6-8 page research paper base on the topic and the abstract

Chapter Title: Acting Like Women in North Korea

Book Title: Illusive Utopia Book Subtitle: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea Book Author(s): Kim Suk-Young Published by: University of Michigan Press. (2010) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.370207.10

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Michigan Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Illusive Utopia

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

c h a p t e r 5

Acting Like Women in North Korea

Between Tradition and Revolution

The rapid political shift from colonialism to socialism in the northern part of the Korean peninsula in the middle of the twentieth century inevitably brought about transformations in the social and cultural sectors that were manifested in everyday life. This political shift was more palpable in women’s lives, since women were by and large not an integral part of public discourse prior to the twentieth century. This chapter addresses how women as a political trope entered the public discourse of nation-building with the establishment of the new socialist state and the ways performing and visual arts shaped as well as re›ected the everyday life of North Korean women.

One foundational aspect of North Korean women’s lives, regardless of political regime or social circumstances, is that women’s identity is seen through the prism of familial relationship. In a Confucian notion of the tra- ditional family, women are de‹ned in relation to male family members as mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. However, as the notion of family was brought out of the traditional domestic realm and expanded to the level of the state, so were the notions of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters con- sidered on a larger national plane. Women in representative propaganda productions, such as Sea of Blood and Flower Girl, became not only the focal point of visual composition within the traditional family structure but also the agents of ideological awakening for the newly founded socialist state. Revolutionary operas and numerous other productions depicted as well as

205

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

forged the new gender order within the structure of the “imagined” family, which gained supremacy over blood ties. The imagined family was de‹ned by the degree of commitment to ideological and political struggle, which separated “us” from the “enemy.” The process of imagining a family thus intended to liberate women from the domestic realm and encourage them to be a part of societal currents.

Women’s role in traditional family life had been a social topic of debate since the early twentieth century, when Korea was under increasing pressure to open up to the outside world. The humiliating colonial experience under occupation by the Japanese, traditionally despised as “barbarians,” propelled Koreans to evaluate their weakness vis-à-vis the concrete threat to their na- tional sovereignty. Women’s backwardness was regarded as directly related to a national problem, and many Korean intellectuals explored the question of how to modernize Korean women, whose traditional ways of life were seen as an urgent enlightenment project. In the age of social Darwinism, when international politics was viewed through the concept of the survival of the ‹ttest and the strongest, female weakness was immediately perceived as one of the primary reasons for a nation’s backwardness.

In light of their nation’s fragile future, Koreans with modern education saw traditional family life, one of the most ancient institutions in Korean society, as the main culprit holding back the progress of women as well as the nation’s modernization. Proportionate to the increasing criticism of the oppression of traditional family life, the traditional mind-set of denying women’s visibility in the public sphere came under scrutiny. Females seen in public prior to the twentieth century were mostly despised professionals, such as shamans, gisaeng (courtesans), and medical experts. Although these women were of disparate class backgrounds, all of them were often viewed as notorious compromisers of men’s morals and, in the case of shamans and gisaeng in particular, corrupters of public decency.

The custom of either con‹ning women within the nonvisible domestic sphere or acknowledging their signi‹cance when they played a man’s role in the public sphere started to change in the early twentieth century, when women’s questions became social issues for the public in their own right. Propelled by the liberal atmosphere created by modern education and ur- ban life, women had a self-generated awakening that expanded their realm of activity beyond strict domestic con‹nes. Social icons groomed to repre- sent ideal women, however, were closely linked to a strong patriotic senti- ment that saw women as instruments in the national project to restore a lost sovereignty. Ryu Gwan-sun, for instance, was one of the key ‹gures who

206 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

marched in peace to protest the harsh Japanese colonial rule on March 1, 1919. After Liu was arrested for her participation in the march and died in prison, she became an icon of sel›ess political resistance, providing inspira- tion for generations to come.

Popular theater and ‹lm productions played a crucial role in forging the new type of women in the social life of early-twentieth-century Korea.1

The earliest example was Shriek (Gyuhan), written and published in 1917 by I Gwang-su, a writer who persistently addressed issues of public education, equal rights for men and women, and the oppressive nature of traditional customs. I’s drama centers on the devastating situation of the lonely wives of overseas students. Even though the female protagonist in this drama lacks the strong will of Ibsen’s Nora and is a victim who becomes insane af- ter her husband’s betrayal, the drama poignantly captures the irrational cus- tom of arranged marriages, which, most of the time, were imposed on young people against their will.

Likewise, Kim U-jin, an English major at Waseda University, in 1925 wrote I Yeong-nyeo, which realistically portrays how an underprivileged young woman struggles to survive as a mother and wife within a traditional family but is doomed to fail because of the systemic failure of the society without an exit from poverty and discrimination. In 1936, Ryu Chi-jin, the most proli‹c Korean dramatist of the ‹rst half of the twentieth century, wrote Sisters, in which he ambitiously addressed multiple aspects of modern women’s lives, such as their pursuit of education, career, marriage, love, so- cial status, and a role in the rapidly transforming society.

But when Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was staged in Korea in 1934, three years prior to the Chinese adaptation of the play, it did not stir up a signi‹cant de- bate over the issue of women’s emancipation, as it did in China.2 North Ko- rean theater historian Choe Chang-ho comments that the social mood for such a debate had not developed yet, and the play was by and large received as a typical melodramatic story of a fallen woman,3 by which he implies that the revolutionary consciousness could not have germinated fully under colonial rule. In Choe’s view, which represents of‹cial North Korean histo- riography, true revolutionary ideology involving gender could only blossom under Kim Il-sung’s revolutionary resistance activities in Manchurian exile.

However, in reality, Kim Il-sung’s resistance effort was only one of the many factions within the socialist revolutionary movement, which consisted of many other top-to-bottom movements seeking to reform gender rela- tions. Mostly initiated by the intelligentsia during the Japanese colonial rule, these movements aimed at restructuring the repressive nature of the

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 207

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

traditional family, and were predicated on emancipating women. Socialists were one of the most active groups, with a speci‹c aim of transforming both men and women into a labor force usable for the impending Communist revolution. This process was interlaced with the deployment of highly ef- fective anti-Japanese sentiment to coat the emancipation of women with a feeling distinctively nationalistic rather than socialist. The North Korean Law of Gender Equality (Bukjoseon namnyeopyeongdeunggwon-e daehan beom- nyeong), promulgated on July 30, 1946, stipulated the historical urgency to liberate women as stemming from the necessity to restore national dignity more than instituting women’s rights:

For thirty-six years [under Japanese colonial rule], women of Joseon had to endure endless humiliation and cruel exploitation. They had neither political nor economic rights, and never had a chance to participate in cultural, social, and political life. Feudal family relations from the Mid- dle Ages bound women politically and economically. Humiliation, igno- rance, and spite became the fate of the women of Joseon. However, the status of women changed when the Red Army liberated North Korea from Japanese colonial rule. The democratic reforms being carried out on a domestic front created conditions for women to be liberated from their unequal positions in political, economic, and family life.4

Although the law was modeled after the parallel cases from the Soviet Union, which presided over the northern part of Korea at the time the law was promulgated, the North Korean version was clearly grounded on anti- Japanese sentiment, which was sure to provoke nationalistic response. Un- derneath the conventional rhetoric of women’s emancipation and gender equality, there lay the urgency for the North Korea’s leaders to build its identity as the liberator of the North Korean people who have been op- pressed and humiliated by the Japanese. The subtext of the preface to the law reads as a promise to guard the dignity of North Korean women from humiliating violation, including sexual violation by foreign forces. At the same time, it was also the state’s claim to exercise the rights to use female la- bor forces for national reconstruction in return for this protection.

Women had joined the labor front upon the outbreak of the Korean War. As manpower was concentrated on warfare, industry and agriculture were left to women’s care. But even after the war, the North Korean leader- ship urged women to continue participating actively in the reconstruction of society. According to the1958 report “Plans to Hire More Female

208 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Laborers in Various Economic Sectors,” North Korea was planning to (1) increase the percentage of female workers in education and health care to 60 percent by 1961; (2) hire women instead of men for jobs women could handle; (3) open more daycare centers to accommodate working mothers’ needs; (4) increase the ratio of female students in higher education.5 How- ever, even though women’s enrollment in higher education actually in- creased, we should not read this plan as an achievement of gender equality in the workplace, for “there are disproportionately fewer women in other ‹elds, such as government, business management, engineering, or trade and ‹nance.”6

The state’s true motivation in encouraging women to join the collective labor force was to ‹ll the empty places that men had left when they joined the army. For North Korean men, it was “mandatory to serve the army for approximately ten years,” which created “more demand for a female work- force.”7 As marriageable men were serving the state long term, women’s marriage and pregnancy years were retarded accordingly. Thus, instead of having families of their own, women were driven out of the domestic sphere and into the public sphere, in such a radical manner as to make Helen Hunter note that “it is doubtful that any society has accomplished a more basic change in so short a time.”8 Because of the practical social demand for a female labor force, women’s emancipation from the domestic sphere was legitimized under the pretext of “achieving gender equality.”9 As Hunter points out: “In 1947, only 5 percent of industrial workers were women; by 1949, the number had jumped to 15 percent. By 1967, women accounted for almost half of the total workforce.”10

The of‹cial claim that full equality exists between the sexes was “pro- mulgated as law in the Law of Equality, enacted in July 1946 and later in- corporated into the Constitution of 1948. Under the law, North Korean women are guaranteed full equality ‘in every phase of life, including politi- cal, economic, and cultural life.’ ”11 Even though the government promised the same work privileges, wages, social security, and education as men, in practice, women are not paid comparable wages for essentially comparable work, and they are not promoted comparably.12

The actual gender discrimination in society notwithstanding, the image of working women in the public sphere was endorsed by the leadership for practical reasons of supplementing the labor force and paved the legitimate way for representing ideal women in revolutionary operas. Alongside the highly codi‹ed projection of a new male citizenry consisting of soldiers, peasants, workers, and intellectuals examined in the previous chapter, there

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 209

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

emerged a systematic depiction of working women as empowered national subjects in the revolutionary operas and other performance genres, yet they managed to retain visible markers of traditional femininity in all aspects of their bodily performances involving gestures, costumes, and action. The creation of ambidextrous women—working subjects as well as docile fe- males—is one of the most conspicuous innovations in North Korean arts.13

However, this process had its own set of dilemmas. The endorsement of women in the public sphere, as depicted in revolutionary operas, primarily aimed at utilizing women’s labor as a social resource. Emancipating women from the domestic sphere actually doubled their duties in the domestic and social spheres while keeping their rights status quo. The dilemma raised by the Marxist women question—that women’s rights could not become a so- cietal issue so long as women did not contribute to social production—had no solution in North Korea. Promoting a strong image of women whose existence extended beyond the domestic realm was part of the attempt to mobilize women as a labor force by creating an illusion of women’s libera- tion without addressing gender equality in the social and domestic areas. North Korea produced many statues and posters of armed women in the public sphere and replicated the images of female revolutionaries on stage and screen. Theater and ‹lm, together with other visual art forms, perpet- uated the impression of women’s liberation through countless repetition of images of the emancipated woman to the point that they became the real foundation of everyday life rather than a mere re›ection of it. The con›icted gender politics in North Korea, as expressed in revolutionary performances, is manifested on various planes, such as body politics, exper- imentation with sexuality, gaze, and fashion, which comprise iterative ques- tions about female protagonists’ making the physical move from the do- mestic to the public space.

Every major female character in North Korean propaganda perfor- mances bids farewell to the traditional family life bound in the domestic sphere. Crossing the boundary of that traditional life becomes a crucial step for character development, or more precisely, an inevitable rite of passage for female characters who become genuine protagonists. Stepping out of the inner domestic world for these women is a risky and occasionally deadly event. Nevertheless, it is a crucial moment that transforms these women into heroes, and one without which the task of revolution cannot be carried out. This is exempli‹ed by the female heroes Kkot-bun in Flower Girl, Mother in Sea of Blood, and Yeon-ok in True Daughter of the Party.

In fact, crossing the boundary between the domestic and the public not

210 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

only became the signature action of revolutionary heroines but also retroactively reshaped the female protagonists living in feudal times, before the twentieth-century revolutionary struggle. The North Korean perspec- tive actively cast the well-known folk heroines in a revisionist light, rein- venting them as belonging to the immediately recognizable paradigm of revolutionary heroes. Theater pieces and ‹lms set in feudal times galva- nized the heroism of women—the upper class as well as the lowest caste— to step out of the oppressive patriarchal household in search of social equal- ity and justice. While their crossing the boundary between domestic and public was evocative of their male counterparts who left traditional fathers for state fathers, it also paved the way for inventing traditions of revolu- tionary women in prerevolutionary times. Historical accuracy was never re- ally a concern for the producers of these performances, which allowed for anachronistic liberated working women in feudal times. At the same time, such creative moves allowed North Korean producers to claim the world of fantasy as a political terrain and to reinvent the world of legends, folktales, and the imagination in general according to immediately recognizable so- cialist ideals. Inventing the past in North Korean propaganda performances was inherently an ideological maneuvering.

Princess Seon-hwa,14 published in 1956, is one of the earliest known North Korean plays to feature an audacious female protagonist who is dri- ven equally by a sense of social justice and individual passion. This ‹ve-act play is based on the folk legend of the beautiful princess Seon-hwa, who was the third daughter of King Jinpyeong (?–632) of the Silla dynasty (BCE 57–935 CE). The legend that serves as the raw material for the play has lit- tle historical veracity, but reinvented by North Korea’s dramaturgical imag- ination, it centers on the princess’s daring acts of speaking against her father king—transgressing the absolute authority of her biological father, who is also the ruler of the feudal kingdom.

The dramatic tension erupts when a song spreads through the kingdom spreading rumors about the illicit nocturnal encounters between the princess and her secret admirer Seo-dong, who is a commoner from the neighboring kingdom of Baekje. Seo-dong claims to have met the princess and immediately fallen in love on a spring day when she came out to the ‹eld to watch blossoming ›owers. Shortly after, a raunchy folk song about their love affair spreads rapidly: “Princess Seon-hwa secretly fell in love with Seo-dong / She takes him into her quarters stealthily in the middle of the night.”15 The king becomes infuriated with his beloved daughter for having defamed the royal household, and issues an order to arrest and exe-

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 211

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

cute Seo-dong. Seon-hwa feels sympathy for the wrongly accused admirer and pleads for justice, only to be dismissed by the king. That night, she se- cretly helps Seo-dong escape and becomes enamored of the brave com- moner, turning groundless rumor into reality. For this act of betrayal, the princess is exiled deep into the mountains and is ‹nally sentenced to death, but just before she swallows poison sent to her by her father, Seo-dong ap- pears to rescue her and both live happily ever after as commoners.

Princess Seon-hwa appears as one who dares to speak the truth and chal- lenge the wrong assumptions of the ruler who wields boundless power. When the king orders the execution of Seo-dong, whose only crime con- sists of unbridled passion for the woman he cannot dream of having, Seon- hwa kneels before the king and pleads:

Father, Your Majesty, I have one wish to ask: I deserve to be punished a hundred times and more If I have ever defamed the lofty court and its people. But if you execute innocent people Under the pretext of carrying out law and justice And let the innocent Seo-dong die because of me He will become a ghost to haunt you. I implore you to value the lives of your people.16

The princess’s daring speech, which challenges the strict hierarchical power of the male ruler, is quite akin to what Foucault terms parrhesia, or “a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a speci‹c relation to truth through frankness.”17 The fearless speech involves the speaker’s courage and risk, since it is a daring act by a person of lower status frankly speaking about a person of higher status. It challenges the authority and power of one whose supremacy is undoubtedly predetermined by social agreement. In Fou- cault’s own words: “The orator who speaks the truth to those who cannot accept his truth, for instance, and who may be exiled, or punished in some way, is free to keep silent. No one forces him to speak, but he feels that it is his duty to do so.”18 In the North Korean propaganda tradition, one of the major risks the revolutionary heroes endure is the threat of punishment for speaking the truth about social injustice and inequality despite the grave danger frank speech imposes on them. Likewise, the princess’ parrhesic speech reserves her a place in the lineage of revolutionaries in North Ko- rean tradition. The female protagonist’s willingness to speak against the

212 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

ruler became a recurring motif in the plays and ‹lms of later years, am- pli‹ed with explicit reference to socialist revolutionary themes.

Princess Seon-hwa appears to promote antifeudalism in the guise of a ro- mantic legend from the past, but at the same time, the play also predicates the question of women’s emancipation on their crossing the boundary be- tween the domestic and the public. When Seon-hwa is found challenging the absolute order of her father, she is expelled from the household and goes into exile in the mountains. Only there, away from the repressive court life, does Seon-hwa succeed in transgressing her father’s order by refusing to swallow the poison. Instead, she starts a new life as a commoner, one of the people whose lives she holds dear in her heart. This event also indicates that she is now a working woman who has to participate in daily labor and provide for herself and the household—a point that is not literally stated but clearly implied in the text. Although the exile is not initiated by Seon- hwa herself, it nevertheless authenticates the play as populist, if not social- ist, by upholding a theme of oppressed women embarking on self-emanci- pating journeys by leaving home and adopting the commoner’s life—a recurring theme in the years to come.

However, this play occupies a unique position in the North Korean dra- matic repertoire by centering on a positive ruling-class protagonist. In the North Korean imagination, feudal kings were unreliable agents of social progress, which was the ground for justifying the advent of socialist state patriarchs. It is Seon-hwa’s gender that makes the process possible, since as a female, she is assigned a marginal place within feudal society, which allows for the subversion of the hierarchical order. This rather understated sub- version serves as a rehearsal for future revolutionary acts carried out by fe- male protagonists, showing the genealogy of the revolutionary heroines in North Korean performance traditions.

As opposed to Princess Seon-hwa, which centers on a ruling-class woman, Ryu Jong-dae’s musical Gye Wol-hyang (1957)19 evolves around the tale of Wol-hyang, a female courtesan who lived in the Joseon dynasty. Giseang, or courtesans, were the lowest of all women in the strict caste system of the Joseon dynasty and feudal Korea in general, since their profession directly violated the Confucian female virtue of serving only one man throughout their lifetime. In addition, gisaeng were located outside of the traditional family structure, the appropriate place for women of decency; hence the so- ciety’s contempt for this particular group of women.

Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that giseang was one of few pro-

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 213

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

fessions available to women in premodern Korea, and so allowed for the po- tential association with the socialist notion of the working class. Combined with their despised status in feudal society, gisaeng in a way constituted the working-classization of women upheld by the North Korean state. How- ever, gisaeng as a profession that capitalizes on female sexuality had to be ad- dressed and cleansed under the socialist imaginary, which nominally sup- pressed all forms of sexuality.

Set during the Japanese invasion of Korea known as the Imjin War (1592–93), the musical centers on a Pyongyang courtesan, Wol-hyang, who voluntarily offers herself to the Japanese general with the intention of help- ing to assassinate him, in a plot masterminded by a patriotic Korean gen- eral. However, the local Koreans—not being aware of her plan—excommu- nicate this already marginalized woman from society for serving the enemy who invaded their homeland. Only when she carries out her plan do these local folks come to project her as a national martyr. When she is arrested af- ter the assassination, she is tortured and sent to the execution ground. On the way to death, she recites the following farewell poem:

My homeland, where ›owers bloom and grasses are green under the sun’s rays! Prosper forever. I bid farewell to the people For whom I sacri‹ce my humble life.

No regrets can taint my departure. I’ve expelled the enemy. Bright sun shines on our homeland. All sorts of birds sing and thousands of ›owers bloom. When people’s laughter resounds in this land I will smile brightly even in my tomb.

Dear General, please take care of yourself and drag all our enemies into the deep blue seas of our southern shore so that this girl’s death will be avenged.20

The dying woman’s song exudes a sense of righteousness, which helps to canonize the lowly gisaeng as a sacri‹cial martyr. What brings this gisaeng of the Joseon dynasty closer to people living in contemporary North Korea who read the libretto or watch the musical performance21 are the speci‹c al- lusions in the song to Kim Il-sung, such as “bright sun shines on our home-

214 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

land” or “Dear General.” As mentioned in chapter 3, Kim Il-sung was the only person to whom the sun as image referred, an unmistakable solar sym- bolism of which the most explicit example is the Sun Festival, the of‹cial ti- tle of Kim Il-sung’s birthday celebration. Likewise, although “Dear Gen- eral” here primarily refers to the character who carries out the assassination of the Japanese enemy, it is the unmistakable appellation reserved in mod- ern times for the state leader. By sharing immediately decipherable phrases with general propaganda practices, the musical bridges the time gap be- tween the past and the present as well as laying claim on the past, which is now turned into a familiar terrain of socialist revolution.

Regarding gender relations, what deserves our particular attention is that it is the Korean general, not Wol-hyang, who ultimately assassinates the Japanese enemy. This general, whose image overlaps with that of Kim Il-sung, escapes after the assassination so that he can continue ‹ghting the enemies. This act is predicated on the voluntary self-sacri‹ce of Wol- hyang, who is left behind to face the deadly consequences. Women’s suffer- ing here not only is justi‹ed but also becomes a prerequisite for supporting the state leader’s public activities. Sexuality can be used as the means, so long as the ends signify the patriotic cause. While the only positive place- ment of women outside the traditional family is related to the process of so- cial awakening, the only allowed type of female sexuality is the one instru- mentalized to expunge enemies from the fatherland.

The lineage of revolutionary females leaving the domestic realm for the public reached full divergence from tradition in the 1970s, when revolu- tionary operas were produced to capture the essence of socialist struggle. This emphasis on grooming nationalistic socialism as being predicated on gender revolution also marked a shift from dramatizing the distant feudal past to galvanizing the immediate past—the Japanese colonial period, the time of Kim’s guerrilla resistance struggle—to motivate patriotism in the present. Accordingly, ideal female heroes in revolutionary operas were imagined as a ghastly exploited class, which set up a natural genealogical arc away from heroines of previous generations, such as Seon-hwa and Wol-hyang.

One common feature of female protagonists in revolutionary operas of the 1970s, such as Mother in Sea of Blood and Kkot-bun in Flower Girl, is that their domestic life within the traditional family is complicated by poverty and physical labor. In order to be righteous agents to carry out rev- olutionary tasks, these women have to come from the exploited and under- privileged class, so the condition of their domestic life is presented as di- vorced from material comfort. Nevertheless, they do not desire to leave the

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 215

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

household voluntarily; most of them desperately cling to the traditional family, which is doomed to disintegrate. When these women ‹nally step out of their traditional life, they nostalgically look back on it as a lost utopia that the male members of their family failed to protect. The life from which these females step out is depicted as an inevitable failure, but it is a neces- sary step since the family’s downfall propels the further development of the female characters.

The next step for these “homeless” female protagonists is to join the collective lives of the revolutionaries. Mother in Sea of Blood becomes a member of the secret resistance movement. She works in league with other women who also carry out risky tasks and contribute to the collective cause of revolution. In Flower Girl, when Kkot-bun’s brother is arrested by the Japanese police, she also steps out of the traditional household and travels to the jail where he is con‹ned. In the process, she encounters numerous compatriots who have lost family members to the Japanese colonial yoke. When they make a futile attempt to see their imprisoned relatives by putting in a request to the prison guards, these suffering people establish a sense of community by sharing painful feelings of loss as well as hatred to- ward the Japanese. Likewise, Yeon-ok in True Daughter of the Party lives among her comrades, whom she projects as her family sharing life and death on a battle‹eld.

This type of collective organization for women who have left their household makes their presence, and even their labor, socially visible. Transforming invisible labor into visible labor demonstrates that channel- ing individual labor into a social commodity to be used for the revolution- ary cause was an important agenda for the North Korean government. Women are reborn as a professional workforce when they leave the domes- tic realm and join the collective. What really matters is their ultimately joining the collective workforce so as to provide the society with more trained and professional skills.

Nevertheless, these women retain an auxiliary role as laborers, secondary to men. Women’s work in the public sphere is similar to their work in the domestic sphere: supplementary service to assist the more crucial missions carried out by men. And yet revolutionary operas project women’s leaving the traditional domestic role as a critical moment of political awakening.

As observed in the previous chapter about model citizens, the labor of all society’s members coalesces in the ultimate aim of glorifying the Party and its leader. The individual state leader is viewed through an extended per- spective of the nation-state, so the distinction between male and female, the

216 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

inside and outside of traditional family life, the individual and the collective, private and public blurs in the overarching effort of glorifying the state and its leader. Thus, combined with other factors such as body politics and ‹lmic manipulation of the gaze, women in revolutionary operas are made to represent the collective entity, indistinguishable from the male workforce but subordinate to the state patriarch and his party. Chen Xiaomei’s com- ment on the PRC’s issues of gendered labor resonates with the North Ko- rean case as well: “Once accounted a new life as a woman warrior, however, she is further distanced from womanhood by the fantasy that a new woman like herself can break away from the family structure that restricts women to their men and hence impairs women’s capacity to act together with other women. Although the existence of such women led the of‹cial press to as- sert that it was a historical fact that the revolutionary army was drawn from the people and was thus of the people and for the people, this political his- tory concealed the discursive practice that ruthlessly erased gender differ- ences to sacri‹ce female subjects to the agenda of the nation/state.”22

As in the PRC, stepping out of the domestic realm and joining the col- lective does not, for the most part, improve the quality of women’s lives in North Korea, even if their labor becomes part of the visible collective re- sources. However, the propaganda performances, through countless repeti- tions, created an impression that there is a continuum between life inside and outside the traditional family structure, a continuous realm of existence in which the private family life is negative and doomed to fail. By separat- ing the inner and outer spaces, these performances could deceptively por- tray the public space as the only legitimate place to invest collective energy in reconstructing the society and the nation. Caught between tradition and revolution, North Korean women in the end had to maintain the same Confucian virtues despite conspicuous political changes and social reforms.

Between Erotic and Heroic Gazes: Female Sexuality as State Property

Every ‹lm made by Sin Sang-ok has modi‹ed the way North Koreans think about ‹lm, but no work has revised the expressions of sexuality in cinema more than his 1984 ‹lm Love, Love, My Love. The ‹lm was Sin’s second cin- ematic attempt on the well-known tale of Chun-hyang—a heroine from the Joseon dynasty period famous for her beauty as well as un›inching loyalty to her husband. Twenty-three years earlier, in 1961 in Seoul, Sin Sang-ok and Choe Eun-hui collaborated on Seong Chun-hyang with Choe playing

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 217

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

the chaste namesake heroine. However, unlike this ‹rst production, which captured the pure virtues of Chun-hyang, the 1984 version bared the erotic male gaze, which has been rarely staged or screened in the history of North Korean performing arts.

GOVERNOR: Don’t be too polite and come here, closer. (Inspects Chun- hyang.) Oh, just as your reputation goes! You are neither too ›am- boyant nor too coquettish. I like your shy manners. I’ve seen many beauties throughout the country, and as they say, even the perfect- looking jade ball has hidden defects. Some beauties had noses that were too sharp, others had eyes that were too slanted. Everyone is bound to have some kind of defect, but no matter from which angle I look at you, you are just perfect. . . .

CHUN-HYANG: I am guarding my chastity while waiting for my husband. It is inappropriate for a married woman to entertain anyone else.

GOVERNOR: (Laughs and sings merrily.) Your face, your words, they are so lovely. You are beautiful both inside and outside. But youth is like an ephemeral ›ower. When you wither, no butter›y will visit you. So adorn yourself and serve my needs.

A corrupt governor’s tempting Chun-hyang to entertain him during her husband’s absence is a rare moment in North Korean performance history for its open expressions of male sexual desire and the objecti‹cation of fe- male sexuality. This scene featuring the conversation between Chun-hyang and the governor has traditionally been regarded as an emblem of Chun- hyang’s heroism and spirit of chastity, as was the case in The Story of Chun- hyang (Chun-hyangjeon, 1980), an orthodox North Korean ‹lm production of the same tale.

While The Story of Chun-hyang emphasizes the de‹ance of the female protagonist in guarding her loyalty and chastity and therefore introduces the encounter through her perspective, Sin’s ‹lm Love, Love, My Love achieves quite the opposite effect by accentuating the governor’s perspec- tive, the prurient gaze of the powerful male who scrutinizes the helpless Chun-hyang, the daughter of a lowly courtesan who belongs to a signi‹cantly lower caste than he. The bold expression of sexual desire em- bedded in the governor’s adulation of the heroine, using concrete physical imagery, was a striking subject for the screen in North Korea, where open statements of erotic desire were never a part of public discourse. Although the governor’s projection of Chun-hyang as a sexual commodity was sup-

218 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

posed to invite critical responses from audiences reviling him as the em- bodiment of corrupt feudal power, to what degree does this ideological safety belt hold back the viewers from identifying with the governor’s per- spective? How do the audience members check and balance their gazes to accord with Chun-hyang’s perspective, not with that of the governor? Do they always take the politically correct path and identify with the heroes? Or is there any possibility the spectators will identify with alternative, not of‹cially prescribed gazes?

The problem of the gaze is important in accessing theater and ‹lm, be- cause the relationship between the subject and the object is a hierarchical one that operates in a semiotic network of power. The problem of seeing involves the way actors relate to spectators, both within and outside of ‹lm, affecting characters’ relationships to one another and actors’ relationships to audiences of the ‹lm. Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” directly touches upon the power of spectators’ gaze within the visual network in ‹lm, which can be applied to both channels of visual communication previously outlined: “As an advanced representation system, the cinema poses questions of the ways the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking.”23

Mulvey renders Freud’s concept of scopophilia in explaining one of the pos- sible pleasures cinema can offer, as associated with “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze.”24 The well- known maxim “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” can be translated into a slightly modi‹ed version: “Power is in the eye of the beholder.”

On the opposite side of this power, there remains a question of whether the object of the gaze has any in›uence over its viewing subjects. This con- cerns whether the act of seeing is a reciprocal performance between the subject and the object of the gaze, or put more concretely, whether the po- sitions of “the one who sees” and “the one who is seen” are equivocal binary opposites that even allow exchange between them, ultimately implicating their inseparable roles in making the performance. To what degree do the actors and actions on stage/screen invite spectators to identify with them— or alienate them?

For further analysis of performances related to the hierarchical nature of gazes, dance historian Susan Manning’s case study on the dancer-spectator relationship of the early modern dance is useful. Having contemplated the critiques of both Ann Daly and Jane Desmond, who see kinesthesia and the projection of generalized ethnic racial types, respectively, as the quintessen- tial aspects of modern dance,25 Susan Manning derives her characterization

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 219

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

of early modern dance as a kinesthetic dismantling of the voyeuristic gaze and the projection of an essentialized notion of identity.26 Such a bifurcat- ing perspective on early modern dance, in my view, is helpful in illuminat- ing the complex dynamics of gaze involved in North Korean propaganda performances. Manning notes that “unlike the spectators of the nineteenth- century ballet, whether male or female, who rarely had direct experience of the movement techniques presented on stage, many female spectators of early modern dance did have such direct experience, which surely in- tensi‹ed their kinesthetic response to the performers they witnessed.”27

The spectators’ kinesthetic response allowed them to empathically experi- ence and identify with the dancer’s body on stage, or “to identify the dancer’s ›ow of bodily motion as re›ective of their own.”28

Applying the idea of kinesthetic power that brings performers and spec- tators closer to each other facilitates an understanding of the identi‹cation between the spectators and the performers involved in North Korean per- formances. Although these spectators were strongly encouraged to identify with the revolutionary heroes on stage and screen by emulating their polit- ical ideology, this does not mean that North Korean spectators had person- ally experienced dancing or singing techniques needed to experience kines- thesia in the sense described by Manning. But some limited, yet conspicuous, measures were taken to bring such performing skills closer to the audience.

The ‹rst example concerns dance. In order to increase the kinesthetic response from the audience, traditional dance, especially the court dance movements, were drastically simpli‹ed and altered. According to dance scholar Judy Van Zile, Korean court dances involve “moving elegantly through circle, square, and line formations . . . [W]ith arms frequently ex- tended sideward, the dancers walk, almost as if ›oating, while gently bend- ing and extending their knees. They punctuate their movements with ›icks of the wrist that gently propel their sleeves upward and outward.”29 These disciplined movements meant to perform elegance and beauty were modi‹ed in order to achieve simplicity and broad participation by the un- trained mass. From the early days of North Korean performing arts, there were multiple publications pertaining to the popularization of dance, the process of which was coterminous with expelling foreign elements and na- tionalizing dance forms while making this art accessible to nonspecialists. For instance, Kim Je-heung in 1957 wrote: “Traditional dance in the past was a cultural commodity exclusively patronized by the upper class. Under the auspicious protection of the party nowadays, it became the treasure of

220 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

the people.”30 He further goes on to mention that “hyangbalmu used to be a type of elegant dance performed usually by eight dancers, widely enjoyed by the royal court. Nowadays there can be more people participating in this performance.”31 Many traditional dance forms were made accessible to or- dinary people, accompanied by music typi‹ed into evocations of nationalis- tic themes, composed to ring familiar chords in the minds of the listeners.32

Thus, the viewers of dance productions were practicing some essential movements in everyday life on numerous occasions, including mass parades and evening balls for citizens during the Sun Festival, so the kinesthetic re- sponse would have been unavoidable. A second example is the revolution- ary songs found in theater and ‹lm productions, widely circulated via vari- ous publications for educational purposes, which were often sung during marches and parades, thus creating a strong connection between the spec- tators and the performers who demonstrated those songs in performances. In this area, it would be far-fetched to symmetrically apply Mulvey’s view on the one-sided ›ow of in›uence—from spectators to desired object of the gaze. Another paradigm is needed to explain the ›ow in the opposite direc- tion—from performing subjects to spectators—as well.

Ostensibly, the gaze of the spectators cast onto performing subjects was not supposed to be based on erotic pleasure, but rather on mutual under- standing of the same choreographic, musical, and ideological templates. Generated from the common movements familiar to both parties, these templates were designed to consolidate as tangible reality the projected im- age of the utopian nation. The mutual ›ow of in›uences between the view- ing subject and the viewed object based on both the principles of voyeuris- tic gaze and kinesthesia was designed to emerge from—and contribute to—a larger manipulative scheme of creating essential ideals of national identity, which was nonexistent in reality.

In revolutionary operas, there are frequent moments when the screen montage demonstrates a visual hierarchy, with the patriotic ‹gure almost always occupying the center and the villains pushed to the periphery. In popular productions, the central heroic ‹gures are often women, as in Sea of Blood and Flower Girl. What is noticeable is the dramatic transformation of the female characters during the play. In the beginning, these women appear as powerless victims of historical turmoil and social injustice, espe- cially as potential candidates for sexual exploitation by the landed class. In the ‹lm version of Flower Girl, Kkot-bun has to endure the possibility of being sold as a concubine to the landlord if her family does not manage to pay their debt. In True Daughter of the Party, Yeon-ok may have to endure

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 221

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

sexual harassment and degradation if she is captured by the enemy during the war.

However, they overcome the challenges imposed on them and join the imagined family unit, often composed of newfound friends, such as Com- munist Party comrades and members of the anti-Japanese guerrilla move- ment. In the process of transforming from hapless victims of predatory males, the female characters turn from passive objects of the erotic gaze to active holders of the heroic gaze, exerting in›uence on their onlookers as models to be emulated.

But what about the erotic gaze of the governor that scrutinizes Chun- hyang in Love, Love, My Love? No matter how discouraged the spectators may be from identifying with the villainous character, does he not provide a chance for them to have a stealthy glance at the lost world of open sexual expression, to sneak a rare moment of erotic pleasure? How did the North Korean producers try to prevent this from happening?

Artistic expression to exclude any kind of eroticism from heroism in North Korean performances mandated that the female characters call forth a feeling of heroism in the viewers via kinesthetic responses. To ensure that female characters and performers do not incite erotic pleasures, almost all the female protagonists in orthodox propaganda performances are pro- jected in familial relationships, as mothers, sisters, and daughters of other heroic characters, and since spectators were supposed to identify with he- roes, as family members of spectators as well. To feel sexual desire for kin would open up the forbidden path of incestuous attraction, and this famil- ial setup became the ultimate device to discourage any erotic gazes from falling on female characters. Many revolutionary heroines are introduced in ‹lms or ‹lmed theater productions via close-ups at the moment of their po- litical awakening, which glorify equally their physical power and ideological achievement. These ‹lm phrases are by no means associated with an eroti- cizing gaze; rather, the semantic dominance is put on women’s physical strength and heroic gestures.

As part of an effort to effectively convey the idea of heroic women, the producers of revolutionary operas and performances endowed elderly women with crucial roles. Elderly women often occupy roles as central as their younger counterparts in establishing heroic images of women, such as the mother in Sea of Blood. In contrast to the younger women whose physi- cal qualities involuntarily open up possibilities of attracting the spectators’ attention, these elderly women have the double merit of being asexual and female. Thus, much as the younger women of the revolutionary class be-

222 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

came visible to the public eye, elderly women became a pervasive social icon to be viewed by the entire nation. The venerable construction of these women’s image induces what Manning calls kinesthetic response from the audience, inspiring heroic deeds in the spectators, who were supposed to identify themselves with the female protagonists on stage and screen.

For instance, the plot of Sea of Blood centers on Mother’s transformation from an ordinary housewife to a revolutionary hero. Her political awakening is the dramatic climax of the production, the only revolutionary opera in which the mother ‹gure becomes the only and true protagonist. The produc- tion is a strong reminder of the Soviet ‹lm Mother (1926), based on Maksim Gorkii’s novel (1907) and directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin, which was later adapted by Bertolt Brecht into a stage play Die Mutter (1932).33 The Soviet ‹lm was translated into Korean and introduced to North Korea in 1955.34

The two ‹lms show striking parallel images of Mother ‹rmly standing up against oppression, in which the position of the camera is signi‹cantly lower than her eye level. In addition, Mother in both ‹lms glances to the far distance with an expression of purposefulness, showing her heroic determi- nation to lead the people on the revolutionary path. As a result of this cam- era arrangement, the spectators are forced to adopt a worshiper’s point of view, looking at an object that inspires awe and veneration. This is a preva- lent point of view that pedestrians were made to adopt when strolling on the streets of the Soviet Union, prior to its downfall, or in the present PRC and North Korea, where gigantic statues of revolutionary leaders, peasants, and soldiers on high pedestals subdue spectators and force them to look up to their majestic presence. The mother’s glance in Sea of Blood dictates that spectators follow her lead, and thereby establishes a strong bond between performer and viewer, which diametrically opposes the class enemy’s eroti- cizing gaze.

As observed, both young and elderly women work in tandem to establish the heroic female image in the eyes of spectators. By posing as the object of the social gaze, women, young or old, establish for themselves the notion that they are merely tools for accomplishing the objective of the revolution, and in more concrete terms, as Chen notes, they consolidate the unchal- lengeable authority of Kim Il-sung.

However, to end my analysis at this level would explain only half the story regarding the dynamics involved in gazes. What about the villains’ lurid gazes cast upon female protagonists in various performances? Al- though sexually charged gazes are exclusively assigned to villains, do they ever become an alternative to the politically correct gaze for spectators

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 223

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

looking at stage and screen heroes in propaganda performances? In explor- ing this question, Mulvey’s idea of predominantly male-oriented spectators’ gaze has to be scrutinized once again: is there any possibility the spectators, both male and female, view these vulnerable females with the same eroti- cizing gaze as some malevolent male characters do within the ‹lm? Can young female protagonists, who are supposed to incite heroism among viewers, accidentally provoke sexual desire instead?

The ambiguous representation and reception of some female protago- nists, such as Chun-hyang, whose performance could be construed as both sexual and heroic, is a complex question in North Korea, which of‹cially dismisses eroticism as an expressive vehicle for revolutionary struggle. In principle, the state-sponsored art practice, which is arguably the only art practice in North Korea, attempted to cleanse itself of any sexualizing ex- pressions. But as ironic as it may sound, art endorsed and sponsored by the state is the only sphere where members of the society can explore the clan- destine visual pleasure of the sexualized gaze, since any form of art express- ing individual erotic desires does not openly exist for public consumption.35

Even though state-sponsored art is not in the least intended to evoke sexual desire in the spectators, there may be gaps and ‹ssures through which cer- tain aspects of tantalizing engagement with sexual allusion are manifested in revolutionary operas and other propaganda ‹lms.36

These clandestine gazes are fundamentally differentiated from the 1950s amateur dramas romanticizing the countryside in that the country- side dramas openly used sexual tropes to address augmenting agricultural productivity. The stealthy sexual gazes currently under discussion are also distinguished from the conspicuously sexualizing gazes: while the conspic- uously sexualizing gaze of the governor in Love, Love, My Love does not al- low any disconnection between his intent to seduce Chun-hyang (signi‹ed by the gaze) and his action, there may be a discrepancy between the intent of the propaganda producers to invoke heroism by creating a exchange of heroic gazes between the heroes and viewers and the sexual effect these scenes inadvertently have on the audience. Chen has noted a case study on the PRC’s yangbanxi (model theater works)37 quite similar to that of North Korea: “Model theater contributed one of the most ingenious examples of the patriarchal appropriation of women’s bodies to serve as the beautiful object of the gaze. The sexualizing elements of women’s bodies—their hair, poses, and wounds—were cleverly employed to popularize the glori‹ed power of the great man. Women’s bodies became a social, institutionalized language and an open space for cultural signi‹cation.”38

224 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

The subtly sexualized expressions of the female body situated as the beau- tiful object of the gaze may also describe what the viewers see in Chun-hyang. Her vulnerability, accentuated by the sexualizing gaze of the governor, ulti- mately glori‹es the power of the male leader, that is, her husband, who is ab- sent while his helpless wife is threatened, tortured, and condemned to death for refusing to comply with the governor’s request. But he nevertheless comes back just before Chun-hyang’s execution to ›aunt his masculinity. The weak- ened, abused, and emaciated body of Chun-hyang is presented to the hus- band as a trophy dedicated to the shrine of his ebullient ego, decorated with his wife’s chastity and self-sacri‹ce. The appropriation of Chun-hyang’s tor- tured body, beaten up and disarranged to expose her very human nature (she has a superhuman will to resist fear and temptation, but her body bleeds like the rest of us), quite possibly invites sadistic imagination from onlookers. In- tentionally or not, the gaze of the governor may open the opportunity for male spectators to indulge in the stealthy pleasure of projecting themselves as full-›edged males in a society where their masculinity is compromised by their demotion to the status of children of the state fathers.

It is undeniable that Chun-hyang incites heroism in viewers by creating a strong ideological rapport concerning loyalty and resistance, but this type of politically sanguine gaze is not the only gaze involved in viewing the ‹lm. Just as women’s transition from tradition to revolution has been framed by their enduring role in the Confucian patriarchy, so women’s sexuality on stage and screen is trapped in the vague and largely unexplored zone cre- ated by the overlap between heroism and eroticism, with the only clear ele- ment in this diagram being that women’s sexuality, no matter from which angle it is regarded, belongs to the state as its rightful property.

Women’s sexuality as state property, malleable to instrumentalization and transformation, succumbs to the hierarchy of the North Korean state, which prioritizes public over private, collective over individual. In The Story of Chun-hyang (1980), which is much more astringently regulated in terms of sexual expressions than Shin’s Love, Love, My Love, the issue of the own- ership of female sexuality is brought to the forefront in the dialogue be- tween Chun-hyang and the governor. When Chun-hyang keeps insisting on guarding her chastity, the governor ‹nally loses his patience and shouts:

GOVERNOR: Nonsense! Although the moon went hiding behind the clouds, it still is the moon. You pretend you are a woman guarding her chastity, but you are still who you are. Stop teasing me and hurry up to move in and serve me.

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 225

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

CHUN-HYANG: I implore you to stop saying those meaningless things and instead pay attention to people’s livelihood.

GOVERNOR: (Laughs.) Pay attention to people’s livelihood? ATTENDANT: It’s none of your business to worry about, and the governor

will take good care of people. You just listen to what he tells you. If you refuse his invitation too many times, it will not be good for you. You’d better attend to his needs while he is charmed.

CHUN-HYANG: I am not a courtesan but a chaste wife who is waiting for her husband to return.

GOVERNOR: (Enraged.) What nonsense! ATTENDANT: You are only the daughter of a lowly courtesan! And to say

that you are guarding your chastity is too absurd! CHUN-HYANG: What law mandates that all daughters of courtesans

should be courtesans, and what law mandates that women of lowly classes are not entitled to guard their chastity? I’ve never heard that only high-class women should guard their chastity.

GOVERNOR: What? CHUN-HYANG: You are a governor who should look after the people. Why

is it that you want to ignore common ethical understanding and vio- late a married woman?

This lengthy conversation between the lowly daughter of a courtesan and the highest of‹cial in town is more politically charged than a parallel scene in Sin’s Love, Love, My Love. The orthodox North Korean version features a carnivalesque inversion on various levels: the conventional division be- tween man and woman as respectively being in charge of the public and the private domain seems to have been shattered. Although Chun-hyang’s grave concern as a married woman is to keep her chastity, at the same time, she keeps reminding the governor of the Confucian virtues he should abide by as an of‹cial, such as wise governance of the people and protection of the common ethics. By doing so, she emerges as the guardian of these values of public service.

On the contrary, the governor, a public servant, is motivated by his per- sonal desire in pressing Chun-hyang, thus prioritizing private matters over public and betraying his duties as a male ruler. Added to this inversion of conventional gender roles is the con›ation of the frivolous with the serious. Chun-hyang as the daughter of a courtesan inadvertently inherits the duty to entertain and thus induce smiles in her patrons. However, it is the governor who instead ful‹lls the role of jester. When Chun-hyang speaks, the camera

226 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

provides a close-up to capture the seriousness of her expression—a typical ‹lm phrase reserved for revolutionary heroes in the North Korean tradi- tion—whereas the governor’s speech is always captured in medium shots that feature not only the governor but also the clownlike attendant who mimics what the governor says. The persistent juxtaposition of serious and intense close-ups and clumsy medium shots makes viewers identify with Chun-hyang, who emerges as the true heroine at the end of this sequence.

As the verbal duel continues, unrelenting Chun-hyang even more dar- ingly corrects the governor’s stance by pointing out his confusion over eth- ical principles and his compromise of ethics for personal gain.

CHUN-HYANG: (Cuts him short.) Of low caste I may be, but I am not a prostitute.

GOVERNOR: How dare you speak! CHUN-HYANG: There is neither loftiness nor lowness in women’s chastity,

just as there is not in men’s loyalty. When our country is subjected to great misfortune by the invasion of horri‹c thieves, would you serve the thieves just because you are afraid of them? Would you serve two lords?

Chun-hyang de‹es the governor by preaching that her chastity is rather a matter of public morality than an object of an individual’s fantasy, while the governor relies on the implied logic of viewing his sexual desire as the will of a public servant, which should take precedence over this individual’s de- sire to guard her chastity. Although their points of view diverge, one per- spective that both Chun-hyang and the governor share is the notion of fe- male chastity as belonging to a discourse involving the state: for Chun-hyang, wives’ loyalty to men is a clear allegory of men’s loyalty for the state; for the governor, women’s sexuality should be in service of the state and its of‹cials.

Thus, two diametrically opposed characters—a villain and a heroine— surprisingly arrive at the same conclusion regarding the place of women’s chastity and sexuality at large. Both Chun-hyang and the governor regard female sexuality as a matter in which the state should be involved. Such a perspective surely embodied the prevailing ideas and practices of the state, which carefully engineered women’s sexuality for its own bene‹t. The erotic and heroic gazes that de‹ned the reception of performances featur- ing female sexuality, or lack of sexuality, entered a realm of public dis- course through fashion as well, shaping the normative as well as clandes-

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 227

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

tine desires for ideal female bodies, a fashioning that will be explored in the next section.

Fashioning the Socialist Utopia

North Korea is a fashion-conscious39 nation where political leaders strive to dress its people through rigid regulations, imposing uniforms on various social sectors and systematically recommending certain designs to civil- ians.40 North Korean leaders have issued numerous statements with an in- tention of promoting fashion as a national project meant to groom ideal corporeality and build national strength through centrally monitored prac- tices. Both Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il have predicated their ideas about national strength and bodily well-being on sartorial projects.41 In this process, visual arts, including theater, ‹lm, and posters played a seminal role in constructing and propagating the ideal bodily image of women through fashion codes.

Anyone investigating North Korean women’s fashion is bound to make a discovery about the bifurcation of femininity. While some other socialist and authoritarian states glori‹ed masculine clothing as a preferred means to represent revolutionized women,42 North Korean fashion has continuously explored and expressed degrees of femininity, seemingly contradicting the astringent revolutionary spirit often identi‹ed with masculinity. The vary- ing visual representations of traditional femininity and state-organized so- cialist ideals predicated on masculinity collide in North Korea, marking a unique sense of fashion for women clearly distinguished from its closest neighbors—the PRC, the former Soviet Union,43 and South Korea.

Still retaining the traditional Confucian ideals of a male-centered soci- ety, the North Korean leadership perceived women as a national project distinguished from men, which meant forging different corporeal practices for two genders. The PRC presents an interesting comparison. Chinese historian Tina Mai Chen has pointed out that “since the early twentieth century, liberated body parts represented new sociopolitical and gendered visions of China, but these visions tended to be imagined on the bodies of women by male intellectuals or masculinized political parties.”44 As with the PRC’s conception, in North Korea the notion that femininity is a gift be- stowed on national subjects by the state, or more speci‹cally, by male state leaders, provided the ground for forging and regulating gendered bodily practices within national subjects. However, North Korean female fashion

228 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

constituted distinctive practices, quite unlike practices during the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where genderless body expression made it dif‹cult to delineate differences between male and female fashions.45

There is no shortage of representations of the ideal body in a North Ko- rean visual media, including stage productions, ‹lms, magazine illustra- tions, paintings, and posters. My aim is to present a critical overview of North Korea’s body politics by exploring how the new idealized vision of women was produced and consumed from the 1950s to the present. Fash- ion in visual media manifests the central ideological issues that the state wanted to present as tangible models of disciplining its people. Jane Gaines’s observation that costumes in ‹lms “primarily work to reinforce narrative ideas”46 is pertinent to understanding the North Korean case, as dress codes became an entry point to materializing the ideology involved in bodily practices. But more signi‹cantly, like fashion, visual media in North Korea are not merely objects of consumption, but by far the most impor- tant form of communication. Their functions are wide in scope—they edu- cate, entertain, and mobilize people. In a society where ideals shape reality itself, the way in which visual images are coordinated and circulated is far from being spontaneous. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that vi- sual media in North Korea set the parameters of available fashion choices.

In North Korea, images of women on stage and screen, in photos and posters function not only as the objects of visual consumption, but also as concrete models to emulate, thus imposing on viewers the desire to produce ideal bodily presentations. Examining the dress codes of female protago- nists on stage and screen illuminates how the state set out to craft ideal fe- male bodies as constantly navigating between revolutionary masculinity and traditional femininity.47 Taking into consideration that daily practices in civilian sectors are by no means formulated accidentally, it would not be far- fetched to claim that such practice would have been impossible without a state endorsement of women’s fashion that the leadership saw as bene‹cial to managing the state.

Although North Korea is a tightly controlled nation across its political structures and cultures, its women’s fashion is as diverse as anywhere else in the world. At a ‹rst glance, there is nothing conspicuously socialist about North Korean women’s fashion. Most North Korean women wear their hair in elegant perms at shoulder length, while younger schoolgirls wear girlish braids, creating a stark contrast to the genderless hairdo and cloth- ing of the PRC during the Cultural Revolution. The ubiquitous femininity

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 229

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

in hairstyles is paralleled by clothing; most women wear skirts instead of trousers, and even in military uniforms, feminine traits are distinctively marked by the preference for skirts.

Such distinctively feminine manifestations in women’s fashion come about as a result of a code shift from colonial modernity to nationalistic joseonot and then military uniform to a more eclectic mixture of styles. Each fashion paradigm re›ected different stages of state-led reforms and social agendas as the North Korean policy toward women changed over time. However, these fashion codes nowadays do not exist as separate signi‹ers of consecutive time periods, but rather as synchronous manifestations of eclectic styles expressing various degrees of ideal femininity accumulated over time. I trace back three stages of fashion development that yielded foundations for contemporary North Korean women’s fashion codes: joseonot of the 1960s, promotion of military uniforms in the 1970s, and the mix of fashion codes that has risen since the 1980s.

Away with Colonial Legacies: Joseonot as a New Socialist Fashion Code

With the success of post–Korean War reconstruction efforts, beginning from the 1960s, the North Korean leadership had a chance to view the im- portance of fashion as a marker of a new socialist state.48 Fashion became an instrument to mark historical periods that separated past and present; the way people dressed under the oppressive feudal culture of the past and the liberating socialist culture of the present featured irreconcilable differences in the North Korean imagination. On November 16, 1961, only two months after the Fourth Party Convention, during which Kim Il-sung emerged as an unchallenged leader of North Korea, Kim gave a speech at the National Meeting of Mothers in which he criticized a few women in the past “who went about dressed to kill and wearing fancy hats” and stated that “these women have been removed from their posts and the ranks of the Women’s Union.”49 Kim uses fashion codes to sort out the corrupting ele- ment within North Korea as remnants of the pre–North Korean colonial stage. The increasing stability North Korea achieved in the 1960s created an occasion to look at its internal dissent and gage the standards of bodily correctness predicated on fashion. In the same speech Kim inscribed cor- rect ways of life that were emblemized in fashion codes: “How can Women’s Union work be conducted by the so-called enlightened women if they are ignorant of the factory and rural life and only know how to apply

230 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

make-up and hair curlers? To tell the truth, it is not so essential to have curly hair and wear pretty dresses, and neither are these things dif‹cult to learn. Even rural women can learn these things easily once they are taught.”50 What deserves particular attention here is the historical develop- ment of women’s clothing in Korea that led to this moment in 1961, when certain fashion codes were marked as a bad example to be openly derided in public. Kim Il-sung’s disparaging remarks about certain fashion types coun- teract the distinctively marked working bodies of laborers and farmers—the ideal citizenry of the newly established North Korea. Concretely described as “make-up,” “hair curlers,” “pretty dresses,” and “fancy hats,” these para- phernalia would surely interfere with backbreaking work on collective farms and in factories. Retaining distinctively Western features, this nega- tive fashion type, in addition to countering proletarian working bodies, de‹es the ethnocentric look of Korean women’s traditional dress. Western fashion codes such as these were introduced preceding, but mostly during, the Japanese colonial period and were regarded by many as compromising national purity. As Susie Kim has illustrated, Western sartorial norms, which encroached upon a segment of the Korean population at the turn of the nineteenth century, were ‹ltered through ambiguous encounters be- tween Korea and Western culture, often framed through the Japanese sen- sibility of the West. Kim points out that women’s fashion reform was car- ried out particularly by female students who had an exposure to the new ideas of womanhood through education abroad and at newly established modern schools in Korea where they could vicariously experience the ideals of the West.

The movement during the colonial era to reform traditional dress into a more functional dress code was not only motivated by a practical sense that Western-style dress would permit better mobility, but more signi‹cantly, by a symbolic order that promulgated the idea that Western clothing was a gesture toward civilization in the globalizing economy and in cultural trends. Western-in›uenced fashion codes ‹ltered by colonial modernity were in most cases accepted by educated upper-class women, whom the state labeled as oppressive bourgeoisie: “So-called sinyeoseong (New Women) could partake in this new material culture insofar as their social standing and economic means, often through their wealthy families, would permit it.”51

These fashion codes had to be eradicated from women’s wardrobe as remnants of the colonial past and the cultural traits of the enemy class, the bourgeoisie. The spirit that guided this process was akin to that during the

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 231

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Chinese Republican era, when clothing reform was viewed “as a rite of eth- nic rehabilitation that would expunge . . . ignominy and reinvigorate the na- tion to redress its recent humiliation.”52 Out of erasure of sartorial markers for colonial modernity rose new clothing norms for socialism, which sug- gested an alternative to Western garments that came to Korea through the corrupt Japanese ‹ltering of culture.

As the nascent North Korean leadership envisioned it, the new socialist era’s departure from the past would not necessarily mean devising a brand- new dress code, but restoring the clothing details found in the sacred mem- ories of the leader’s household during the anti-Japanese struggle in 1930s Manchuria. The of‹cial North Korean historiography, assisted by visual media such as paintings and photos, persistently cultivated the idea that Kim Il-sung’s family embodied the epitome of national purity by resisting the Japanese aggressors. Although many historians have argued that Kim Il- sung’s father attended a Christian school and was an obscure ‹gure in the Korean independence movement, North Korean history tells a different version of his life as sacri‹ced in prison for the cause of rebelling against the Japanese colonizers. Oxymoronic as it may sound, North Korea’s brand of socialist modernity and progress found its prerogative in traditional dress codes rather than the preceding colonial period, when modernity for women meant more westernized garments—a marker standing for non- working bodies.

An alternative to the corrupting feminine bodily practice of the past was designed in an old-fashioned mold: the traditional Korean dress joseonot be- came the new signature code for women under the socialist state. Since a large number of women were still wearing this traditional dress, having failed to accept Western clothing during the colonial period, no thorough dress reform was required to promote this dress type. A poster (see ‹g. 36) from the National Archives and Records Administration, dating between the late 1940s and early 1950, features a motherly ‹gure who is immersed in amending clothing. The caption at the bottom (“Let Us Be Well Pre- pared for Winter!”) urges viewers to prepare for the upcoming cold. The frugal nature of this slogan is mirrored by her modest traditional dress, which marks her body as enduring hardship akin to that experienced by Kim Il-sung’s mother. Like Gang Ban-seok, the woman in this poster wear- ing joseonot embodies working-class ethics through the ethnically prescribed dress code, and thereby becomes a state-endorsed antidote to the corrupt- ing markers of the colonial past.

As the state perceived it in the early 1960s, the ideal North Korean

232 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

women’s bodily presentation attired in traditional form was the corrective to the immediate past of Japanese colonial rule, which had disgraced na- tional dignity. The state’s promotion of modi‹ed joseonot was predicated on a nationalistic dress code borrowed from traditional sartorial motifs that emphasized modest feminine beauty and virtue. In the following descrip- tion of joseonot published in 1960, the author attributes distinctive national- istic qualities to joseonot as essentially different from styles of other nation- alities: “People say the Korean women’s dresses with the pleated chima (skirt) and short jeogori (jacket) are simple, but they have a charm of ele- gance and harmony. The jeogori has a white dongjeong (neckpiece), and the beoseon (footwear) is also white. Korean women usually wear white shoes.

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 233

Figure 36. A poster produced between the late 1940s and the early 1950s by the North Korean Culture and Propaganda Bureau urging North Koreans to be well prepared for winter. (Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.)

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

The beauty of their dress is in their graceful lines, not in ›ashy colors. As a matter of fact, Korean women prefer delicate or pastel shades for their dresses, as if to symbolize the virtue that they have preserved throughout the long history of Korea.”53 The essentialist quality emphasized in the dress code recurs throughout the decade, as seen in the anonymous article titled “Characteristics of Korean Women’s Clothing” (“Joseon nyeoseong uisang-ui teukseong”), where the speci‹cities of Korean women’s fashion are grafted onto ethnically marked body types.

Korean women’s clothing is designed to suit the special physiological needs of our Korean women. Short jackets and long skirts—this is the basic style that embellishes feminine beauty. Skirts that start above the waistline ending at a length covering the knees make one slim so as to enhance the elegant personality of the wearer. Short jackets that barely cover the armpit make one’s face look simple and dapper while revealing the chaste nature of the wearer. A tightly designed jacket and wide skirt, when worn together, complement each other to create harmony. . . . Ko- rean women’s clothing is as practical as it is beautiful, for it re›ects the frugal spirit of the Korean people. The end of sleeves and neck area of the jacket are always prone to wear and tear, and by using different cloth and color for these areas, one does not have to throw away the whole jacket because it is possible to retain the decent part of the jacket while replacing the old part with new fabric.54

The explanation ‹rst takes the corporeal distinction of Korean women as a primary factor for shaping joseonot into certain design patterns, which in turn re›ect the frugal nature of their wearer. The clothing here transcends the material level so as to mark distinctive national traits and become a con- duit that connects the ethnically distinctive body types with essentialist na- tional characteristics of Korean women.

The modest beauty of joseonot, which was repeatedly emphasized in the quotations previously reviewed, was supposed to bear subtle color schemes well harmonized with the environment. To North Koreans in the 1970s, the color scheme of joseonot should present the idea of female modesty and chastity, and in this sense, visual media were particularly concerned with how the costumes were chromatically coordinated within themselves as well as with the surrounding environment. The color coordination was not merely an aesthetic concern, but ultimately touched upon the realm of ide- ology. A 1963 article by theater critic Hwang Guang-hyeon exempli‹es this

234 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

point. Hwang touched upon color and clothing in tandem in his review of the children’s musical ‹lm Our Flower Garden: “Color on screen plays an important role in enriching ideological themes. Colors affect both the vi- sual and psychological realms and produce various effects in the viewer’s mind. Therefore the various identities of the viewers—race, age, knowl- edge, sex, and health—bring in various emotional responses to different colors.”55 Far from being a peripheral element, color, according to this pas- sage, is an essential collaborator in determining the emotional responses of certain demographics. Hwang consequently insists that “colors should be organically coordinated with each other, and also with other elements of ‹lm, such as music and dance.”56 He goes on to lament that Our Flower Garden used too many colors without appropriate coordination, especially in a scene (see ‹g. 37) that featured “a motley of ›owers, grass, trees, but- ter›ies, which clashed with the colors of the protagonists’ clothing. Inap-

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 235

Figure 37. A scene from children’s musical film Our Flower Garden. Cover page of Joseon Yeonghwa 6 (1963). (Photo by Park Gyeong-un.)

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

propriate color coordination distracted viewers from the jolly mood created by the dance and music and instead distracted the viewer’s attention.”57

What is not clearly stated in this quotation, but certainly implicated in the criticism, is that the protagonist in question was wearing joseonot, which should re›ect the subtle and elegant beauty of the Korean people. In this respect, Hwang’s criticism not only targets the misuse of color, but also the disruption it creates in establishing joseonot’s mission of expressing a modest and subtle nationalistic ethos.

Another example from a revolutionary opera illustrates the need to co- ordinate joseonot with the surrounding environment. The Song of Geumgang Mountain shows chorus girls in dresses rehearsing their song and dance for the performance competition. The girls’ bodies in joseonot in this scene cre- ate a seamless harmony with the idealistic national landscape. Geumgang Mountain for North Koreans is tourist space boasting scenic beauty and idyllic recreation.

However, the representation of traditional joseonot in this production did not preclude a socialist ethos and visions of modernity in a revolutionized North Korea. Quite the contrary, the female bodies displaying joseonot be- come active interlocutors with the dress code of the new socialist state. Tra- dition, in this particular situation, is not regarded as remnants of the feudal past, but a rich reservoir where nationalism could be reinstated in the ser- vice of the new socialist state. In The Song of Geumgang Mountain, the girls wearing joseonot appear as necessary mediators of tradition and revolution, past and future. The female protagonist travels back and forth between the countryside and Pyongyang, mediating disparate national spaces. In the end, she is reunited with her father, who was separated from the family dur- ing the Japanese colonial period. Her traditional dress in this production symbolizes restoration of the family, which can be seen as the restoration of a nation at large. Joseonot acquires a timeless quality embodying essential Korean values as it mediates disparate times and places.

In light of joseonot’s ability to articulate different values and sectors of na- tional life, Joseon Nyeoseong (North Korean Women) in 1960 featured a collage of photos of smiling North Korean women in joseonot. In the background are factory chimneys and a tractor on a farm (see ‹g. 38). This traditional women’s look, which is usually identi‹ed with domestic space, was brought to the front line of industrial and agricultural production—the very heart of socialist reconstruction. The juxtaposition of what seem to be incongruous elements of tradition and modernity marks joseonot as the dress of North Korean women under the new nation. Nevertheless, these well-groomed

236 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

women in joseonot are placed as pleasant embellishments of the social recon- struction rather than the main force of production, a beautiful garnish to the rising economy, just like the ›owers they hold in their hands.

Why, then, is there such ambiguity in women’s bodily performances? Why are women depicted as mediators between past and present, tradition and revolution? For one thing, North Korean men do not wear traditional Korean clothing, and are not encouraged to master feminine virtues—nei- ther in theatrical representations nor in everyday life. It is only women who must confront this double standard, mastering the performance of both gender roles.

Two major reasons account for such a practice: The obvious reason can be found in North Korea’s pursuit of juche ideology, which is generally

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 237

Figure 38. Cover of the August 1960 issue of the magazine Joseon Nyeoseong (North Korean Women).

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

translated as “self-reliance” or “independence.” This ideology, known to be Kim Il-sung’s theoretical work, was adopted in international politics for ad- vocating the ideological independence of Third World nations. But as Park Han notes: “Juche views Korea as a chosen land, as people are told consis- tently that world civilization originated from the Korean Peninsula.”58 As a way of practicing this extreme ethnocentric viewpoint, North Korean women did not completely substitute their traditional Korean dress for Western-style dress. While this line of explanation points to why traditional dresses were widely encouraged, it does not explain why only women had to demonstrate “Koreaness” through their bodily expression, thus requiring another explanation.

Throughout most of Korean history, social roles that integrated women into state politics were largely absent, especially during the Joseon dynasty. Yun Mi-ryang notes that from the early days of the North Korean state leading up to the consolidation of Kim Il-sung’s leadership in the early 1960s, there were systematic attempts to promote women as aggressive rev- olutionary ‹ghters, but such policies eventually gave way to more tradi- tional approaches that emphasized the domestic virtues of women, who were now seen as mothers and wives—docile subjects of state discipline.59

Thus, for women suddenly to become revolutionary warriors under the North Korean state meant that they had to master new roles with which they were entirely unfamiliar. If women were to master military roles, they would have to abandon their familiar persona as domestic housewives and attempt to personify something they were not. No matter how intensively visual media created simulacra of female warriors, this impersonation would have presented a tough challenge for North Korean women, since the gap between them and the theatricalized characters was so wide. If everyday life is so distanced from represented reality, then visual media’s ability to present a credible model of everyday life becomes diminished. The North Korean state intended ordinary women’s experience of watch- ing revolutionary women in media productions to involve a strong degree of empathy and identi‹cation.

For this reason, the North Korean state needed to create an intermedi- ary procedure that would enable everyday women to identify with women on the stage. By creating an ideal woman in real life, the North Korean pro- paganda productions could convince ordinary viewers that ideal women ex- ist not only on stage, but also in everyday life. The lives of these historical characters were forged into narratives in the liminal zone between reality and illusion. The state promoted the ideal North Korean woman’s identity

238 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

through its fashion code, carefully inventing paragons of virtue through nu- merous legendary tales concerning members of the leaders’ family.

Kim Il-sung’s mother Gang Ban-seok was the iconic vanguard of this ef- fort.60 In the 1960s, her story became the textbook example women set out to emulate. One telling example comes in the form of her biography, enti- tled The Mother of Korea. It is written in the style of Communist hagiogra- phy, presenting Gang’s lifelong dedication to supporting her husband and raising the revolutionary hero Kim Il-sung. The narrative unambiguously promotes her as the model mother for all North Koreans to emulate.61

Gang appears as a dexterous and hardworking girl from a poor household. According to the story, she displayed a precocious gift for weaving and spin- ning—not unlike Arachne in Greek mythology—creating a superhuman aura about her sartorial talent: “In the evening she used to spin together with her mother. She had learnt to spin when she was a child, and now she could also weave. She did not just imitate others—watching them working she tried to work even better. Far from being satis‹ed with her results of to- day, she strove to achieve perfection tomorrow. She worked with such dex- terity and skillfulness that all her movements seemed easy and graceful. Everything she made was extremely durable. She weaved so skillfully that the neighbors used to say, ‘Her linen is as soft as silk, and as beautiful as bro- cade.’ ”62 Of particular interest in the passage is that even as a young girl, Gang is portrayed as a producer of dress materials rather than a consumer.63

Although she appears as a provider of domestic labor rather than a revolu- tionary heroine on a battle‹eld, her ability to produce endowed her with heroic qualities; she grows up to be the mother of the national savior who liberates Korea from the Japanese colonial yoke and moves on to establish a new socialist paradise. In Mangyeongdae, which is supposedly Kim Il- sung’s birthplace, there are clusters of photos featuring Kim Il-sung’s im- mediate parents inside the house where he grew up. One of the photos fea- ture an elderly woman—supposedly Gang Ban-seok—sewing clothing (see ‹g. 39). The narrative that sealed her as the maker of clothing is sustained into the later stages of her life through photographic evidence. The virtue of labor and production as a Marxist hallmark legitimizes Gang as a mother of a national hero.

Coalescing ideal motherhood with the ability to produce was an endur- ing view of the North Korean leadership through the 1960s and 1970s. Nu- merous statements made by Kim Il-sung testify to the fact that domestic skills of nurturing and providing for the family were projected as social virtues positioning women as useful members of society. This assertion was

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 239

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

tied to the rhetoric of fashion indicating women’s stance within the society. The sartorial discourses often merged with the state’s of‹cial stance of glo- rifying production rather than consumption, although that production was con‹ned to the domestic sphere. The North Korean leadership seemed to have perceived the notion that women’s domestic labor was a foundational aspect of the national economy, but nevertheless subservient to male labor; this idea was reiterated in the public sphere, most prominently in the speeches by Kim Il-sung: “Women play a very important part in their homes, and their mentality as housewives greatly affects their families. At home even men are in›uenced by their wives in no small measure, to say nothing of the fact that children are in›uenced by their mothers. If women with obsolete ideas grumble over food and dress at home, asking their hus- bands to buy them this or that, even men are obliged to be distracted by these things and gradually become greedy.”64 In a similar vein, women were also seen as mothers who carry out their duty to groom their children tidily, which, again, is predicated on the question of clothing and bodily represen- tation: “If women would be just a little bit concerned about a neat and or- derly life, then everything would be settled. But some mothers do not do what they could well do within their possibilities, nor do they consider any- thing wrong with that. In some homes they even allow children to go about with their hair uncombed, and they do not feel the need to provide them

240 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

Figure 39. Photos of Kim Il-sung’s ancestors in Mangyeongdae. The upper right image features Gang Ban-seok, who is sewing clothing. (Photo courtesy of an anonymous donor.)

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

with caps and school knapsacks. . . . Only when children are reared to be tidy at home will they keep everything spick-and-span at school and grow up into men of a new type who will live in a cultured way in the future.”65

The national project to foster women as reliable housekeepers, evi- denced in this speech by Kim Il-sung, foremost concerned the domestic discipline that involved the bodies of family members, but it also had real repercussions in life, in that there was a concrete need to produce ef‹cient clothing for women for domestic work. Vis-à-vis joseonot (see ‹g. 40), sim- ple and modern clothing was promoted to meet the needs of women’s labor at home (see ‹g. 41). Nevertheless, these new clothes for domestic labor re- tained distinctively feminine traits marked by the preference for skirts in- stead of genderless garments. The overriding preference for skirts, not trousers, and the way women were groomed for elegance in both joseonot and modern clothing accentuate similarities rather than differences be- tween the two sets. Both paradigms of clothing stamp women’s bodies as being ‹rmly situated within the domestic realm, devoid of any hint that these delicately adorned bodies have any direct participation in national construction and advancement, although in reality women by this time were almost half the workforce in North Korea.66

Military Uniforms: A New Code of Revolutionary Virtue

However, the national project to embrace women as useful members of so- ciety did not con‹ne the ideal dress code for women within the domestic sphere. Paralleling this notion of women as domestic workers was that they should participate in industrial and military efforts to resist colonial powers and defend the liberated motherland through hard labor and military tac- tics. Although the idea had existed since the beginning of the North Korean state, starting from the mid-1970s there was a tendency to actively promote women in both the domestic and public realms.

In 1974, at the Fourth Congress of the Democratic Women’s Union of Korea, Kim Il-sung gave a speech titled “On the Revolutionization and Working-Classization of Women,” which emphasized the importance of women’s labor: “The revolutionization and working-classization of women is of great signi‹cance not only in revolutionizing and working-classizing half the population, but also in revolutionizing their homes.”67 Kim’s speech coincides with the time when women were actually consolidating their position as part of the indispensable workforce within North Korea. As was pointed out by Hunter, by the mid-1970s, women already made up

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 241

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Figure 40. “Elegant style” clothing. Joseon Nyeoseong 4 (1966).

Figure 41. “Home style” clothing. Joseon Nyeoseong 4 (1966).

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

half of the workforce. To extol the values of a female workforce, visual me- dia promoted the image of working women in all spheres, but most no- tably, military women were the crux of glorifying female labor force in North Korea.

In addition to these social factors, there seems to be an obvious corre- spondence between promotion of the military uniform and Kim Jong-il’s rise to power: Kim Jong-il as the head of the propaganda bureau produced and promoted revolutionary operas and their ‹lmed versions from 1971 to 1974. Partly in response to model theater works created in China during the Cultural Revolution that promoted a thorough militarization of women, placing them on a par with their male counterparts, the revolu- tionary operas wanted to place female citizens within a new dual role that straddled the domestic-public continuum.

Women in revolutionary operas were stable guardians of family life, yet, when necessary, they were at the forefront of military battle and revolu- tionary struggle. On stage and screen, women’s ambidexterity was marked by constant alternation of joseonot and military out‹t. Unlike the PRC’s yangbanxi where women’s domestic activities were presented predominantly as feudal practices of the bygone era, in North Korean revolutionary operas women were able to gain access to both realms as mediators. Nevertheless, their military out‹ts retained the quintessential feminine marker of the skirt, which distinguished them from their male comrades—quite unlike the case of the PRC of the same time, where female soldiers wore a gen- derless military uniform just like their male counterparts.

Juxtaposing dual values of feminine joseonot and masculine military uni- forms positioned at the opposite ends of sartorial spectra, feminized mili- tary uniforms were devised in order to mark ›uid identity of the North Ko- rean women of the 1970s. Military uniforms mark women’s entry into social and economic structures, but at the same time, their feminine shapes were constant reminders of different positions between men and women in the public sphere; military skirts were adopted to mark women’s auxiliary posi- tions in relation to their male comrades with a purpose of con‹ning the pa- rameters of women’s role (see ‹g. 42).

Women in uniform can be seen frequently on the streets of North Ko- rea as well as on stage. A scene from the True Daughter of the Party shows a military nurse who is graciously receiving a new uniform from the Korean Workers’ Party as a reward for her excellent service at the war front (see ‹g. 43). Her feminine gesture in holding the treasured military uniform marks the endearing relationship between the female body and the military uni-

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 243

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

form. On a surface level, military uniforms on women may create a sense of gender equality or a mark of privilege, but more importantly, they mark a woman’s body as state property and an essential part of social routine, both in everyday life and on stage. Uniforms become a visual claim on the body’s political af‹liation and determination to go through the discipline that the state imposes. The fashion code of the North Korean military uniform, therefore, signi‹es less empowerment than regulation by discipline.

Kim Jeong-suk—Kim Il-sung’s ‹rst wife and Kim Jong-il’s birth mother— appears in the visual media as the quintessential ‹gure marking the transition from joseonot to military uniform. Through various sketches from biographical episodes, her corporeal presentation gradually marks the transition from joseonot of the domestic realm to the military uniform of revolutionary space. This shifting dress code seems to re›ect how North Korean society cast her in dual roles of traditional homemaker and revolutionary ‹ghter: “As soon as she became familiar with revolutionary ideology, she never left Kim Il-sung’s side and assisted him in various capacities, such as seamstress, cook, nurse, and shooter in his anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle.”68

244 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

Figure 42. A traffic policewoman in Pyongyang wearing a modified military uniform. In the back- ground stands a billboard painting that features a peasant woman in joseonot. (Photo courtesy of an anonymous donor.)

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

If Gang Ban-seok was the Korean mother who epitomized Korean women’s virtue within the domestic realm, Kim Jeong-suk became the ar- chetypical model of the 1970s who mixed domestic activities with the pub- lic activities that included military struggle. Such a transition is visibly marked by the sartorial transformation from traditional joseonot to modern uniform. In 1981, an anonymous article was published in a women’s maga- zine that emphasized women’s need to ful‹ll binary duties both domestic and public: “Just because our country has issued the Laws of Gender Equal- ity, we cannot forget to think and behave like virtuous women. We should be as resolute as possible when it comes to revolutionary business, but in or- dinary life, women should be feminine and use feminine speech.”69 This ar- ticle is not an isolated instance of extolling essentialist feminine virtues, but is merely one of the countless similar examples, most of which centered around the legendary ‹gure of Kim Jeong-suk.

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 245

Figure 43. Scene from the revolutionary opera True Daughter of the Party. Joseon Yesul 2 (1978), cover page.

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Kim Jong-il was at the center of systematically promoting his mother’s virtues in revolutionary artworks, visually capturing the ›uid juxtaposition of joseonot and military uniforms adorning the body of the model woman of the new era, as seen in ‹gures 44 and 45. Figure 44 is a painting published in 1976 under the title Un›inching Fighter of Revolution, Comrade Kim Jeong- suk Studies Juche and Revolutionary Ideologies of Our Great Leader, Comrade Kim Il-sung. Here Kim Jeong-suk is presented as a girl who manages to ‹nd time to read the revolutionary writings of Kim Il-sung, her future husband, after putting her brothers to bed; her chaste, modest, and diligent nature is expressed through black-and-white dress code of joseonot. Figure 45, how- ever, marks her as an adult in military uniform, as a companion of the revo- lutionary hero Kim Il-sung. The March 1975 issue of Joseon Yesul published the painting titled Comrade Kim Jeong-suk Protects Comrade Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader of the Revolution, with Her Life. In this painting, the hagio- graphic companionship of the couple in a revolutionary setting legitimizes Kim Jong-il’s rise to power in the 1970s. Just as Kim Il-sung’s mother was projected as the producer of dress materials—thus con‹guring her as the righteous bearer of the future national father of North Korea—Kim Jeong- suk was positioned as the revolutionary ‹ghter whose son would naturally assume the position of the heir.

In the same manner that Gang Ban-seok’s sartorial dexterity was em- phasized, legends about Kim Jeong-suk accentuated her sewing skills, which produced much needed revolutionary ‹ghters’ uniforms. A short story titled “She Produced Military Uniforms during the March” (“Haeng- gungil-eseo jieusin gunbok”) captures an event that allegedly took place in one bitter winter when Kim Il-sung had to retreat from the Japanese: “As the ‹ghters marched through high piles of snow for many days, their uni- forms were torn into pieces. So Kim Il-sung acquired cloth materials to make military trousers, but the soldiers had no time to sew them. So Kim Jeong-suk wanted to make new trousers for the soldiers, but not wishing to burden her with such a task, the soldiers did not hand over the cloth. How- ever, the un›inching revolutionary ‹ghter comrade Kim Jeong-suk read the soldiers’ kind hearts and told them that assembling clothes is naturally a woman’s job and took the cloth from them and made uniforms.”70 Just like Gang Ban-seok, Kim Jeong-suk appears as a maker of clothes, but unlike her traditional mother-in-law, she does so on the battle‹eld. By doing so, Kim Jeong-suk expands the realm of women’s domestic labor to what is tra- ditionally de‹ned as masculine space, but at the same time, she keeps her militant identity from completely taking over women’s bodily representa- tions by performing feminine activity even on the battle‹eld (see ‹g. 46).

246 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Figure 44. An oil painting illustrates young Kim Jeong-suk wearing joseonot. Joseon Yesul 9 (1976): 11.

Figure 45. Kim Jeong-suk in this oil painting is wearing a feminized military uniform that is distin- guished from those of her male comrades. Joseon Yesul 3 (1975): 11.

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

From shooting to sewing, Kim Jeong-suk is cast as traveling through the two worlds of feminine domesticity and masculine publicity through a wide range of bodily gestures oscillating between tradition and revolution. As ex- pressed in the above paintings, she marks the transition from the ideal woman of Gang Ban-seok’s generation to that of the newer generation in the 1970s.71 The two realms of traditional femininity and military mas- culinity do not form a mutually exclusive relationship, but coexist harmo- niously so as to form a notion of feminine virtue much more complicated than that of the previous generation.

The gradual transition from joseonot to military uniform, or better put, the seamless coexistence between the two dress codes, did not contradict women’s undertaking within North Korean society. There existed a dual mis- sion for women, to nurture and build family life as well as to ‹ght and con- struct at the workplace. Performing arts and their visual documentation were at the forefront of congealing such ideas into daily practices. In ‹gure 47,

248 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

Figure 46. Kim Jeong-suk is sewing milirary trousers for soldiers on the battlefield in this oil paint- ing published in Joseon Yesul 9 (1970): 11.

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Figure 47. An illustration of a scene from dance performance Snow Is Falling (Nun-i naerinda), pub- lished in Joseon Yesul 2 (1981): 28, symptomatically captures different degrees of femininity in North Korean imagination.

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

which captures a dance drama entitled Snow Is Falling, the duality of North Korean women’s fashion codes as related to bodily practices is represented in a hierarchy, emblematically capturing various layers of femininity.

In the illustration from the dance sequence, a group of dancers in white joseonot embody snow›akes, forming the foreground to sustain a glori‹ed female soldier in a military out‹t. The female soldier, in turn, upholds the red ›ag as the unambiguous escutcheon of revolution. This vertical com- position symptomatically captures the hierarchy of North Korean feminin- ity: at the summit shines the red embodiment of revolutionary ideology; be- neath it is a female soldier, whose body is marked as distinctively feminine with her slim waist, knee-length skirt, and exposed calves; she, in turn, is supported by numerous women wearing white joseonot—the dress code cap- turing the ideals of the traditional past. This trilevel structure might signify different levels of femininity, but at a closer look, they illustrate a visual- ideological continuum rather than a rupture.

Accompanying the choreographic plans for the performance are the two illustrations of costumes for a female soldier and dancers performing snow›akes (see ‹gs. 48 and 49). At a ‹rst glance, the two ‹gures reveal dif- ferences, such as military uniform versus traditional joseonot, short versus long hair and skirts, easily differentiated waistlines and different forms of headgear. However, at a closer look, their bodies are united by signi‹cant similarities that expunge diverging points: both dancers feature similar docile bodily gestures, while their gazes are focused on some distant point as if anticipating the advent of an ideal world. Topped by the red ›ag—the ultimate sign of the socialist revolution—both ‹gures implicate the coming of a socialist utopia. Although different in color and shape, their costumes feature the same ›uid silhouette that accentuate their feminine beauty, res- onating with the ›uid identity Kim Jeong-suk embodied through a wide va- riety of dress codes and bodily gestures.

Such resilient negotiations between the traditional joseonot and military uniforms are too numerous to catalog, since similar images were in‹nitely replicated and circulated through media from the 1970s on. In one exam- ple, this ubiquitous visual structure was put into a full-›edged spatial envi- ronment. In True Daughter of the Party, the same visual composition mani- fests itself through a dance sequence where a female solder wearing a military uniform is supported by a group of dancers in traditional white joseonot (see ‹g. 50). The two images from Snow Is Falling and True Daugh- ter of the Party are identical in their visual composition and verisimilitude. Once again, a female soldier is carrying a red revolutionary ›ag. This pro-

250 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Figure 48. Costume design for the dance performance Snow Is Falling. Joseon Yesul 10 (1970): 113.

Figure 49. Costume design for the dance performance Snow Is Falling. Joseon Yesul 10 (1970): 113.

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

duction seemed to have taken the previously discussed dance production one step further in that the advent of the utopian future is not only impli- cated through the gazes of female performers, but is visually manifested through a realistic rendering of Pyongyang’s cityscape and architectural de- tails, including Daedong River and People’s Grand Study Hall (see ‹g. 51). The production makes a statement that Pyongyang is the socialist utopia of the revolutionized future. What is even more telling in this pictorial illus- tration is that the trilevel hierarchy is extended by another signi‹cant ele- ment of a red sun, which, without exception, signals the presence of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung. Ultimately, regardless of women’s progression marked by various dress codes, they are situated under the benevolent guid- ance and radiance of the national father, destined to perform docile gestures of beauty and obedience.

Shift in Fashion in the 1980s

If the sartorial discourse of the 1970s was predicated on the ›uid continuum between military uniform and joseonot, the 1980s saw a much more discur- sive sartorial landscape created by factors including the diversi‹cation of the textile industry, transforming cultural in›uences from neighboring re- gions, and most importantly, the leadership’s changing visions of women’s fashion. When Kim Il-sung declared in 1982 during the Supreme People’s Assembly that “sleeveless shirts with low necklines do not contradict the so- cialist way of life,”72 was he fully aware of the fact that exposure of the body, especially the female body, can be taken as an open expression of sexuality, a counterintuitive gesture for socialism? Or when his son Kim Jong-il, in 1984, noted that “we must pursue revolution in the textile industry and pro- duce smart clothing that is up to the latest fashion,”73 was he implying that the source of the “latest fashion” lies outside of Korea, or even outside of the socialist bloc, thus contradicting the ideological backbone of North Ko- rean self-reliance? Just as the former East Germany and the countries of the Soviet bloc sent their of‹cials to capitalist fashion centers “to attend haute couture shows and industrial exhibitions,”74 North Korean of‹cials seemed to be setting their eyes on Western standards to catch up with the latest fashion modes, which would diversify the binary dress codes based on tra- ditional female garments including joseonot and other clothing for domestic labor and military out‹ts.

Once again, visual media were at the forefront of promoting fashion di- versity in the 1980s. Numerous illustrations attempted to diversify the pro-

252 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Figure 50. Joseon Yesul 2 (1975), cover page. Stage curtain design for the Grand Pyongyang Theater depicting a scene from the True Daughter of the Party.

Figure 51. A panoramic view of Pyongyang. (Photo courtesy of an anonymous donor.)

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

duction of dress materials in ways that did not belong to the traditional bi- nary division. In 1981, Joseon Yesul published a painting titled Fatherly Love Is Felt in Silk Fabric (Bidanpil-e gitdeun eobeoi sarang) where Kim Il-sung is standing in the middle of textile factory (see ‹g. 52). He is holding colorful fabric surrounded by female workers who look up to Kim as the true object of adoration. Because of the idolizing gazes of the female factory workers, he assumes the focal point of this visual composition as if he were the real producer of the fabric. Not inadvertently at all, Kim in this painting resem- bles his mother, Gang Ban-seok, who was portrayed as the producer of dress materials in biographical sketches. The adoring gazes of the female factory workers ‹xed on Kim Il-sung accentuate his masculinity as the revered and even desired provider of goods necessary for women’s livelihood.

Why then, was there such a need to situate the most sacrosanct political ‹gure at the heart of textile production? Was there a practical need for the leader to intrude on what is conventionally regarded a female domain? To a certain extent, Kim’s centrality to the visual composition marginalizes the potential subject material—the silk fabric—as a perfunctory medium through which the male state leader and the female national subjects are brought together. The ›owery pattern of the fabric is obviously marked as intended for female consumption, and in that sense, Kim Il-sung’s endorse- ment of the material situates him as the arbiter of feminine beauty. As a metonymic object standing for North Korean women’s materiality and sex- uality, silk fabric in this painting reinforces the link between the national fa- ther and female consumer materials. As the title of the painting denotes, the product of women’s labor plays an important role in lifting female workers to an ecstatic realm where they experience an emotional rapport between themselves and the national father. In the process, female labor, which brings the workers closer to the national leader, becomes an aesthetically valued object; in the upper right corner of the painting, a slogan in red let- ters reads, “Textile Is Art.” The slogan succinctly articulates the intimation between labor and art. At the same time, it teaches the viewers that the right form of beauty is an ef‹cient way of measuring political correctness.

All in all, the juxtaposition of the national father and fashion was cre- ated with a dual intention: it was a political project endorsing female labor by endowing Kim Il-sung with the power to establish standards of how women should produce rather than consume, yielding the fashion prod- ucts that would ultimately regulate their patterns of consumption and bod- ily expressions.

In case of North Korea, it is not only visual arts that enforced the idea of

254 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

the paternal authority over female production and consumption of fashion. There are many other examples that indicate Kim Il-sung actually used co- ercive measures to reform North Koreans’ fashion practices to make them look more diverse. Sin Sang-ok and Choe Eun-hui, the South Korean di- rector and actress who were kidnapped by Kim Jong-il in 1978 and stayed in North Korea until 1986, recounted several examples they experienced in the 1980s in North Korea. In her memoir, Choe notes that the Korean Workers’ Party instructed people to wear hats: “The instructions from the Party were religiously followed, so everyone started putting something on their head. Some women wore western style hats with a large shade and other women wore hats with ear covers resembling children’s hats, all while wearing modi‹ed joseonot.”75 A similar case illustrates a top-down approach to fashion: in 1984 Kim Il-sung returned from Eastern Europe and sud- denly instructed people to wear ties: “The next day, everyone was wearing a tie regardless of whether it matched their other clothes or not. People who did not have a dress shirt still wore a tie on top of collarless shirts. From then on, party members and of‹ce workers put aside their Mao suits and started to wear ties at work. But Kim Jong-il still insists on wearing a Mao suit.”76

Kim Il-sung’s and Kim Jong-il’s preferred fashion codes diverged con- spicuously, as the father preferred Western-style suits often tailored out of white fabric, while the son preferred Mao jackets as a marker of his status as a military commander.77 The difference in fashion codes notwithstanding, they shared an interest in reforming people’s fashion. The leadership’s per- vasive fashion measures often resulted in stultifying practices, but on the other hand, they also evidence the leadership’s strong desire to present North Koreans as fashionable. Choe, as the abducted guest of Kim Jong-il, provides a unique insider’s view on how Kim personally thought of North Korean women’s fashions: “I put on Korean traditional dress made of ›am- boyant fuschia cloth Kim Jong-il had sent me as a present. When Kim Jong-il entered the reception room, he closely scrutinized me, looked at my dress up and down, and ‹nally murmured to himself. ‘Why is it that our comrades do not make Korean dresses like that?’ He must have been im- pressed by the fancy color of joseonot.”78

Kim Jong-il’s desire to fast-forward North Korean women’s fashion cer- tainly implies his acknowledgment that fashion elsewhere was far more ad- vanced. Choe recounts that a couple of weeks after her abduction in 1978, Kim Jong-il sent her forty to ‹fty boxes of cloth of all sorts for all seasons, starting from cashmere for coats, silk for Korean dress, thin veils, and vel-

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 255

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

vet for evening dresses. One time he even sent her three mink coats, two of which she returned to him. Everyday he would send all kinds of boots, hats, gloves, “all made in Japan.”79 If Choe’s accounts are true, Japan as the pro- nounced enemy was ironically providing North Korea with high fashion standards, which could have disturbed Kim Jong-il deeply. But could this have been a suf‹cient reason for Kim to issue instructions that abrasively af- fected the daily fashion practices of North Koreans?

The leadership’s interest in elevating the standards of fashion, especially women’s fashion, manifests itself well in a photo of the father and the son during the 1988 fashion exhibition in Pyongyang. While attending the ex- hibition, Kim Jong-il noted: “If there is a gathering of ten thousand people, they should all be dressed diversely according to their own taste.”80 Kim Jong-il also echoed his father’s statement: “We must increase the produc- tion of clothing. We should ef‹ciently manage clothing factories so that they produce various sorts of clothing catering to the taste of our people. We must open many tailor shops and train more tailors and seamstresses so that people can obtain appropriate suits according to seasonal change.”81

Paralleling the ideas expressed in these statements is a photo published in Joseon Nyeoseong in 1988. The two leaders of North Korea are inspecting women’s red high-heel shoes on exhibit with other sorts of shoes. Produced in domestic factories, these ›amboyant shoes embody the livelihood of the North Korean people, but at the same time, they also become conduits through which the national leaders endorse certain types of femininity. Just like the painting (see ‹g. 52) in which Kim Il-sung endorsed colorful fabric and thereby established himself as the arbiter of female beauty and regula- tor of their bodily practices, both Kims in the photo establish their stature as endorsers of the production and consumption of female fashion goods. Kim Jong-il’s interest shown in the photo is paralleled by numerous writ- ings throughout 1990s. For instance, in a 1990 speech entitled “On the Revolution of Light Industry,” Kim Jong-il claimed: “Shoes are absolutely necessary consumerist items for people’s daily lives. As people’s living stan- dards keep rising, there is a growing demand for shoes. We must improve the quantity and quality of shoes production so that we can produce massive amount according to gender, age, season, and profession. We must concen- trate on the production of a large quantity of leather shoes and winter shoes, especially women’s long neck boots, high heels, sandals, and guaran- tee that there are enough workers’ shoes. We must produce at least 120 mil- lion pairs of shoes every year.”82 The diverse kinds of shoes cataloged in this speech showcase the fact that Kim Jong-il was concerned with the beauty as

256 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

well as the utility of these items. Fashion, in this sense, is not simply placed in the conventional domain of female consumption, but rather belongs to the ›uid production-consumption continuum that seamlessly links labor with art.

The 1993 ‹lm Urban Girls Come to Get Married reinforces the afore- mentioned ideals of the state leaders equating fashion with people’s liveli- hood. The ‹lm is about a young fashion designer in Pyongyang who gives up her coveted urban lifestyle to marry a model farmworker in the country- side. In the end, when she ‹nally settles down in the countryside, she opens a tailor shop to bring in higher standards in the urban mode to the village.83

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 257

Figure 52. A painting featuring Kim Il-sung as surrounded by female textile workers. Joseon Yesul 9 (1981): 17.

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

The in›uence of urban fashion, often associated with consumption, how- ever, is projected as a site of production in this ‹lm, where designing clothes and driving tractors form parallel activities through a montage sequence. The union of the urban girl and the country boy in the movie becomes the industrial coupling between fashion and agriculture. The sequence sets up a seamless account in which consumption and production are just two dots on the same orbit of any North Korean industry: farmers and workers ›ock to the newly opened dress shop to revamp their style, but in the immedi- ately following sequence we see them laboring in the rice ‹eld. Every con- sumer produces something for the community in turn, and this is the only way consumption becomes justi‹ed as an extension of production. Just as in ‹gure 38 in which beautifully adorned women in joseonot rejoice at the so- cialist construction symbolically captured by tractors and factory chimneys, fashion that is often regarded as the site of ‹ckle feminine consumption fully meshes with the masculinized site of production.

What, then, is achieved by the urbanization of rural women’s fashion? In the broad scheme of things, it reinforces the obvious urban-rural divide that privileges the former as a model to emulate. Likewise, the bodily presenta- tion embodied in the newly arrived urban girl imposes superior body poli- tics on rural women, who should be enlightened and cultivated by urban standards. Not by chance, this is the space associated with the sacrosanct national leaders. In this light, the urban girl becomes the fashion evangelist spreading the nationally recommended fashion standards and behavioral norms that accompany this new code of fashion.

Fashion is just but one way for the North Korean leaders to con‹gure, discipline, and circulate the politically correct ideas about female bodies, which prove to be so central to the postcolonial nation-building process. This process proved to be more nationalistic than socialist in North Korea, as the conceptualization of postcolonial modernity foremost hinged upon ethnocentric ideals. While the new socialist republic promised to bid farewell to the feudal legacies of the past, the most painful of which re- mained the immediate memories of the Japanese colonial rule, the promises remained rhetorical at best when it came to the regime’s idea about what constituted womanhood. As late as 1988, Kim Il-sung proclaimed his es- sentialist view on women and how they should always remain within the pa- rameters of the feminine: “Of course women should be encouraged to struggle to achieve liberation and rights. This is one of the reasons why we still struggle. However, women should not solely focus on their liberation, rights, and equality and forget about the traditional feminine beauty and

258 • I L L U S I V E U T O P I A

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

virtue that typically de‹ned the Korean women . . . women should be fem- inine after all.”84 Upholding the sacred opinion of the leader, North Korean women’s fashion as expressed in the media was mindful of potentially dan- gerous cross-pollination of genders: to be sure of this, women’s military uniforms were feminized with the introduction of a pleated skirt and slim waistline. At the same time, feminine traditional dresses were modi‹ed to achieve mobility, which would allow women to participate in domestic and social labor alongside their male counterparts.

Underneath this convenient marriage between the instrumental pursuit of women’s labor and control over gender hierarchy, there lies a much more resilient interchangeability and ›uidity between the masculine and the fem- inine, as well as the traditional and the revolutionary. The matrix of women’s fashion in North Korea is woven through these complexities, for fashion is a site of production as well as consumption. As seen through the examples of iconic national heroines, such as Gang Ban-seok and Kim Jo- eng-suk, who were both masterful makers and bearers of women’s clothing, the North Korean brand of women’s fashion created an equation in which production and consumption are mutually exchangeable. Even with the ad- vent of more diverse styles in the 1980s and thereafter, this thesis remains truthful, resonating with the founding principles and practices of women’s fashion.

However, the ‹nal question remains: “Are there any possibilities of reading subversive moments of fashion practices, in which women can ran- domly rebel against the state politics of gender? How shall we decode the transparent top-down approach to women’s fashion in North Korea? A comprehensive study of how fashion practices work from the bottom up in North Korea is impossible to conduct at this stage in history, as free access to North Korean people and the ethnographic research are not guaranteed. While those curious can vicariously answer these questions by interviewing North Korean defectors or foreigners who frequent North Korea, one thing remains certain about women’s fashion and the bodily practices aligned with it: it gains its distinctive texture by weaving together labor and art, production and consumption, and the postcolonial desire to restore the national essence by reinforcing ideals of untainted femininity.

Acting Like Women in North Korea • 259

This content downloaded from 137.165.124.15 on Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:44:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms