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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2010
Ho-Jin Yoon's production The Last Empress (1995) was the first Korean-brand, Broadway-style musical to travel to Western venues. This article explores how the play was influenced by its producer's commitment to South Korea's cultural development in light of the country's intensive globalization during the mid-1990s. My analysis concludes that the production's development and the musical itself comprise a set of interactions between the global and the national; in turn, these interactions indicate a mode of alienation in which the concept of ‘global’ becomes meaningless, a fetish, or an empty signifier used in the service of national glory. My analysis also shows how elements of The Last Empress magnify the national and how its esoteric, exclusivist idea of Korean-ness is visualized via gendered nationalism.
1 All of the musical's dialogues and songs quoted here are from the unpublished English translation version of The Last Empress, translated by Georgina St George (2002). Locations in the text are given, as here, in parentheses. Translations from other Korean sources are my own, unless otherwise noted.
2 Kang, Myung Koo, ‘Discourse Politics toward Neo-liberal Globalization’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 1, 3 (2000), pp. 443–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 450.
3 Kim, Young Sam, Korea's Reform and Globalization (Seoul: Korean Overseas Information Service, 1996), p. 15Google Scholar.
4 Cho, Younghan, ‘The National Crisis and De/Reconstructing Nationalism in South Korea during the IMF Intervention’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 9, 1 (2008), pp. 82–96, here p. 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 The dates in the parentheses indicate the year(s) that these pieces were staged in South Korea.
6 Suh, Yeon-Ho and Lee, Sang Woo, Uri yeongŭk paeknyun (One Hundred Years of Korean Theatre) (Seoul: Hyunam Sa, 2000), pp. 334–47Google Scholar.
7 See my ‘“Broadway” as the Superior “Other”: Situating South Korean Theatre in the Era of Globalization’, Journal of Popular Culture, 45 (2011), forthcoming.
8 The majority of shamans in Korea are females, who are called mudang. Primarily, Korean shamanism is considered a female practice. It is told that Queen Min actually had a female shaman brought to the court in order to help her conceive an heir to the throne. See Lee, Haekyoung, ‘The Gazes of the Other upon the Life of Empress Myoungsung and Its Portrayal in The Last Empress’, Feminist Studies in English Literature, 10, 2 (2002), pp. 141–61Google Scholar.
9 Yuval-Davis, Nira, ‘Nationalism, Feminism and Gender Relations’, in Guibernau, Montserrat and Hutchinson, John, eds., Understanding Nationalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), pp. 120–41Google Scholar, here p. 127.
10 Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 134Google Scholar.
11 Ho-Jin Yoon, ‘Myoungsung Hwanghoo eui Broadway jinchul gwa sunggwa’ (Staging The Last Empress on Broadway), Lecture, Kukmin University, Seoul, Korea, 12 November 1998.
12 The Last Empress relied on domestic funding for its travel to New York City; Chosun Ilbo, Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) and Samsung Corporation sponsored A-Com's New York tour in 1997. For the musical's London performance in 2002, the South Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism funded performance expenditures.
13 Dong-A Ilbo, 9 May 1997.
14 Ho-Jin Yoon, ‘Myoungsung Hwanghoo eui Broadway jinchul gwa sunggwa’ (Staging The Last Empress on Broadway).
15 Hangyorae newspaper, 18 August 1997.
16 Chosun Daily newspaper, 18 August 1997.
17 New York Times, 21 August 1997.
18 Devan, Janadas, ‘Strange Bedfellows: Lee Kuan Yew and Samuel Huntington’, unpublished essay quoted in Lee Weng Choy, ‘Authenticity, Reflexivity, and Spectacle; or, The Rise of New Asia is Not the End of the World’, Positions, 12, 3 (2004), pp. 643–66Google Scholar, here p. 663.
19 The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, 2003, ‘About Gugak’, Samulnori, http://www.ncktpa.go.kr/eng/aboutg/trad_ins_view.jsp?gugak_id=17 (accessed 3 January 2008).
20 Yegam Inc., n.d., ‘About Jump,’ Jump, http://www.yegam.com/jump/ENG/introduction/01_about.asp (accessed 16 June 2009). The text belongs to the English version of this webpage.
21 Jung-Soon Shim, ‘Changing Visions of Koreanness in Oh Tae-sok's Plays, Africa and Love with Foxes’, Theatre Research International, 27, 1 (2002), pp. 28–36, here p. 31.
22 Joongang Ilbo, 28 June 2006.
