Utopian Performatives Matter

Abstract

The Korean diasporic community in Japan has long been othered in their host country. At the same time, despite being ethnically Korean, their overseas marginalized status has been largely met with indifference and an absence of solidarity from South Korea, a country with a long-held fetish for ethnic homogeneity. Yakiniku Dragon (2008) is a play written and directed by Korean/Japanese theatre-maker Chong Wishing based upon experiences of the diasporic community in Japan, including his own diasporic memory as well as postmemory. In this article, I examine how the (post)memory of the Korean/Japanese diaspora is dramatized and transmitted to the audience through this play. I argue that staged memories lead the audience to experience a ‘utopian performative’ – an emotionally and aesthetically intense moment in theatre spectatorship – and the intersubjective experience of the past and continuing reality of these geographically and emotionally distant ethnic Koreans invites contemporary non-diaspora South Koreans to develop and share an empathetic memory of the Korean diaspora. The alternative form of memory – prosthetic memory – acquired through Yakiniku Dragon, I suggest, plays a significant role in bridging the emotional distance between those who have neglected and those who have been neglected, creating a solidarity with the diaspora.

Notes

1 I use this slash here as a way of highlighting Korean/Japanese people’s ambivalent belonging to both Korea and Japan, which need to be considered equally importantly. The Japanese term Zainichi literally means residents ‘in Japan’ and refers to Korean/ Japanese people (Chapman 2004: 29). However, the Korean translation of Zainichi (Jae-il ‘Hangukin’ [‘Koreans’ in Japan] or Jae-il ‘Joseon-in’ [‘Joseon people’ in Japan]) indicates ‘Koreans’ in Japan with a subtly different nuanced affiliation with South or North Korea. Indeed, North Koreans and Jae-il Joseon-in, until today, often address their home country as Joseon (1392–1910), which is the name of the last Korean dynastic kingdom. While those Korean/Japanese people who still regard Joseon as their home country remain stateless, other members of the diasporic population have either South Korean or Japanese nationality.

2 Though there are pro- Pyeongyang and pro-Seoul establishments in Korean/ Japanese society: The Federation of Joseon-in Residents in Japan and The Korean Residents Union in Japan.

3 Japan colonized Korea for thirty-five years (1910–45).

4 In contrast, North Korea showed interest in – and support for – Koreans in Japan and, in 1959, the communist state initiated a repatriation project, which resulted in more than 90,000 Korean/ Japanese residents moving to North Korea until the termination of the project in 1984. Considering the Korean War (1950–3) and the consequent division of the Korean peninsula, the Korean/Japanese diaspora’s association with North Korea is arguably one of the reasons that makes South Koreans remain indifferent to the diaspora despite the long-held ideological belief of ethnic homogeneity.

5 The premiere in 2008 was co-directed with South Korean director Yang Jung-ung. In 2011, the production was directed by Chong.

6 Other scholars, including Min Byung-eun and Park Myeong-jin, are not referenced here but they also discuss those aspects in Yakiniku Dragon and Chong’s other plays.

7 Yakiniku means grilled meat in a Korean-style barbeque in Japan. The signboard of the restaurant on stage reads Yakiniku Horumon, which means ‘grilled tripe’. In Japan, tripe used to be regarded as scraps, but people started to eat it because Korean/ Japanese restaurants served the scrapped tripe in a Korean barbecue-style dish. A Korean/Japanese Yakiniku restaurant is part of Chong’s own childhood memories of living in a deprived Korean village in Osaka (Heo 2011). In the script of Yakiniku Dragon, the spatial background is described as a city in the Kansai Region (Chong 2014: 31) but, as Moon Kyoung-yeon states (2012: 215), it is widely understood as a Korean ghetto in Osaka.

8 Under the control of the US military government in the south of the Korean peninsula, the protest was against the establishment of an exclusively South Korean government and aimed to interrupt the 1948 election. The failed election in Jeju resulted in the military suppression of the islanders (Yang 2018: 41, 53–4). The 4.3 incident continued until 1954. The estimated number of deaths of 30,000, with the majority of those killed being civilians who were brandished as communists, constituted about 10 per cent of the island population (41).

9 In the performances in Seoul (2008, 2011) only Mika (originally from Jeju) was performed by a South Korean actress, which reflects that she is more fluent in Korean than her siblings. This play was staged in Tokyo in 2008, 2011 and 2016; however, my analysis focuses on the performances in Seoul.

10 Inspired by her later visits to Czernowitz (between 1998 and 2008), Hirsch co-authored the book titled Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory (2010).

11 Although not clearly stated in the script, the context implies that Chong refers to the Pacific War.

12 Chong mentioned this regarding the characters in his film Yakiniku Dragon (2018) but this can be applied to the same characters in the play Yakiniku Dragon. While Chong declares that the characters are fictional (M. Kim 2018), as stated by a newspaper reviewer who had interviewed Chong, the lives of Chong’s family and their Korean/Japanese neighbours were used to develop the characters (Heo 2011).

13 ‘TOKIO: It was an era when rapid development took off at an incredible rate, dashing off without a thought … and everything became bright and shiny without a thought … But this town remains unchanged’ (Chong 2014: 34).