The Shaman and the Epic Theatre: the Nature of Han in the Korean Theatre

Abstract

The distinctively Korean concept of Han evokes a pervasive sense of sorrow, traditionally in need of shamanistic purging in the spirits of the dead, but also describing the sense of national trauma induced first by the Japanese occupation, then by the post-war division of the country. Han has also become an important feature of modern Korean drama, and in this article Jung-Soon Shim describes how Park Joh-Yeol's play The Toenails of General Oh (1974) revisits the concept, integrating indigenous cultural traditions – notably the shamanic ritual Gut – and how, in the production by Sohn Jin-Chaek, the director utilized a western style of epic theatre to create a ‘distanced’ style of Gut on the proscenium stage. Jung-Soon Shim is Professor of English at Soongsil University in Seoul, and a founding member of the Korean Association of Women in Theatre (KAWT), of which she is currently President. Her books include the two-volume Globalization and Korean Theatre (2003), which won the Best Book of the Year Award of the Korean Ministry of Culture. She also received the Best Critic Award for 2004 from the Korean Association of Theatre Critics. Her research for this article was supported by Soongsil University.