North Korea Research Group

On March 24, Suk-Young Kim, Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of California at Santa Barbara, delivered a talk on “Dancing Through the Revolution: Performing Revolutionary Women in China and North Korea,” at the Munk Centre, University of Toronto.

Professor Andre Schmid, the main sponsor of the event, said that when he came across scholarly research material on North Korea which focused on the visual culture of the region and deterred away from the subjects of nuclear missiles and six-party talks, such a divergent topic intrigued him a great deal. It also served the interest of NKRG as well, as it provided an opportunity to examine the culture of North Korea, a topic that oftentimes was neglected.

Professor Kim’s main interest of research, for the purpose of the event, investigates the transformative depiction of the woman’s body in the use of visual language. She focused particularly on the performance manners and clothes of the dancers from both China and North Korea during Mao’s Cultural Revolution and in the 1970s, respectively. At the talk, Professor Kim demonstrated the social significance of the transition of female bodily image from social obscurities to social modernity in both regions, which was an attempt to transcend the socialist ideology of nationhood collectivity over its individuality. The use of media such as theatre stages, dance troupes, dance operas, and films served as didactic visual manifestations that contributed to mass production and distribution of the ideology to firmly secure or heighten the “national space” in the public domain. The two socialist nations, however, displayed distinctive interpretations of female bodily representations. For example, in the Chinese propaganda performances, such as the ballet performances at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the Red Detachment of Women (1971), exhibited cultural hybridity by using ballet, a traditional Western art form, to portray the daughters of China as “masculine” heroines clad in military “Mao suits” with guns in order to stress the ideal Chinese female Communist. On the other hand, in the North Korean Revolutionary Opera, female protagonists in Flower Girl (1971) and A True Daughter of the Party incorporated the traditional dress, choreography, and props to emphasize the feminine qualities in a stark contrast to their male counterparts and to embody the notion of “utopian nature” into “tangible ideology.”

Overall, Professor Suk-Young Kim’s research on the perception of “body politics”, the significance of the visual manifestation of female corporality in materialization of revolutionary spirits and illustration of political socialist ideology provided an imperative academic platform to explore the inherent political implications, in the study of intersubjectivity or the collective group identity, embedded in the cultural aspects of North Korea. It was a fascinating talk, refreshingly removed from the bifurcated security discourse on nuclear missiles.

Selected Publications by Suk-Young Kim

Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (Univ. of Michigan Press, forthcoming)

Coauthored with Kim Yong, Long Road Home: A Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (Columbia UP, forthcoming)

"Musical from the Gulags of North Korea: Performing Trauma in Yoduk Story." TDR: The Drama Review 52:1 (2008)

Springtime for Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang: City as Stage, City on Stage." TDR: The Drama Review 51:2 (2007)

Russian Symbolist Drama as Rituals: G. Gippius' Sacred Blood and A. Blok's Puppet Show, Festschrift in Honor of Professor Anna Lisa Crone (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2007)

From Imperial Concubine to Model Maoist: Photographic Metamorphosis of Mei Lanfang," Theatre Research International 31:1 (2006)

Event Photos

(Photographed by Michael Motala)