Discussion
On April 27, 2021, the 252nd Japanese Expert Invitation Seminar was held as a webinar. With about 30 participants attending, Hye-jin Lee, associate professor of Liberal Arts College at Semyung University, gave a presentation on the theme of "Idol of the Empire: The Age of the Empire, Women Standing on the Border." The contents of the announcement are as follows.
The presenter played a specific role in the process of propaganda toward the masses in the imperialist era, and in the process of spreading through the media, female 'idols' organized the public's fantasies and admiration, and defined the identity of women in the context of ideological confrontation in the postwar Cold War period. It was noted that the public sentiment was reflected in this. Using Choi Seung-hee and Li Xiang-lan, the female stars of the Japanese imperialism period, as the targets, the rapid change of status and the origin of their identity in the post-war period were examined in relation to the public.
Choi Seung-hee, who was evaluated as the queen of the imperial Japanese dance world, and was the best dancer in East Asia, performed the propaganda of the Great East Asia co-prosperity by performing tours in Japan, China, and Europe. She fled to North Korea after liberation and became North Korea's best popular actor, and she also served in propaganda for Kim Il-sung's unique regime through national dance plays. She, however, was criticized afterward for saying that she had the remnants of Japanese imperialism, and she was finally purged. Choi Seung-hee, who was an object of oblivion because she was a North Korean artist and a person who had been purged from both South and North Korea, was refocused as a subjective dancer after the ban on North Korean artists in 1988. It can also be seen that her memories of her handed down by her emotions of mourning over time, as she was the subject of her postwar oblivion, passed through the Cold War.
Li Xiang-lan, who has “Japan as his motherland and China as his motherland,” is an actress and she was an idol of “Japanese Friendship”, who shot major works such as the continental trilogy. During her acting career, her identity as she was Chinese/Japanese continued to be a problem. Despite the great popularity of the imperialist era, she was criticized after the defeat as a betrayal of China and a cultural gang, and she failed to recover from the cold of the public even in Japan, where she returned in 1946. The reason why she was elected as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party since 1974 and was able to meet her transition as a politician can be seen from the fact that in the 70s, her sentiment of the rehabilitation community spread and she was remythified as Li Xiang-lan.
Through the identity problem in the propaganda practice of Choi Seung-hee and Li Xiang-lan, the way of understanding others and the hysterical reaction of the public can be read, and the arbitrary base of national ideology and cultural power, its weak base, and the resulting need for propaganda can be grasped. have. This discussion can also lead to a discussion on the conspiracy relationship between national ideology and public sensibility.
In the question-and-answer that followed after the presentation, when evaluating Choi Seung-hee in Korea, when using the term nationalism in the sense of subjective, it was raised whether there would be a need to clarify the concept of the term. In addition, whether there is any problem with re-reflecting these characters as victims of the state power and the public, or the premise that the public is easily submerged by state power and ideology, and the view that their identity is absent when looking at characters such as Choi Seung-hee and Li Xiang-Lan. The seminar was concluded after a discussion on inquiries such as whether it was possible or whether it would be necessary to discuss from a gender perspective in terms of dealing with female idols.
