|
|
|
|
Page 3 of 5
'Run-DMZ' and the axis of vaudeville
By Stephen Epstein
discourses of gender. In a piece about them that includes the phrase namnam
pungnyo, a band member is quoted as saying, "The whole idea that it's
men in the South and women in the North is out of date. South Korean women are
really pretty."
The last decade has seen an increasing differentiation in the South's
imaginings of paradigms of feminine beauty in North and South, with the North
promising purity in contrast to Southern sexiness. The Tallae Umaktan
appropriates such a mantle of purity in explaining the band's name: "the fresh
plant that gives off the fragrance of spring from frozen ground is none other
than the tallae ... we want to give our South Korean fans a sense of comfort
and purity like that of the tallae".
Indeed, the concept of innocent purity, with its positive and nostalgic view of
qualities associated with a lack of sophistication, appears in a variety of
Southern contrasts: between its own rural and urban inhabitants, between a
developing Asian hinterland and the developed South Korea, and between North
and South. Band members draw further implicit distinction between themselves
and South Korean female stars in discussing their choreography: "We're seeking
after a classical dancing style. Actually, we don't know much about South
Korean dance, but Lee Hyori and Chae Yeon seem to dance well."
The contrast in dancing styles between the Tallae Umaktan and the South Korean
stars mentioned could hardly be starker. K-pop megastar Lee Hyori, whose latest
album title knowingly declares, with an in-your-face pun for English speakers,
"It's Hyorish," stands as symbol par excellence for the increasingly
provocative sexuality of South Korean popular culture.
Strikingly divergent modes of idealized Northern and Southern femininity
underpin a 2005 ad campaign for Samsung Anycall's video mobile phone technology
that pairs Lee with North Korean dancer Cho Myung Ae. In the series, the two
are performing in Shanghai in a joint South-North concert. They are first seen
in the concert hall, each surrounded by a media crush, and make longing eye
contact as they pass each other in the midst of their entourages without
exchanging words. A dramatic voiceover (whose breathiness even carries
quasi-erotic overtones) says, "You can speak without speaking. Just from
looking, your pulse can race. Digital Exciting. Anycall."
In a sequel, Lee sends a satellite DMB phone as a gift to Cho in her dressing
room. We then see Cho on stage, in elegant hanbok and gyrating with a vase on
her head, an accomplished classical dancer. Cho's performance is juxtaposed
with shots of Lee in her own dressing room, clad in jeans and a top that
exposes her midriff, practicing a few dance moves. The camera allows fleeting
glimpses of the overtly sexual grinding of her hips, affirming Lee's iconic
status among contemporary South Korea's foremost sex symbols.
Lee and Cho then hold a joint press conference in which Lee asks her
counterpart's age, and, upon hearing the answer, notes that she is Cho's "big
sister" (onni). In a final segment, we view the two spending the day
together, holding hands, and exchanging gifts before departing with a promise
to meet once more. The campaign, notable for its rare depiction of interaction
between South and North Korean women, hints at a sisterly bonding akin to the
intense homosociality of JSA. I would argue, however, that while the ad
foregrounds the possibility of a warm relationship between the two, it equally
emphasizes flagrant contrast. South Korean popular culture, while at times
encouraging belief that North and South can develop close friendship, also
increasingly highlights a gulf that extends beyond obvious ideological
difference to fundamentally opposed modes of acculturation.
The Axis of Vaudeville
In a similar vein, a trio of 2003 B-film comedies aimed at South Korea's youth
market all imagine romantic couplings between North and South and engage in
explorations of complementarity and difference. Love Impossible, Spy Girl,
and North Korean Guys), in their use of humor and caricature, decline to
be taken seriously, but this refusal of earnestness paradoxically deserves to
be considered seriously as an indicator of a sea change in the South Korean
imaginary.
Although prior to the 2000 summit one occasionally finds jollier treatments of
the North in South Korean popular culture, the meeting between Kim Dae-jung and
Kim Jong-il thrust the North into new territory: that of romantic farce. The
triggering of optimism about inter-Korean relations made it possible to find in
the North a source of fun and romantic reveries, and filmmakers eagerly
exploited the opportunity.
Love Impossible, in tackling head-on the putative ideal Korean match,
sets the clash between North and South in execrably ludicrous (even offensive)
terms. The film follows the "impossible" love story between Ch'ol-su, a
handsome university student from the South who is an incorrigible and not
terribly sympathetic womanizer, and Yong-hui, a beautiful and academically
talented young woman from Pyongyang.
The two meet in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Northeast China,
where they are taking part in a joint North-South excavation project on Koguryo
tombs. In the movie's farcical calculus, however, Yong-hui exhibits an odd
mixture of ethereal femininity and masculine toughness: in Ch'ol-su's first
sighting she has an artlessly radiant beauty, but she later displays an
astonishing capacity for alcohol and her martial, acrobatic dancing style
causes onlookers' jaws to drop.
Although she displays ideological fervor, demurring on her budding relationship
with Ch'ol-su by saying she still has much to do for her country, she also
shows potential corruptibility: she listens to rap music on the sly in
Pyongyang, her Northern sidekick convinces her to visit a disco in Yanbian, and
she readily turns to makeup when given the opportunity. The film seems torn
between portraying her as alien and suggesting that North Korean girls, like
their Southern peers, just wanna have consumerist fun. The tension between
centripetal and centrifugal forces towards similarity and difference drives
much of the film's humor.
Spy Girl likewise portrays a romance between a young Southern man and a
beautiful woman from the North, whose angelic demeanor here belies the fact
that she is a tough-as-nails spy. While both movies apparently wish to emulate
the success of recent forerunners that featured forbidding women as the
protagonists in romantic 
comedies, such as 2001's Chop'ok manura (My Wife is a Gangster) and Yopkijogin
kunyo (My Sassy Girl), the Northern element adds a crucial twist: the
female protagonists are not treated so much as exceptional individuals as
representatives of an exceptional nation.
Nonetheless, the North Korean Spy Girl clearly evokes audience sympathy
in contrast to the film's "bad" Southern characters. The latter include not
only gangsters but venal and vain young women, who can only be enticed on dates
at the price of expensive eye shadow. Indeed, a striking feature of this set of
films is the discourse they open about South Korea itself, and the frequency
with which this framework is turned to the South's detriment. For example, the
clash of the South's growing sexual openness and the North's more traditional
restraint has become a stock trope, but handling of this motif can vary greatly
depending on the needs of the moment: the North can be seen as enticingly
innocent or hickish; the South, suavely sophisticated or decadent.
The premise of North Korean Guys is that two sailors in North 
Korea's Navy are blown off course and wind up in the South. The film's title
derives from the sailor's names, and, in quoting the opening line of the South
Korean national anthem referring to the East Sea and Mt Paektu, suggests the
film's patent aspirations to tap into allegories of unification. Again,
however, culture clash drives comedy, as when circumstances lead the
protagonists into performing a rap song, and the viewer witnesses the
incongruous spectacle of North Koreans mimicking the most Westernized aspects
of contemporary South Korean popular culture.
When the pair first recognize from a vantage point on a bluff above an East
Coast beach that they have arrived in the ROK, the film shifts into a montage
of attractive young men and women in skimpy swimsuits, public displays of
affection, families playing in the water, and joyous dancing beside a boom box
surrounded by cans of Hite beer, all set to a rock-and-roll soundtrack. The two
Northerners stand motionless, jaws agape.
North Korean Guys recapitulates numerous features of Nannam pungnyo Love
Impossible and Spy Girl, the primary difference lying in its
reversal of the usual formula of Southern man and Northern woman. Captain Ch'oe
Paek-tu, in North Korean Guys, is portrayed sympathetically as a
dashing, if muttukttukhan (brusque) lead. He is a skilled fighter, in
touch with the natural world, and exhibits chivalry. His favorable qualities
impress a troubled young South Korean woman with the unsubtle name Han Na-ra
("Grand Nation" or "One Nation), and affection develops between the two.
At the film's conclusion, the two North Koreans depart for home in a dinghy and
the characters Ch'oe Paek-tu and Han Na-ra share a sentimental farewell,
promising that when they meet again they will be able to be friends. The film
thus offers a frothy concoction of allegory-lite for the popular market,
offering the hope that "Nara" might be reunited with "Paektu." But some
implicit assumptions
Continued 1 2 3
4 5
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2009 Asia Times
Online (Holdings), Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
