• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.175-209
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• 2020

This paper examines how the cinematic representation of the Japanese military "comfort women" stimulates 'imagination' in the realm of everyday life and in the memory of the masses, creating a common awareness and affect. The history of the Japanese military "comfort women" was hidden for a long time, and it was not until the 1990s that it entered the field of public recognition. Such a transition can be attributed to the external and internal chronopolitics that made possible the testimony of the victims and the discourse of the "comfort women" issue. It shows the peculiar status of the comfort women history as 'politics of time'. In the same vein, the cinematic representations of the Japanese military "comfort women" can be found in similar chronopolitics. The 'comfort women' films have shown the dual time frame of the continuity and discontinuity of the 'silence'. In Korean film history, the chronotope of the reproduction of "comfort women" can be divided into four phases: 1) the fictional representations of "comfort women" before the 1990s 2) documentaries in the late 1990s as the work of testimony and history writing, 3) melodramatic transformation in the feature films in the 2000s, and 4) the diffusion of media and categories. The purpose of this article is to focus on the first phase and the third phase in which the issue of 'comfort women' is represented in the category of popular fiction films. While the "comfort women" representations before 1990 were strictly adhering to the framework of commercial movies and pursued the sexual exploitation of "comfort women" history, the recent films since the 2000s are experimenting with various attempts in the style of popular imagination. Especially, the emergence of 'comfort women' feature films in the 2000s, such as Spirit's Homecoming, I Can Speak, and Herstory, raise various questions as to whether we are "properly" aware of issues and how to remember and present the "cultural memory" of comfort women. Also, focusing on the cinematic representation strategies of the 2000s "comfort women", this article discusses the popular politics of melodrama, the representation of victims and violence, and the feature of 'comfort women' as meta-memory. As a melodramatic imagination and meta-memory for the historical trauma, the "comfort women" drama shows the historical, political, and aesthetic gateways to which the "comfort women" problem must pass. As we have seen in recent fiction films, the issue of "comfort women" goes beyond transnational relations between Korea and Japan; it demands a postcolonial task to dismantle the old colonial structure and explores a transnational project in which women's movements and human rights movements are linked internationally.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.39
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• pp.457-507
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to explore the formal and content features of the material for the Changgeuk album , which was produced and released in 1971. Changgeuk album was produced and published as a headword for "Changgeuk". However, it differs from the style of Changgeuk which is treated as a stage drama in that the narrative is developed around the commentary and dialogue in the formal aspect and the Pansori is only partially used. The styles of Changgeuk, implemented through gramophone record, radio broadcasts and television broadcasts, varied widely, unlike those of Changgeuk established in the 1930s. Pansori music wasn't the only center, and traditional performers weren't even the main members of the play. The characteristic form of the Changgeuk album is an experiment of Changgeuk that emerged naturally with radio reading and the advent of radio dramas in the 1950s and 1960s. So it is necessary to pay attention to the Changgeuk album in that it shows diverse forms of experiments conducted by Changgeuk in the newly introduced culture and media in the middle and late 20th century As for the contents of the Changgeuk album , the work embraces Lee Jong ik 's novel (1957), but develops the narrative centering on the life of Saint Sa-myung(四溟大師). And it is faithfully portraying the life of a Buddhist monk and the national salvation hero who pursued the original work. This content composition can be understood in the will of singer Lee Yong bae, the soundman who produced the album, and in the flow of historical dramas that summon the historical hero of the old country of the time to the stage. Singer Lee Yong bae reflects on his life in the past when he was full of greed and conceit through his life as a monk of Saint Sa-myung(四溟大師) and is greatly impressed by the personal aspect of Saint Sa-myung(四溟大師), and these emotions encouraged his creative will. Also, the Changgeuk record is meaningful in that it is one of the specific materials that embodies the national hero as a record and a traditional play under the discourse of the people, the nation in the 1970s.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.22
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• pp.223-252
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• 2011

If we remember that modern world history has built systems of meaning through the concepts "difference," "different," and "other-ness" and has constructed new identity based on opposing hierarchy, music anthropology which tried to build "difference" between the west and the non-west was thoroughly west -centered, in the sense that it has perceived the heterogeneous symbolic systems among nations, as well as the barrier between the two cultures. On the other hand, world music, which has emerged as the most attractive field in culture industry and concert-art-market by crossing over global capitals, markets, and barriers, can be considered the most post-modernist and glocal. However, it is interesting to note that world music, which has been described as post-modern and glocal, has "difference" and "different" in its basis, just like the precepts for modern music anthropology (Meintjes 1990; Guilbault 1993; Taylor 1997; Frith 2000; Feld 1988). Furthermore, one can understand that the "different" and "difference," generally termed as being "non-western," are fundamentally based on ethnic or national imagination. In this sense it is interesting and important to examine such ethnic imagination in the "non-western ethnic musics" in music anthropology and in world music. Notwithstanding the attention paid and research made by music anthropologists, they have failed to elevate the "non-western ethnic musics" to become universally communicative, and these ethnic musics were reborn as "global" and "world music," through the process of "acculturation," "derivation," and "hybridization," with the west as major site for production and consumption. Meanwhile, the audience for world music, which did not exist before the birth of world music as a term, was now born as world music emerged. They are global populace who consume the musical "difference" and "imagined ethnicity," who through their consumption are constructing new social meanings including ethnicity, race, nation, and class identity. This study, by examining current discourse, performance, and process for the world music through media and field studies and scholarly debates, attempts to understand the production and consumption of "imagined ethnicity." This will also shed light on how "ethnicity" is created and consumed, and how this is involved in the process of world music.