Jockeying for Tradition The Checkered History of Korean .docx

Jockeying for Tradition: The Checkered History of Korean
Ch'anggŭk Opera
Author(s): Andrew P. Killick
Source: Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 2003),
pp. 43-70
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1124052
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Jockeying for Tradition:
The Checkered History of
Korean Ch'angguk Opera
Andrew P. Killick
The perception that Korea does not have a traditional
theatreform comparable to those
of other Asian countries has been widely accepted by Koreans
as well as international
observers. The last hundred years have seen a sustained effort
to fill this gap with a genre
called ch'angguk-a type of opera using the singing style, and
often the actual reper-
toire, of the older musical storytelling form p'ansori. But
admission to the hallowed
ranks of the traditional has not come easily, and ch'anggfik still
awaits the marks of
institutional recognition bestowed on p'ansori and other
designated "cultural assets."
This article traces the complex and unfinished history of
ch'anggfik's efforts to position
itself relative to the "traditional" against the backdrop of
Korea's turbulent transition
from Confucian dynastic rule through colonization, partition,
and nation building.
In the process, we see how a genre that seeks to associate itself
with tradition has had
to address issues of historical truth, modernity, nationalism,
gender, and the colonial
encounter.
Andrew Killick is lecturer in ethnomusicology at the University

of Sheffield, U.K.,
and past president of the Association for Korean Music
Research. He received his Ph.D.
in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington in 1998
and served as associ-
ate editor and contributing author to the East Asia volume of
the Garland Encyclo-
pedia of World Music (2002). His research interest in musical
theatre extends from
Korean opera to Broadway and Hollywood.
Given the enormous amount of attention, scholarly and other-
wise, that the theatrical traditions of Asia have attracted both at
home
and abroad, one might not expect to find a whole country
whose main
form of indigenous professional indoor theatre remains
virtually
unknown outside its borders and largely neglected even within
them.
Yet such a country is Korea, long regarded as a "land without
theatre"
by domestic and international observers alike. William Elliott
Griffis's
Asian TheatreJournal, vol. 20, no. 1 (Spring 2003). ? 2003 by
University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved.
2018 15:19:54 UTC
Killick

remark that "the theatre, proper, does not seem to exist in
Corea"
(Griffis 1907, 291) was echoed almost a century later in a
program note
by director Yi Chinsun: "Our country originally had no theatre
and no
stage. As a result, it could not have its own dramatic form.... It
is this
that we are now trying to create for the first time."1 From the
frequency
with which such statements are encountered, one might be
forgiven
for supposing that theatre was unknown to Korea before the
Western
influences of the twentieth century-and that a distinctively
Korean
style of theatre was left for modern directors like Yi Chinsun to
create,
having no basis in traditional performing arts. But in fact the
effort to
develop such a style within the setting of the modern theatre
has been
marked throughout its hundred-year history by constant
maneuvering
for an advantageous position relative to the traditional-by, if
you will,
jockeying for tradition.
Moreover, we must be careful to distinguish "theatre" from "the
theatre" or "theatres." While it is true that the commercial
indoor the-
atre with separate stage and auditorium (Griffis's "theatre
proper")
came to the peninsula only with the dawn of the twentieth

century,
Korea, like the rest of the world, had always had performing
arts that
were "theatrical" or "dramatic" insofar as they involved acting
and the
depiction of fictional characters and events. Ever since these
traditional
art forms were brought into the type of performance space that
the
world calls a "theatre," Koreans have been striving to create an
indige-
nous, "traditional" theatre form to show the world as a home-
grown
equivalent of China's jingju ("Peking opera") or Japan's kabuki.
The most likely candidate to fill this role is ch'anggik, a type
of
opera that began to develop when the musical storytelling
tradition of
p'ansori was brought into the new public theatres in the early
1900s.
Borrowing a phrase from Hobsbawm and Ranger's much-cited
book
(1983), I have elsewhere described this process as the
"invention of
traditional Korean opera" (Killick 1998a). But while
Hobsbawm and
Ranger's "invented traditions" are generally accepted as
"traditional"
within a few years (1983, 1), ch'angguk is still struggling for
recognition
as "traditional Korean opera" after nearly a century. Its
unresolved
process of tradition formation opens a fascinating window, not
just on
Korean theatre history, but on the broad social and political

issues that
surround it: issues of nation, gender, tradition, modernity, and
the
colonial encounter.
I have dealt with specific aspects of ch'angguk in greater depth
elsewhere (Killick 1998b; 2001a; 2001b; 2002b; forthcoming).
My aim
here is to provide the best general introduction available in
English
(against thin enough competition, to be sure) to this little-
known
genre and its somewhat checkered history.2 This history
extends from
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CH ANGGUK OPERA
the period of Korea's forcible incorporation into the modern
interna-
tional world order-through its colonization byJapan-to
liberation,
partition, and the growth of two hostile and ideologically
divergent
nation-states. (Since ch'angguk did not in the long run survive
in the
Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, however, my
com-
ments on the period since partition refer only to the Republic

of
[South] Korea.) It is a history of intersecting and sometimes
conflict-
ing interests that continue to be played out in ch'anggik and in
the con-
testing discourses around it-including contestation over that
history
itself. There has been a great deal at stake in the invention, and
the
continual reinvention, of traditional Korean opera.
Origin Myths
Perhaps the first question to ask is why Korea at the dawn of
the
twentieth century lacked a theatrical tradition to compare with
those
of China or Japan. The most convincing explanation is
probably that
Korea had never developed the kind of substantial moneyed
merchant
class that supported professional indoor theatre in neighboring
coun-
tries (Pihl 1994, 21). It did, however, have certain amateur or
outdoor
entertainments of a broadly theatrical nature, such as masked
dance-
dramas (t'alch'um), puppet plays (kkoktu kaksi), and the
"motley crew" of
stock characters (chapsaek) who performed as a sideshow with
farmers'
percussion bands (p'ungmulp'ae or nongaktan).3
Korea also had an elaborate form of musical storytelling, p'an-
sori, that today holds an honored place among South Korea's
officially

designated Intangible Cultural Assets (muhy6ng munhwajae).
P'ansori may
be familiar to some Western readers through Im Kw6nt'aek's
film Chun-
hyang (2000), now available on video with English subtitles
(New Yorker
Video, ASIN: B0000505K6), in which a dramatization of a
traditional
p'ansori story is framed with excerpts from the original pansori
narrative
sung by the great Cho Sanghy6n. In p'ansori a single vocalist,
originally
a male but now more often a female, delivers an entire story, or
more
commonly an episode from one, taking on the roles of the
various char-
acters in turn and also acting as a third-person narrator.4
P'ansori per-
formance is said to involve three distinct techniques: singing
(ch'ang)
with a distinctive husky and emotionally intense vocal timbre;
stylized
speech (aniri); and mimetic or expressive movement (pallim or
norum-
sae). The music of p'ansori is organized both by melodic modes
(cho)
and by rhythmic cycles (changdan), the latter outlined by an
accompa-
nist who strikes both the head and the wooden body of the
small bar-
rel drum (puk). The drummer also gives shouts of
encouragement and
appreciation called ch'uimsae, helps establish rapport with the
audience,
and may be addressed as if he were one of the characters in a
scene,

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Killick
though he (drummers are invariably male) does not himself act
in the
role of a character.
When theatres came to Korea, all of these resources, as well as
a
small repertoire ofp'ansori stories and much of their actual
words and
music, became part of a new theatrical genre that gradually
absorbed
imported concepts of acting, costumes, and stage scenery
(Color Plate
1). Eventually-with the addition of an accompanying orchestra,
a
chorus of extras, other kinds of music besides p'ansori, various
styles of
dance, and the technical capabilities of the modern theatre-the
genre
would approach the proportions of grand opera. This type of
opera
with p'ansori-style singing has gone by various names but is
now gener-
ally known as ch'anggik, literally meaning "sung drama" and
frequently
glossed in English-language publicity materials as "traditional

Korean
opera."
The historical origins of this transformation from pansori into
ch'anggik remain a subject of debate, though it has been
established at
least to my satisfaction that the most widely believed story is a
fabrica-
tion.5 The story is traceable to what was for two decades the
only pub-
lished book on ch'angguk, Pak Hwang's Ch'anggiksa yon'gu
(Study of the
History of Ch'angguk, 1976), which quotes veteran pansori
singer Yi
Tongbaek (1866-1947) as having recollected:
The Chinese [community in Seoul] had an opera house where
Chi-
nese singing actors performed operas every day.... In addition
to Chi-
nese, many Koreans also attended.... Korean singers who
happened
to be in Seoul at the time would visit out of interest and
curiosity ...
and the master singer Kang Yonghwan would attend the theatre
when-
ever he had a chance, practically making it his home. Kang
Yonghwan
developed the p'ansori "Song of Ch'unhyang" into a ch'angguk
on the
model of these Chinese operas. [Pak Hwang 1976, 17;
translation
abridged from Pihl 1994, 45-46]
Pak Hwang (1976) surmises that this production took place in
the

autumn of 1903 at the W6n'gaksa, Korea's first purpose-built
theatre,
which had opened the previous year (pp. 21-23). He goes on to
recount
that the W6n'gaksa, as a venue for performing arts expressing
the
Korean national spirit, was closed down by the Japanese
shortly after
they established a protectorate over Korea in 1905. The
performers of
this early ch'anggik, he states, then formed touring companies
to seek
their fortunes in the provinces, but even these wandering
troupes were
dispersed in 1910 when Korea was annexed by Japan (pp. 45-
67).
Although Pak Hwang describes a fair amount of ch'angguk
activity dur-
ing the first two decades of the colonial period (pp. 67-84),
most
scholars (such as Pihl 1994, 50) assumed that all ch'angguk
disappeared
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CH'ANGGUK OPERA
from sight until the mid-1930s, when there was a large-scale
revival. The
consensus is that the nascent theatrical genre, created by

p'ansori sing-
ers on the model of Chinese opera, was nipped in the bud
byJapanese
imperialism.
Since Pak Hwang's book was written, however, meticulous
research into contemporary newspaper reports and other
primary
sources has yielded little support for his account. (See, for
example,
Paek Hy6nmi 1997, 29-90.) No definitive record has been
found of a
Chinese theatre in Seoul, nor of a visit by a Chinese opera
troupe,
before the first recorded ch'angg,ik productions. The earliest
unambigu-
ous references to ch'angguk describe performances at the
W6n'gaksa
theatre in 1908, some five years after the Song of Ch'unhyang
is said to
have been dramatized (and after the ch'angguk performers are
said to
have left for the provinces following the closing of the theatre).
More-
over, it appears that the supposed founder of ch'anggik, Kang
Yong-
hwan, died in 1900 before the W6n'gaksa was built (Paek
Hyesuk 1992,
77-79). And yet Pak Hwang's story remains unquestioned
except
among a handful of scholars.
While the documentary record is too thin to admit of any final
and authoritative account of ch'anggiik's origins and early
history, the
picture that emerges from the primary sources is one

ofJapanese and
American influences rather than Chinese. Although there is no
record
of a Chinese theatre in Seoul before the emergence of
ch'angguik, we do
know that the American-owned Seoul Electric Company, which
opened
a streetcar line in Seoul around 1900, also operated a theatre of
sorts
at its generating station near the East Gate, where silent movies
were
shown as well as live performances (Yi Kyu-tae 1970, 222). It
was to this
theatre that American diplomat William Franklin Sands brought
a per-
formance troupe he had observed somewhere in the Korean
country-
side, which presented a dramatization of the popular story of
Ch'un-
hyang in a form that may have anticipated some aspects of
ch'angguk
(Sands 1987, 179-181). We also know that several Japanese
theatres
were opened in Seoul after Korea became a Japanese
protectorate in
1905 and that Korean students had been studying inJapan and
witness-
ing the "new school" (shinpa) plays that were popular there at
the time
(Paek Hyonmi 1997, 64-69). It appears to have been one of
these stu-
dents, Yi Injik, who first brought a group ofp'ansori singers
together to
perform a drama that we would now recognize as ch'anggik. Yi
Injik's
role is well authenticated in contemporary newspaper accounts,

but
p'ansori singer Kang Yonghwan is not mentioned at all.6
Why, then, has a story that does not square with the sources
come to be so widely believed? The answer, I suggest, lies in
precon-
ceptions concerning the colonial relationship with Japan and
the ear-
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Killick
lier tributary relationship with China. Koreans generally
acknowledge
China as the source of much Korean "high culture," while
theJapanese
colonization of 1910-1945 continues to be blamed for many of
the
country's contemporary ills. Pak Hwang's story may not fit
comfortably
with the documentary record, but it fits extremely comfortably
with
the received idea that China has contributed positively to
Korean cul-
ture while Japanese imperialism merely uprooted and
suppressed any
Korean aspiration toward progress. The idea of a
productiveJapanese
influence has been virtually unthinkable within this view of

history.
Yi Tongbaek's testimony derives from interviews conducted in
the late colonial and early postliberation years, more than three
decades
after the time to which he referred. Even if he was aware of Yi
Injik's
role and motives and remembered the circumstances accurately,
he
would have had every reason to downplay anyJapanese
connections.
The colonial regime became increasingly harsh and demanding
during
its last ten years as Japan stepped up its military program in
various
parts of Asia, and the colonists must have been more unpopular
than
ever in Korea. And after liberation, to tell the story I have told
would
have been to lay the ch'angguk performers open to the charge
of collab-
orationism-a charge that some of them did, in fact, have to face
(Suh
Yon-Ho 1994, 99). An influence from China was much more
acceptable,
for China had been recognized for centuries as the legitimate
source of
a civilization that Korea was proud to share-and China had
been an
enemy ofJapan in the recent war. The accepted story thus
emerges as
an origin myth that confers legitimacy on the genre.
One of the archetypes of postcolonial consciousness is repre-
sented by the protagonist of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's
Children,

Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment of India's
independence, to
an Indian mother and a British father. The baby Saleem is
switched at
birth with a child of purely Indian parents who raise him in the
belief
that he is their own son. In telling the story, the adult Saleem
com-
ments: "My inheritance includes this gift, the gift of inventing
new par-
ents for myself whenever necessary" (Rushdie 1980, 125).
Ch'anggtik, too, seems to have invented new parents for itself
in
response to the postcolonial predicament. The newly liberated
nation
needed to assert its right to political independence through
symbols
that would express its cultural independence from its former
colonists.
One such symbol might be the possession of a traditional
musical the-
atre form that could be held up as the equal of, though distinct
from,
kabuki or no. But when such symbols are themselves of
colonial origin,
their disreputable past is liable to be cloaked in a more
attractive origin
myth.
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CH'ANGGLK OPERA
Serving the Great
By itself, the case of ch'anggik might suggest that the creation
of
such origin myths is simply a reaction to the colonial
experience-a
cover-up operation to hide the skeleton of a colonial origin in
the
closet of a genre's forgotten past. But a couple of parallel
examples will
show that similarly implausible claims of continuity with
venerated Chi-
nese sources have been part of the discourse on Korean
performing
arts since long before the colonial period. Intangible Cultural
Asset 1,
for instance, is the aak: Confucian ceremonial music and dance
that
originated with two huge gifts of instruments from Song-
dynasty China
in 1114 and 1116. The prevailing Korean view of aak was well
expressed
in 1973 by S6ng Ky6ng-rin, who made the same claim for aak
thatJapa-
nese writers have made for the distantly related genre gagaku:
[Aak] probably represents the most ancient tradition alive in
the Ori-
ent. It is only in Korea that the tradition has been maintained
con-
tinuously since the introduction of the music from China in the
twelfth century, and it is this music alone of all the music

received
from China which has not been transformed totally beyond
recogni-
tion at the hands of Korean musicians and has been preserved,
pre-
sumably, in essentially unaltered form. [S6ng Ky6ng-rin 1973,
142]
But as Robert Provine (1980) has shown, the idea that this
music has
been "preserved ... in essentially unaltered form" is wishful
thinking at
best. The tradition of aak was anything but continuous: almost
all the
instruments of the original gift were destroyed when the
Korean capi-
tal was sacked in the Red Turban invasion of 1361, and the
subsequent
fifteenth-century Korean effort to "restore" the ancient
Confucian tra-
dition resulted in what was essentially the creation of a new
Korean
genre. Since then, however, aak has been faithfully preserved-
pre-
cisely because it was believed to represent an older Chinese
practice.
Provine concludes that while "Koreans have for centuries con-
sidered a-ak to be Chinese in origin, style, and spirit," in
reality "Korean
a-ak... is no more Chinese than seventeenth-century opera is
Greek
or all piano music is Italian" (p. 23). He adds that his findings
might
"not be welcomed by those who consider Korea a cultural

dependency
of China and who like to think that it is authentic Chinese ya-
yiieh which
now survives in Korea" (ibid.). But as late as the 1970s, when
both Song
Ky6ng-rin's article on aak and Pak Hwang's book on ch'angguk
were
published, to claim a Chinese origin for something was to
enhance its
image in Korean eyes.
This attitude clearly reflects the traditional Korean deference
to
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Killick
the Middle Kingdom, a principle known as sadae ("serving the
great")
or, more pejoratively, sadae-juii (sometimes translated as
"flunkeyism").
Hwang Byung-ki (2002) uses the latter term in a paper that
traces the
Korean habit of claiming Chinese origins back at least to the
time of
the original gift of aak instruments. Hwang reexamines an
account of
the origins of the Korean zithers kayagim and komun'go from
the oldest

extant Korean source on music, Kim Pusik's History of the
Three Kingdoms.
Dated to 1145, this work cites a still earlier but no longer
extant vol-
ume, the Silla kogi (Old Record of the Silla Kingdom), which
is said to
have stated that the komun'go was modeled on the Chinese qin
(Song
Bang-song 1980, 26). But as Hwang points out, the two
instruments
resemble each other only in the most superficial way. While
both are
of the "long zither" type, the komun'go has raised frets,
movable bridges,
and a pencil-like plectrum, none of which is found on the qin.
Similar
raised frets are, however, found on the ja-khe of Thailand
(Miller 1998,
239) and the mijaiun of Myanmar (Burma; Becker and Garfias
2001,
571-572), which are much more likely relatives according to
organo-
logical evidence.7
Intriguingly, Hwang suggests that Kim Pusik associated the
komungo with the qin because of its function rather than its
form: both
instruments were vehicles of self-cultivation for the literati.
The logic is
the same as that of Robert Van Gulik in his celebrated book on
the qin,
The Lore of the Chinese Lute (Van Gulik 1969, ix), where he
chooses to
translate qin as "lute," though aware that it is technically a
zither,

because of his view that the qin held a position in traditional
Chinese
culture equivalent to that held by the lute in Renaissance
Europe. Kim
Pusik's objective, similarly, was perhaps to show that Korea
had an
instrument equivalent to the qin, revered as a symbol of
cultivation and
refinement among the ruling class.
Here again we find a Chinese antecedent invoked to legitimize
a Korean cultural product, and the origin myth of ch'anggik
begins to
reveal itself as just one instance of a deeply rooted Korean
discursive
practice. In placing the origins of ch'angguk in a more proper
context
than the origin myth provides, we will need to range beyond
the Korean
peninsula to the Asian continent and its broad history of
encounters
between indigenous performing arts and the encroachments of
colo-
nialism.
The Pan-Asian Context
Theatre forms in many ways analogous to ch'angguk were
taking
shape under parallel circumstances all over Asia in the late
nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Such dramas formed the subject
of a
series of panels in the conference "Audiences, Patrons, and
Performers

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CH'ANGGUK OPERA
in the Performing Arts of Asia" at Leiden University, the
Netherlands,
in August 2000. In the call for proposals, the panel convener,
Hanne de
Bruin, suggested the term "hybrid-popular theatres" as a name
for these
novel forms of drama that arose in various parts of South and
South-
east Asia as a result of "direct and indirect contacts between
indigenous
expressive genres and Western, melodramatic performance
conven-
tions and proscenium stage techniques, which were 'imported'
into Asia
during colonial times."8 She further noted: "The emergence and
rise
to popularity of the hybrid-popular theatres appear to have
been stim-
ulated by the demand among local audiences for 'novelty.'...
For their
revenues, the hybrid-popular theatres depended on the new
convention
of ticket sales and on the exploitation of a newly emerging
'perfor-
mance market.' Their grounding in a commercial base
distinguished

them from earlier theatres, which depended on community or
royal
patronage."
It was immediately clear to me that according to this definition,
Korean ch'angguik would be a good example of "hybrid-
popular theatre."
I also noticed that Northeast Asia had not been mentioned-no
doubt
because the region was not extensively colonized by European
powers
and had its own well-established theatrical traditions long
before West-
ern-style drama came on the scene. But Korea was the
exception: it had
never developed its own forms of commercial indoor theatre
like those
of China and Japan, and it did undergo colonization, not by a
Euro-
pean power, but by a highly westernized Japan. It was largely
through
the increasingJapanese presence in the years preceding
annexation in
1910 that Korea came to develop a form of drama closely
matching de
Bruin's description of hybrid-popular theatre. Though this art
form
arose without the direct influence of the broad hybrid-popular
theatre
movement in South and Southeast Asia, much less of Western
theatre
itself, it reproduced the defining characteristics of that
movement in a
separate but parallel development.

In the most general terms, all parts of Asia had some form of
drama before coming under the influence of the West. Except
in China
and Japan, however, these dramas were not performed in public
the-
atres but in the private courts of the elite or the open communal
spaces
of the folk, often as part of a religious festival. Typically,
mythical sto-
ries of supernatural beings were conveyed through song, dance,
and
mime, and everything was stylized and exaggerated. What
distinguishes
hybrid-popular theatre is that elements of these local narrative
and dra-
matic traditions are brought together with conventions deriving
from
Western theatre: performances are given in an enclosed space
open to
all those, and only those, who will pay the price of admission;
the sub-
ject matter is more human; and the presentation is more
realistic.
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Killick
The first Asians to perform theatre of this type appear to have

been members of the Parsi community in Bombay around 1850.
Many
Parsis had become wealthy by trading with the British East
India Com-
pany and were eager to send their children to the recently
opened
Elphinstone College, where British-style amateur theatricals
became
fashionable among students. From these emerged professional
Parsi
theatre troupes that enlivened the spoken dramas with songs
and spec-
tacle to appeal to a diverse audience and help them cross
linguistic bar-
riers when they began to tour widely in India and abroad in the
1870s
(Hansen 1992, 79-85; 2002).
By the end of the century, traveling Parsi troupes had
performed
in Singapore, the Malay Straits, Penang, Burma, and the
Netherlands
East Indies. And wherever they went, their popularity inspired
the for-
mation of local troupes following their example. In British
Malaya, for
instance, the hybrid-popular theatre genre that later became
known as
bangsawan first emerged in the 1870s under the name of tiruan
wayang
Parsi or "imitation Parsi theatre" (Tan 1989, 231). In Java the
visiting
Parsi troupes inspired not one but several local forms of
hybrid-popu-
lar theatre: the short-lived komedieJawa and wayang cerita of
the 1870s

and the more intensively commercialized and influential
komedie Stam-
boel of the 1890s (Cohen 2001, 315-330). In India they
spawned innu-
merable local derivatives such as the "Special Drama" (special
natakam)
and "Boys Companies" of Tamilnadu (Seizer 1997, 66).
But the burgeoning of hybrid-popular theatre forms in late-
nineteenth-century Asia was not simply a response to the Parsi
theatre
and its widespread influence. Even within India, the extensive
touring
of the Parsi troupes was not the only factor promoting the
emergence
of more or less westernized theatre styles outside the Bombay
area. A
firsthand account of the origins of the modern Bengali theatre
by musi-
cologist and composer Sourindro Mohun Tagore (1963, 84)
does not
mention the Parsi troupes at all but gives the impression of a
separate
and almost contemporaneous development. Such genres could
arise
without the influence of the Parsi theatre if the social and
political
conditions were propitious, and these conditions were generally
brought about by colonization. In Calcutta as in Bombay, the
social
and economic transformations wrought by British colonization
had
spawned a prosperous merchant class with the leisure and
disposable
income to support professional theatre, while visiting European
troupes and British amateur theatricals had provided models for

a style
of performance that was perceived as up-to-date and
cosmopolitan. Sim-
ilar transformations accompanied Dutch colonization in Java,
where
wayang wong drama changed from a royal court entertainment
to a
commercial art form without emulating the Parsi model (Cohen
2001,
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CH'ANGGUK OPERA
323-325), and French colonization in Vietnam, where drama
adopted
Western conventions such as spoken dialogue without ever
being
exposed to the Parsi theatre or its derivatives (Gibbs 2000).
Evidently, hybrid-popular theatre in Asia is a phenomenon of
polygenesis rather than pure diffusion. Without direct
influence, sim-
ilar conditions in different places led to the repetition of the
same pat-
tern: colonization brings economic change, of which one
symptom is
the commercial indoor theatre with its ticket sales, proscenium
arch,
and realist conventions. New forms of theatre are inspired by

the
desire to emulate the colonist and to meet audience demand for
nov-
elty. But familiar local elements, frequently musical, are
retained to
avoid challenging the audience too much. Seen in this
comparative
context, the origin of ch'anggik need not be explained through
stories
like that of the Korean p'ansori singer inspired by Chinese
opera; the
genre was a predictable response to conditions that were
producing
similar responses elsewhere.
Inventing a Tradition
Insofar as there was a single originator of ch'anggik, the
evidence
suggests that it was not ap'ansori singer at all but a figure much
less pal-
atable to Korean nationalist sensibilities: the pro-Japanese
writer and
politicianYi Injik (1862-1916). While studying inJapan around
the turn
of the century, Yi Injik had become familiar with the
popularJapanese
interpretation of Western melodrama, shinpa geki or "new
school" the-
atre (Kim and Pak 1995, 553). At that time shinpa still bore
traces of
its earlier incarnation-the late-nineteenth-century "political
dramas"
(soshi geki) that were used for campaigning in the early days
ofJapanese

democracy-and this may have led Yi Injik to see the stage as a
suit-
able platform for his political ideas.9
With this in mind, in 1908 Yi Injik brought together a group of
p'ansori singers to perform a drama of his own composition. He
must
have realized that these singers were the only available
performers with
dramatic skills that would be relevant to his objectives. For his
part, he
knew p'ansori well, having earlier translated one of the stories
into Japa-
nese, and thus was capable of writing in the p'ansori style.
Accordingly
he wrote a novella called Unsegye (Silver World), the first half
of which
was made to resemble the style of a p'ansori text so that it
could be per-
formed as a drama by a group of p'ansori singers. The story
exposed the
hopeless corruption (as Yi saw it) of Korea's social order and
thus, by
implication, advocated the need for external intervention.
Borrowing another idea from shinpa, Yi Injik advertised the
pro-
duction as an example of sinyon'gik (new drama) in contrast to
the
kuyon'giik (old drama) of traditional arts like p'ansori. (The
Japanese
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Killick
term "shinpa" had been coined in 1897 to contrast with the
kyuha or "old
school" of kabuki; Leiter 1997, 588.) He began instructing the
p'ansori
singers in the new dramatic techniques that would be needed to
pre-
sent Silver World on the stage. Meanwhile, to defray expenses,
the p'an-
sori singers performed episodes from their existing repertoire,
gradually
adopting the new theatrical mode of presentation they were
learning.
These fundraising performances became the earliest
presentations in
ch'angguk format of which any contemporary record survives.
We are fortunate to have a detailed account of one of these per-
formances, written by one Major Herbert H. Austin, who
happened to
visit the W6n'gaksa (which he called the "Theatre Royal")
during a
week's trip to Korea in October 1908:
Desirous of seeing Korean life in all its different aspects, we
paid a visit
after dinner to the Theatre Royal, close by, and derived no
little enter-
tainment from watching several acts of a Korean play,
performed
mainly by men and boys. The building in which it took place

was one
of some size, the seats in the body of the hall being raised in
steps
until they reached the level of the gallery or promenade, on
which we
had our seats in a private box on the right-hand side. There
were four
or five boxes on each side of the hall; those on the left,
reserved for
Korean ladies, being all full. Not understanding a word of the
lan-
guage, we were, of course, unable to fathom the plot-if there
was one
at all-though a gigantic paper or cardboard pumpkin, which was
repeatedly being cut, seemed to be the chief cause of interest in
this
highly sensational drama. Most of the dialogue was chanted to
the
accompaniment of a drum played by a man on the stage, and
from
time to time supers strolled across the scene as though they
regarded
themselves as invisible for theatrical purposes. The music was
by no
means discordant, and the high falsetto voice so commonly
heard in
India appeared to be considered worthy of commendation in
Korea,
as applause occasionally broke out when a peculiarly high note
had
been successfully grappled with. At the end of each scene a
red-and-
white curtain, running along a wire, was pulled across the stage
from
one side, and a member of the company would come before the
foot-

lights and hold forth to the audience, whom he was apparently
inform-
ing what might be expected in the scene about to follow.
[Austin
1910, 196-197]
Though Austin showed no awareness that he was witnessing
something
new to Korea, this passage is the earliest description of a
ch'angguk per-
formance that has come to light, predating any surviving
Korean source.
It bears unmistakable references to both the repertoire and the
sing-
ing style ofp'ansori, while indicating that the performance was
given by
multiple singing actors in dialogue format and that some degree
of
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CH ANGGUK OPERA
visual presentation was attempted. The reference to a
"pumpkin, which
was repeatedly being cut" identifies the story as that of
Hfingbo, one of
the popular heroes of the p'ansori repertoire, and the drum that
accom-
panies the singing is presumably the barrel drum (puk) that

provides
the sole instrumental accompaniment in p'ansori. The "member
of the
company" who would "hold forth" between the dramatized
scenes is
evidently the narrator (toch'ang), a device that probably arose
when dia-
logue passages from existing p'ansori texts were performed by
two p'an-
sori singers taking the roles of the characters while a third was
needed
to deliver the third-person narration. Later, when stage scenery
was
added, the narrator became a convenient device for holding the
audi-
ence's attention while the set was changed-a practice still seen
in
ch'anggTuk today.
Although we have no comparable account of Unsegye itself, we
know that it created a sensation and proved a hard act to
follow. Yi Injik
moved on to other interests, and no one was ready to step into
his
shoes. With the advent of actual shinpa dramas performed by
Korean
troupes, as well as imported silent movies with live interpreters
(pyonsa),
ch'angguk was unable to compete for novelty value. Its
exponents tried
to appeal to the sense of tradition instead and changed its name
from
"new drama" to kup'a (old school) or kuyon'gik (old drama)
before it
was in fact even five years old (Paek Hyonmi 1997, 91-116).
Thus began

the project of inventing traditional Korean opera.
National Drama
If progressive-minded Koreans could find their entertainment
in films and spoken plays, those who wanted something
traditional
could still hear p'ansori and other indigenous performing arts.
Falling
between these two stools, ch'anggiuk was unable to find a
fruitful niche
in the "performance market" and became mainly a matter of
drama-
tized highlights from the p'ansori stories performed with
minimal the-
atrical equipment by struggling itinerant variety troupes.
Ch'angguk limped on in this form through most of the colonial
period until its vigorous revival in the mid-1930s through the
activities
of an organization called the Chos6n S6ngak Y6n'guhoe
(Korean Vocal
Music Association).10 The background to this revival goes
back to the
March 1 Independence Movement of 1919, which convinced the
Japa-
nese authorities of the necessity to allow a safe outlet for
Korean nation-
alist aspirations. The safety valve took the form of a limited
"cultural
movement" that would promote Korean national culture to the
point
where, at some remote and indefinitely postponed future date,
the
colony would be sufficiently "advanced" to stand alone as an
indepen-

dent nation (Robinson 1988). By the early 1930s, the movement
had
55
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Killick
inspired a growing interest-on the part ofJapanese as well as
Korean
scholars-in Korean folk culture as an expression of national
identity.
Meanwhile the popular media began to publicize the idea that
this iden-
tity might be expressed in cultural forms such as the
performing arts.
Thus on March 29, 1931, the newspaper Tonga Ilbo stated:
"Our
Korea, which has had its own culture from ancient times, has
also had
its own [way of] singing. The joy expressed in that singing was
our joy,
and the sadness expressed in that singing was our sadness, so
that this
[singing] was the mouthpiece of our lives." Such statements
laid a
foundation for the idea, taken for granted in the postcolonial
period,
that the affective life of Korean people was different from that
of other

nations and, moreover, that distinctive styles in the performing
arts
captured this difference.
It was during this period that the genre name ch'anggik came to
be used for the first time, and in other respects as well the
Chos6n S6n-
gak Y6n'guhoe created a new form of ch'angguk with most of
the fea-
tures we would recognize in the genre today. The performance
of com-
plete dramas, rather than separate episodes, became standard;
spoken
dialogue was added in the process of dramatization; an
orchestra of tra-
ditional instruments supplemented the puk barrel drum
ofp'ansori; and
visual appeal was enhanced with more elaborate costumes,
scenery,
and dancing. The scale of most productions, however, remained
mod-
est by today's standards, especially when the shows were taken
on tour.
The final years of the colonial period, as mentioned earlier in
connection with Yi Tongbaek's retelling of the origins of
ch'angguk,
witnessed an increasingly harsh regime in which the public
expression
of a separate Korean identity was no longer tolerated. While
the
authorities believed that the theatre could become a powerful
vehicle
of state propaganda in Korea as it had been in Japan, they
strove for a
compromise between allowing it to retain enough familiar

elements to
attract a Korean audience and insisting that every performance
be
given at least partly in the Japanese language.
With liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 came the partition
of the Korean peninsula into Soviet and American occupation
zones,
each of which established itself as a republic in 1948.
Communist North
Korea-regarding traditional culture as, at best, material for
improve-
ment and at worst a hangover of a stratified feudal society-
eventually
replaced ch'angguk with its own version of revolutionary opera
(Suh
Yon-Ho 1991). The South, by contrast, developed an ideology
of pres-
ervation that maintained the colonial-era view of traditional
music as
an expression of the unique Korean national identity. In the
South the
performing arts were brought into the agenda of nation building
as all
forms of traditional Korean music came to be known by the
generic
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PLATE 1. In the National Ch'angguk Troupe's production of
Yollyo Ch'unhyang (The Virtu-
ous Woman Ch'unhyang, September 1997), Governor Py6n
(Ch'oe Y6nggil) is taken aback
at the refusal of Ch'unhyang (Yu Suj6ng) to become his
concubine. (Photo: National The-
atre of Korea)
PLATE 2. In the S6rab6l Y6song Kukkfik Troupe's production
of Hwan-
hyangnyo (Women Returning from Abroad, February 1997), the
King of
Korea is played by Cho Kumaeng (center), one of several
senior performers
who were active in y6song kukkik in its 1950s heyday. (Photo:
Jean-Marc
Leenders)
2018 15:19:54 UTC
PLATE 3. In the Sorab6l Yosong Kukkuk Troupe's production
of Hwanhyangnyo (Women
Returning from Abroad, February 1997), the invading Chinese
army creates a colorful the-
atrical spectacle. (Photo: Jean-Marc Leenders)
PLATE 4. In the National Ch'anggik Troupe's production of
Kuunmong (A Nine-Cloud Dream, September 1993), the
toch'ang
or narrator (An Suks6n, left) breaks with convention by
interacting
with the protagonist Songjin (Un Huiijin). (Photo: National

The-
atre of Korea)
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CH ANGGUK OPERA
term "kugak" (national music) while ch'anggik took the name
"kukkik"
(national drama) (Paek Hy6nmi 1997, 334-339). The stage
would
appear to have been set for at least one part of Korea to assert
itself as
a distinct nation with a theatre form of its own. But from the
beginning,
the nature of the new nation and the right to represent it in
perfor-
mance were hotly contested.
Nation and Gender
The first female p'ansori singers, trained in the late nineteenth
century, had been kisaeng entertainers, the Korean equivalent
of the
Japanese geisha. During the colonial period, p'ansori came to
be more
and more the province of this profession to the point where
what had
once been an all-male art form came to be dominated
numerically by
women. Groups of kisaeng had performed scenes from
ch'angguk, taking

the male as well as the female roles, as early as the 1910s. But
it was not
until after liberation that they developed a fully fledged all-
female
opera form inspired byJapan's Takarazuka Revue but using
traditional
rather than Western-style music (Color Plates 2-3). Since the
usual
name for ch'anggik at the time was kukkuk, the all-female
version was
dubbed yosong kukkik (women's national drama).11
But for some in Korea's patriarchal society, "women's national
drama" seemed almost a contradiction in terms-or at least a
threat
to the assumption that whatever is "national" ought to be
defined and
controlled by men. This point of view was expressed by Pak
Hwang,
whom we encountered earlier as the author of the first
published his-
tory of ch'anggik. Pak saw the new subgenre as inimical both to
artistic
standards in ch'anggik and to proper gender relations in
society. The
audience for yosong kukkuk, like that of Takarazuka, has
always been
predominantly female, and the advent of the new theatrical
sensation
drew crowds of married women whose lives (as Pak rather
wistfully
observed) had been largely restricted to the home (Pak Hwang
1976,
189). For these women to identify with female actors, cast in
the roles

of brash and vigorous male heroes, seemed dangerous enough
to pro-
voke Pak into some remarkable rhetorical flights. After quoting
a
Korean proverb, "When the hen crows, the house is ruined," he
com-
pared the all-female troupes with the mythical creatures called
pulga-
sari that were said to eat metal and tried to overthrow the
ancient
kingdom of Kory6 (p. 229). To Pak, himself a librettist of
mixed-cast
ch'angguk, yosong kukkuk represented a threat not just to the
traditions
ofp'ansori and ch'angguk but to the Korean nation itself. As
Korean fem-
inist writers are now starting to show (Kim and Choi 1998),
one part of
the postcolonial project of nation building has been the
scramble to
ensure that the nation is structured along patriarchal lines.
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Killick
Ch'anggiik has participated in this patriarchal agenda-not least
through its constant and approving display of the self-sacrifice
of

women. The established repertoire of ch'angguk consists of
only four
stories, all derived from p'ansori, of which the most frequently
per-
formed are the stories of Sim Ch'ong and Ch'unhyang, both
paragons
of female devotion to men. Sim Ch'ong, the filial daughter,
sells herself
to a crew of sailors-as a human sacrifice to ensure safe passage
across
a treacherous sea-in exchange for a donation to a Buddhist
temple
that will result in the miraculous restoration of her blind
father's eye-
sight. Ch'unhyang, the virtuous wife, remains faithful to her
absent hus-
band in the face of a brutal beating and the threat of death.
Some of
the musical and literary highlights of both stories are
expressions of the
heroine's grief.
Since about the 1970s, this grief has been given a name, han,
and
represented as an emotion peculiar to Koreans and arising from
their
national history of invasion and repression (Park-Miller 1995,
183).
This special instance of the older idea that Korean affect is
different
from that of other nationalities has come to be so widely
accepted that
many people assume it has a much longer history than it does.
Im
Kw6nt'aek's popular 1993 film Sop'yonje, for instance, contains
much

discussion of han, although it is set in an earlier period when,
as far as
we know from contemporary sources, no one was talking about
han in
this way.12 Today the concept of han forms a link between the
suffering
of women like Ch'unhyang and the grim history of the Korean
nation
-itself feminized as a territory under the constant threat of
penetra-
tion by more powerful neighbors and in need of protection by
strong
masculine institutions such as the armed forces and an
authoritarian
government (Moon Seungsook 1998).
The Western imagination has long been captivated by
narratives
of penetration in which a hero overcomes a formidable obstacle
to
enter an alien territory that is both feared and desired and in so
doing
achieves a renewal of self. With its heterosexual and
patriarchal sym-
bolism, the structure governs the tales of difficult seduction
that recur
in novels like Dangerous Liaisons and plays from The Taming
of the Shrew
to Guys and Dolls, as well as adventure stories (Journey to the
Center of the
Earth or the Indiana Jones series) and the fieldwork narratives
of
anthropologists and other cultural explorers. 13 But in the
Ch'unhyang
story it is precisely the resistance to penetration that is

celebrated. That
such a story could become the most often told tale in Korea is
proba-
bly not because patriarchal values hold less sway there than in
the West
but because Koreans have learned to see their national history
in terms
of foreign penetration and native resistance. Korean historians
have
compiled lists of over nine hundred invasions, large and small,
in the
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CH'ANGGUK OPERA
nation's history; representative national heroes are colonial-era
resis-
tance fighters and the sixteenth-century naval commander Yi
Sunsin
who fought off an earlierJapanese attack with his impenetrable
iron-clad
"turtle ships."14 Today, while the infiltration of Western ways
and ideas
into almost every sphere of Korean life is undeniable, the need
to pre-
serve some corner of national identity that resists this
penetration is
often keenly felt. It is perhaps partly this need that keeps
Korean audi-

ences showing up again and again for adaptations of the story
of Ch'un-
hyang in whatever guise: for them, there is more at stake than
one
woman's refusal to yield to aggression.
State Sponsorship
Historically, the discourse of han appears to have taken shape
under the authoritarian regime of President Park Chung Hee,
who
seized power in a military coup in 1961 and remained in office
until his
assassination in 1979. It may well have helped to bolster that
regime by
forming part of what Louis Althusser (1971) would have called
the
"ideological state apparatus." That is: a workforce suffering
under the
harsh demands of rapid industrialization while largely excluded
from
its economic rewards might be less inclined to make trouble if
taught
to believe that suffering and resentment are an intrinsic part of
their
national character and that to remove the suffering and its
causes
would make them somehow less authentically Korean.
The point is perhaps a speculative one, but there is no doubt
that ideological legitimation was a pressing concern for Park's
govern-
ment. Not only had Park and his henchmen seized power by
undem-
ocratic means, but during the colonial period they had been
trained in

the Japanese military academy and served as officers in the
Japanese
army, rendering them subject to the stigma of collusion with
the colo-
nial authorities. Park seems to have addressed this concern by
repre-
senting his government as a patron and supporter of those
symbols of
Korean national identity, the traditional performing arts, in
which he
had never previously shown the slightest interest. In 1962, the
year
after he came to power, he passed a Cultural Assets Protection
Act,
itself ironically modeled on legislation that the Japanese
government
had adopted in 1950 (Yang Jongsung 1994, 49-51). Under this
law,
genres judged to express the Korean national culture were
officially
designated Intangible Cultural Assets (muhyong munhwajae)
and lead-
ing exponents, unofficially known as "human national
treasures," were
appointed on a modest stipend to maintain and transmit these
genres
in what was considered their "authentic form" (wonhyong).15
One of
the first art forms to be so designated was p'ansori.
Ch'angguk also received government support, but outside the
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Killick
Cultural Assets system, and this says something of the concept
of "tra-
dition" that was adopted and the difference in its application to
p'an-
sori and to ch'anggfk. Again in 1962, a National Ch'anggiik
Troupe was
established and given lavish funds for an opening production.
Forty
years later, this troupe continues to define the state of the art
for chang-
guk though the genre has never been nominated for recognition
as an
Intangible Cultural Asset. The relatively short history of
ch'angg/ik and
its obvious foreign influences appear to have barred it from
this honor,
while by common consent the genre is still evolving and has
yet to
achieve an "authentic form" that would be worthy of
preservation.
Thus, instead of staging standardized dramas in an unchanging
form,
ch'angguk directors are expected to innovate in each new
production
in search of a format that will be, paradoxically, more
"traditional" than
ever before.
This complex relation to the notion of "tradition" has led me to
suggest the term "traditionesque" for a category of cultural

forms that
hover on the margins of the "traditional" (Killick 1998a;
2001a). In this
dichotomy, both "traditional" and "traditionesque" art forms
base their
appeal on the association with a "tradition" that embodies a
valued
community-in this case what Benedict Anderson (1983) would
have
called the "imagined community" of the nation. But while a
"tradi-
tional" repertoire is transmitted with some concern for
protection from
changes that would make it less "authentic" (McDonald 1996,
115), no
such concern affects the transmission of the "traditionesque,"
which
must innovate in search of an "authenticity" that is not found in
its past.
To venture another speculative observation, it seems likely that
"tradi-
tionesque" art forms will prove particularly characteristic of
postcolo-
nial societies like Korea, which typically feel a need to assert
the
uniqueness of their nation's cultural traditions in justification
of its
political independence while simultaneously keeping pace with
the
world in modernity and cosmopolitanism.
Jockeying for Tradition
The failure to create an "authentic" form of ch'anggik to fill the
role of a "traditional Korean opera" has not been for want of
trying. In

1967, a committee called the Ch'angguk Ch6ngnip Wiw6nhoe
(Com-
mittee for the Establishment of Ch'anggik) was set up under the
aus-
pices of the National Ch'angguik Troupe.16 For a concise
formulation
of its mission, we can do no better than return to the 1971
program
note from which I quoted at the beginning of this essay:
Our country originally had no theatre and no stage. As a result,
it
could not have its own dramatic form. Taking the ancient
drama of
other countries for comparison, the Greek drama, Roman
drama, and
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CH:ANGGIUK OPERA
medieval drama of the West all had their own form [governing
every-
thing] from the design of the theatre to the [style of] acting,
while
China's Peking opera andJapan's kabuki and n6 bear their own
excel-
lent form transmitted through the ages. Our country, as
mentioned
above, had no theatre and no stage, so it did not have its own

form of
musical drama (ch'angguik). It is this that we are now trying to
create for
the first time.17
There could hardly be a more explicit statement of the ambition
to
"invent" a traditional Korean opera.
The committee, composed of senior exponents and professional
scholars, was given the task of arranging texts for ch'angguk
productions
and determining the manner of their performance in a way that
would
eliminate the earlier pandering to popular appeal and make
ch'angguk
as faithful as possible to its p'ansori originals. Not only would
the words
and music of existing p'ansori material be incorporated, as far
as pos-
sible intact, into these ch'anggik productions, but even the style
of
speech and acting would follow pansori practices, while the
visual pre-
sentation would reflect the minimalism of pansori's physical
resources.
Once established, this "authentic" form of ch'anggutk would
then be
protected from change-for instance, by standardizing the texts
and
having each new production supervised by a "leader" (toy6n)
whose
responsibility was to ensure that the established conventions
were

followed without the creative freedom usually assumed by a
"director"
(y6nch'ul) (S6ng Ky6ng-rin 1980, 347-352).
Here again a pointed cross-cultural comparison reveals that the
Korean case was not unique. Rather, Korean ch'anggfik
conforms to a
widespread Asian pattern, not only in its relationship to
colonization,
but also in its relationship to decolonization. The closest
analogy here
is perhaps the Malaysian hybrid-popular theatre form
bangsawan. Sooi-
Beng Tan (1989) has shown that in the early twentieth century,
bang-
sawan was touted as modern and up-to-date and made a great
virtue
of its constant innovations as it responded to the changing taste
of its
ethnically diverse audience. "Since the 1970s," however, says
Tan, "the
Malaysian government has created a 'traditional' past for
bangsawan.
Under state sponsorship, the popular type of theatre has been
reshaped, Malayized, and institutionalized for new national
purposes"
(p. 230). This reshaping has involved the elimination of non-
Malay sto-
ries and musical features in order to "promote an artificial
'tradition'
for bangsawan" as an expression of Malaysian national identity
(p. 256).
A similar process of "traditionalizing" can be seen at work in
the history
of ch'angguk. At first proclaimed as sinyon'gik (new drama), by

the 1970s
ch'anggiuk was supported by a National Ch'angguk Troupe that
was mak-
ing a determined bid for the genre's recognition as "traditional
Korean
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Killick
opera" while its colonial origins were being written out of its
history
(Pak Hwang 1976).
In the end, the Ch'angguk Ch6ngnip Wiw6nhoe did not succeed
in establishing fixed texts and performance practices, and its
influence
rapidly declined. The jockeying for tradition, however-the
effort to
position ch'anggik in an advantageous relation to the
traditional-was
renewed by director H6 Kyu, who was responsible for most of
the
National Ch'anggiuk Troupe's productions throughout the
1980s. H6
sought to bring ch'anggik closer to the "spirit" of p'ansori
(rather than
emphasizing the "letter" as the Ch'angguk Ch6ngnip Wiw6nhoe
had
done) by negotiating a new "contract" (yaksok) between

performers and
audience (H6 Kyu 1991, 384). This contract sought to
recapture, by
means of such devices as direct audience address and a
projecting stage,
the free-and-easy interaction that characterized the madang or
village
square in which p'ansori would traditionally have been
performed.
Hence H6's approach came to be labeled the madanghwa
(madang-iza-
tion) of the ch'angguk stage (Song Hyejin 1987, 239).
While many of H6 Kyu's innovations have become standard
practice in ch'angg/ik, his madanghwa project was ultimately
defeated by
the physical properties of the proscenium-based performance
spaces
with which he had to work, as well as by the passive audience
habits
associated with them.18 In the 1990s, therefore, the National
Ch'ang-
gik Troupe largely embraced Western realist production values
and
returned to an unabashedly "traditionesque" approach.
The continuing traditionesque status of ch'angguk is nowhere
more clearly revealed than in a development of the early 1990s
when
the new head of the National Ch'anggiik Troupe, literary
scholar Kang
Hanyong, decided to abolish the toch'ang (narrator). As we
have seen,
the toch'ang was a feature of the earliest ch'angguik
performances on
record, and by the 1990s it had become perhaps the nearest

thing
ch'angguk possessed to a venerable tradition of its own: it had
an indig-
enous origin and a precedent of some eighty years behind it, as
well as
a history of performance by some of the most distinguished
senior p'an-
sori singers of those years. Nevertheless, the toch'ang was not
sacro-
sanct. Some newly composed ch'anggiik dramas had dispensed
with the
toch'ang, and during Kang's tenure one production adopted the
exper-
iment of having the toch'ang interact directly with the dramatis
per-
sonae (Color Plate 4). More radically, when Kang himself
arranged
new texts for adaptations of the traditional p'ansori stories-
which had
always been the most "traditional" part of ch'angg/ik's
repertoire-he
eliminated the toch'ang altogether, arguing that third-person
narra-
tion held up the action and was out of place in the "show, don't
tell"
ethos of the theatre.19
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CH'ANGGUK OPERA

Such a fundamental change of performance convention would
have been unthinkable in a "traditional" art form. But since
ch'angguk
itself was not recognized as traditional, its own would-be
traditions have
been accorded no guarantee of protection from change. Instead
they
have been readily sacrificed in the pursuit of either
entertainment
value or traditional elements derived from recognized "Cultural
Assets"
such as p'ansori. While the toch'ang has been reinstated in a
number of
productions since Kang's retirement in 1995, its use is at the
discretion
of the director-and ch'anggik seems no closer to achieving
"tradi-
tional" status since its only recognized traditions (that is, its
only prac-
tices protected from change) are those it has taken from
p'ansori. A tra-
ditional art form, presumably, must possess traditions of its
own.
National Music
Ch'anggiik has always had trouble being taken seriously as an
expression of Korean national culture. And yet, in at least one
respect,
its claim to represent the nation is arguably second to none-and
that
respect is its music. In a telling scene from a recent production
of the
Ch'unhyang story, the p'ansori-style singing of the toch'ang
was inter-

rupted by loud blasts on the straight trumpet (nabal) and conch
shell
(nagak) from the back of the auditorium.20 A colorful parade
filed
down the aisle playing the raucous royal processional music
Taech'wit'a.
On reaching the stage, the music changed to the stately banquet
ver-
sion of the same rhythmic material, Ch'wit'a, and the
procession entered
an elaborate set representing the yamen of the governor of
Namw6n.
The wicked governor took the seat of honor, his white-robed
officials
stood in attendance, and a group of female entertainers
(kisaeng) lined
up to solicit his favors.
Such a mixture of theatrical presentation, p'ansori singing, and
other varieties of Korean music is to be found only in
ch'angguk. The
category of music that has come to be known in postcolonial
Korea as
kugak (national music) comprises a diverse collection of genres
that
would have been performed in quite different contexts and for
differ-
ent audiences before the twentieth century. Certainly p'ansori
and Tae-
ch'wit'a would have been worlds apart in their social setting as
well as
their musical sounds. But ch'anggfk directors have not
hesitated to use
any form of traditional music that seemed appropriate to the
dramatic
situation: a dirge for a funeral, a sea shanty for a shipboard

scene, court
music for a banquet. Antecedents for this musical eclecticism
can be
found in p'ansori narratives and in their presumed forebears,
the mythic
songs of shamans, both of which interpolated existing folk
songs into
their fluid forms (Hahn Man-young 1975, 17). But the practice
is taken
to an extreme in ch'anggik, where the principle that anything
within
63
2018 15:19:54 UTC
Killick
the realm of kugak is fair game was perhaps finally established
by direc-
tor and dramatist H6 Kyu in the 1980s. In a work of his own
composi-
tion, Yongmagol changsa (The Strong Man of Yongma Valley,
1986), H6
incorporated regional folk songs from Kangw6n province,
shaman
songs, farmers' songs, court music, and classical kagok singing
and
accompanied the movements of a lion with the music of
t'alch'um
masked dance-drama (Paek Hy6nmi 1997, 397-398). This
degree of

eclecticism has made ch'angguk the first single genre to draw
on the full
range of kugak styles without regard to distinctions of region
or class
origin-and on this basis ch'anggutk could claim to represent the
nation
in a more comprehensive way than any of the established
"Cultural
Assets." If this argument carries little weight with the
gatekeepers of the
"traditional," it is probably because nationalist discourse has
projected
the modern monolithic view of kugak back onto the past and
the dis-
unity of Korea's traditional musical repertoire, as of its
traditional soci-
ety, has been downplayed.
A Tradition in the Making?
When I began my fieldwork on ch'anggik in 1995, many people
involved with the genre in one way or another advised me to
studyp'an-
sori instead, pointing out that the performance conventions of
ch'ang-
guk were still in flux and moving too fast to hold in focus. I
replied that
the process by which traditions were formed (or not) was
precisely what
interested me. To study this process is, of course, nothing new.
Students
of culture and the arts have long since jettisoned the idea that
only
"pure," "authentic," and "stable" traditions are worthy of study.
But I
believe the study of tradition formation is particularly

revealing when
the process has been long, conflicted, and still unresolved, as
has cer-
tainly been the case with ch'anggik.
As this essay goes to press, the National Ch'angguk Troupe is
pre-
paring a special performance to celebrate "A Hundred Years of
Ch'ang-
gik," scheduled for October 18-27, 2002. This seems somewhat
pre-
mature. As we have seen, the earliest contemporary records of
ch'anggik
performances date from 1908, and even Pak Hwang dates the
first pro-
duction no earlier than 1903. True, the W6n'gaksa theatre was
opened
in 1902, and p'ansori singers performed there from the
beginning
(Paek Hy6nmi 1997, 29-39), but we can hardly assume that the
tran-
sition to ch'anggik was instantaneous. Thus the National
Ch'anggik
Troupe appears to be in somewhat of a hurry to claim the sense
of tra-
dition and stability implied by a hundred-year history. But after
review-
ing that history, it should come as no surprise that a genre
whose rela-
tion to the "traditional" has always been problematic should
still be
jockeying for tradition.
64

2018 15:19:54 UTC
CH'ANGGUK OPERA
NOTES
1. Yi Chinsun, director's note in program of the National
Ch'anggfik
Troupe's production 16, Ch'unhyang-jon, September-October
1971. Transla-
tions from Korean sources are my own unless otherwise
credited.
2. Other than my own publications, the literature on ch'anggik
in Eng-
lish consists largely of chapters and occasional articles by
authors whose main
interest is in the parent genre, p'ansori. See Jang Yeonok
(2000, 116-122);
Kim Woo Ok (1980, 186-222); Park-Miller (1995, 58-75); Pihl
(1991; 1994,
41-54); Um Hae-kyung (1992, 84-99). Understandably such
studies tend to
rely on the most accessible Korean secondary sources, and all
of them, in my
view, contain inaccuracies.
3. For an overview and bibliography of traditional theatre
forms in
Korea see Killick (2002a, 941-944; 2002b).
4. The literary, musical, and performative,aesthetics ofp'ansori
are dis-

cussed in countless studies; perhaps the most accessible in
English is Pihl
(1994, 69-109). Detailed studies include Jang Yeonok (2000);
Kim Woo Ok
(1980); Park-Miller (1995); Um Hae-kyung (1992).
5. At least one writer, however, has sought to defend this story
(Kim
Jong-cheol 1997).
6. The origins of ch'angguk are detailed in Killick (2002b).
7. Some significant differences between the Korean and the
Southeast
Asian instruments should also be noted. Both the names and the
morphology
of the ja-khe (also spelled chakhe) and the mijaiu (mi-gyauing)
reference the
crocodile, but no similar zoomorphism is associated with the
komungo. While
each instrument has three strings that pass over raised frets, the
komun'go has
three additional strings that pass over movable bridges.
8. From the call for proposals for the conference "Audiences,
Patrons,
and Performers in the Performing Arts of Asia," hosted by the
European Foun-
dation for Chinese Music Research (CHIME) and the
International Institute
of Asian Studies (IIAS) at Leiden University, the Netherlands,
on August
23-27, 2000.
9. In tandem with shinpa, the influentialJapanese popular songs
known

as enka started out in the 1880s as political songs before
acquiring the senti-
mental tone for which they are better known today (Fujie 2002,
371). On the
"new school" and "political" dramas ofJapan see Leiter (1997,
588-589) and
Ortolani (1990, 233-242).
10. For more details on the Chos6n S6ngak Y6n'guhoe see
Killick
(1998b).
11. The only scholarly monograph on yosong kukkiuk to date is
Kim
Py6ngch'61 (1997). The only published article in English is
Killick (1997). On
Takarazuka see Berlin (1988) and Robertson (1998).
12. Heather Willoughby (2000, 21-22) quotes some dialogue
from
Sop'yonje in analyzing the relationship between p'ansori and
han, though she
does not adopt my critical stance toward the concept.
13. I have analyzed the structure of these narratives of
penetration and
its implications for cross-cultural fieldwork in an earlier article
(Killick 1995).
65
2018 15:19:54 UTC

Killick
14. Thus the valorizing of resistance to penetration may also
help to
legitimize patriarchy, as when Korea's supposedly exceptional
frequency of
foreign invasion is made to suggest that the nation must be
defended by men.
See Moon Seungsook (1998, 42).
15. For in-depth analyses of the Intangible Cultural Assets
system see
Maliangkay (1999) and YangJongsung (1994).
16. The activities of the National Ch'angguk Troupe and the
Ch'ang-
giik Ch6ngnip Wiw6nhoe are discussed in detail in Killick
(2001b).
17. Yi Chinsun, director's note in program of the National
Ch'anggiik
Troupe's production 16, Ch'unhyang-jon, September-October
1971.
18. This obstacle was identified by drama critic Suh Yon-Ho in
a review
of H6 Kyu's production of Karojigi (reprinted in Suh Yon-Ho
1988, 338 -341).
19. Kang Hany6ng explained his decision in a seminar
(National
Ch'anggik Troupe 1995, 14).
20. Under the direction of Kim Kwan'gyu, on May 29-30, 2000,
the

performance was given in the main hall of the National Center
for Korean
Traditional Performing Arts (Kungnip Kugagw6n) in Seoul by
a visiting troupe
from the National Center for Korean Folk Performing Arts
(Kungnip Minsok
Kugagw6n) in Namw6n.
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Contentsimage 1image 2image 3image 4image 5image 6image
7image 8image 9image 10image 11image 12image 13image
28image 29image 30Issue Table of ContentsAsian Theatre
Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1, Spring, 2003Front Matter [pp. i -
ii]From the Editor [p. iii]On Shimizu Kunio's Play: May Even
Lunatics Die in Peace [pp. 1 - 11]Artistic Direction in Takechi
Kabuki [pp. 12 - 24]A Chinese Director's Theory of
Performance: On Jiao Juyin's System of Directing [pp. 25 -

42]䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯⁔䩯⁃䩯䩯䩯䩯⁈䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯䩯⁃䩯䩯䩯ŭ䩯䩯䩯
䩯䩯䩯†䩯‷そEast, West, and World Theatre [pp. 71 - 87]Book
Reviewsuntitled [pp. 88 - 91]untitled [pp. 91 - 93]untitled [pp.
93 - 95]untitled [pp. 96 - 97]untitled [pp. 98 - 100]untitled
[pp. 100 - 102]untitled [pp. 102 - 104]untitled [pp. 104 -
106]untitled [pp. 106 - 108]untitled [pp. 108 - 110]Video
Reviewsuntitled [pp. 111 - 112]Back Matter
Original Post instructions (for reference): From your reading
you learned that economics is the allocation of scarce resources.
In public health you will be looking at trade-offs: should time
and money be allocated to this preventive activity or would it be
better spent elsewhere? The Agency for Health Care Research
and Quality: https://hcupnet.ahrq.gov/ lets you look at how
money was spent for hospital services. Run a query and share
your findings.
Responseinstructions (for completion): In your response to your
classmate, compare and contrast the information gathered from
the query. Discuss how this information could be helpful to you
in your current or future public health career. 1/2-1 page AMA
format
Classmate Wang’s response:
I ran many queries on the Agency for Health Care Research and
Quality website. I have decided to share about two queries. The
first query (Emergency Department National Statistics) lists out
the total number of visits, percent of visits, % admitted to the
hospital, mean age and percentage of male in the first table.1
No cost was provided, but it does help me in seeing the
percentage of transferring from Emergency Department to
admission to the hospital as inpatients. The second table
includes the percentage of death in ED from the number of
visits. The percentage of admitted to the hospital in 2014 was
14.10, and the percentage of death in ED in 2014 was 0.16. Is
there a way for the percentage of death in ED be reduced to a

lower percentage? The third table illustrates the ED visits with
Admissions to the same Hospital. The mean cost was $44,665
with 2.60% death in the hospital. I compared this 2014 with the
2013 data, the percentage of death in the hospital was 2.63%
with the mean cost of $41,667.2 Can we assume that there is a
direct correlation between money spent and mortality rate? The
second query that I ran focused on the Hospital Inpatient
National Statistics in 2014. The actual charges for the number
of inpatient discharges was $41,633 while the actual costs of
providing health care was $10,885.3 There is a difference of
about $30,000 between the actual charge and cost for the
provided healthcare service. My question now are how we are
spending the difference? Can we spend this money in preventive
measures?

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