Scandal in Singles Inferno: Tracing the Tension between Global Formats and Cultural Norms in Korean Reality Dating Programs

Faye Mercier 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2023 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.16 No.1

“This does not feel like a Korean dating show!” Host Hong Jin-Kyung’s introduction to Netflix’s newest Korean reality series, Singles Inferno [솔로지옥] (2021), takes care to single out the show’s “foreign” feel. This “foreignness” stems in part from the show’s provocative premise, placing several attractive singles on a deserted island where they will battle it out in a competition for romance. Echoing popular global reality formats from Love Island to The Bachelor in Paradise, the supposed “foreignness” of Singles Inferno evokes not only popular Western reality television conventions but also emphasizes the sexual and scandalous content for which these series are famed. And yet, despite these sensationalistic hints that the show will be unlike any other Korean reality series to date, Singles Inferno remains a largely conservative and uncontroversial production, where intimacy is intimated but never realized. This paper examines the seemingly contradictory endeavor of the series in seeking to deliver the excitement, drama, and scandal associated with global reality dating series while preserving the traditional morals and conservative norms that continue to define Korean television production. While the show itself manages this balancing act through editing and panel commentary, I will also make the case that the attempt to reconcile moral conservatism and neoliberal competition causes new forms of scandal to arise. These tensions surrounding the process of localization also point to larger discussions around the power dynamics at work within a media context defined increasingly by the use of content as a platform.

Put Yourself in White Shoes: Race and Translation in a Korean Production of Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven

나은하 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2021 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.14 No.2

This essay examines the 2017 Korean production of Young Jean Lee’s Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (Yongbiŏch’ŏn’ga [용비어천가]) as a case study to consider the construction of racialized spectatorship. While the production revealed the conundrums of staging Lee’s multicultural and multiracial text, the aesthetic failure allows us to rethink the construction of racialized spectatorship in modern and contemporary Korean theater. Re-enacted by Korean actors for Korean audiences, Yongbiŏch’ŏn’ga inevitably created ruptures between the original text and its translation. Such ruptures, which unveil the differences between the original and its translation, help us to rethink the prevalent notion of translation as seamless and invisible. I argue that the production called for a specific kind of racialized performance on the part of the audience— namely, putting themselves in the shoes of white liberal audiences to better understand the play’s original intention, and thus temporarily withholding their uneasy feelings of racial tension. This collective gesture in theater for a “universal” understanding of the play calls attention to existing processes in the Korean theater in which spectatorship has been covertly constructed in white terms, where audiences, over time, have been disciplined into “raced subjects.”

Minoritization: Why This Is an Issue

Sowon S Park 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2021 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.14 No.2

The advent of a global literary market has brought the flourishing field of world literature in its wake. But is world literature really as inclusive and diverse as it is now fashionable to say it is? This paper asks whether we have good reason to believe that theories of world literature recognize the “minor” in rethinking the universal—or whether some actually reinforce structural conditions that made certain literatures “minor” in the first place. It identifies the script as a key site of minoritization and discusses the way in which Anglo-centric translation practices tyrannize “minors” into being. By attending to the problems of minoritization, this paper attempts to generate a new dynamic for thinking about literatures of the world.

Fending Off Darkness, Uplifting National Cinema: Korean Film Censorship and The Stray Bullet

Hye Seung Chung 연세대학교 영어영문학과 BK21 Plus 사업단 2023 Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context Vol.16 No.1

Marshalling archival evidence of state censorship documents, this paper challenges the established historical narrative that construes Yu Hyǒn-mok’s The Stray Bullet [Obalt’an] (1961) as being a victim of anti- communist paranoia under Park Chung Hee’s military dictatorship. The author argues that the film’s two-year ban (1961–63) occurred primarily because of its tonal incompatibility with the new government’s cultural policy of cheerful national uplift. During the Park era, the nation- state aimed to foster a particular mode of affirmative emotions while discouraging negative feelings through the affective monitoring of national cinema. By comparing contrasting overseas reception of Yu’s uncompromisingly dark social problem film and Kang Tae-jin’s more hopeful family drama The Coachman [Mabu] (1961), the paper also demonstrates the universal appeal of uplift cinema advocated by the state.