[KS] Jazz in Korea--Josephine Baker

[Frank Hoffmann]

Hi Steven:

Where are all the Korean literature scholars gone to? Anyone?

Two short responses ... THANKS for your careful reply, by the way.


>(...) And this brings me to point number two 
>above-they are included in vol. 7 of Yi's 
>collected works, the supil collection not 
>danpyeonseon which would be fiction.

Please see this online version's title page:
http://www.readbuild.com/books/388/pages/5749?edition=0.1&locale=ko
QUOTE:  Yi Hyo-sôk t'anp'yônsôn (...) 'Kûttae kû hangguûi pam (...)

Yes, right ... not the original ... I had no time 
to even check if that original journal is around. 
So maybe someone on the list could and let us 
know? That would be great. In any case, I am 
seemingly not alone with interpreting this piece 
as fiction rather than a report.


>    The essay published in December, four months 
>after the C-port essay, is the most interesting 
>(after the original essay in question of course) 
>for our discussion. It is titled "Goyohan 
>{Dong}ui Bam: or "A Quiet Night at 'Dong'." Dong 
>was the name of a cafe that Yi frequented in 
>Nanam, Gyeonggi-do. In his essay about his visit 
>to Cheongjin to see Baker, he mentions that he 
>went with a friend that he became close to while 
>frequenting the cafe "Dong." In "A Quiet Night 
>at Dong" he identifies the man as a railway 
>engineer and says that "This engineer had a 
>great knowledge of music and was the only one 
>(from Dong) to accompany me when I went to see 
>the famous jazz singer in Chongjin." This is 
>exactly the same thing he says in the original 
>essay Gudae Gu Hangui Bam: "In our party 'R' and 
>I were the only ones from the Dong crowd (that 
>made the trip)..." If the original essay was 
>fiction, or as Frank later suggets a "fictious 
>report," why bother to repeat the fiction in 
>another essay that is clearly not fiction and 
>will obviously be read by the very friends he is 
>talking about (among whom are other writers)? 
>What conscientious writer would do that?

Well, there is absolutely no contradiction here 
to what I stated. My understanding is that Yi's 
piece was, to repeat myself, a fictitious (or 
fictional, if you like that better) report, a 
literary genre. Of course would Yi use whatever 
actual information he has about the landscape, 
coffee shop, people, etc.  I understand that is 
confusing, but it is also not unusual for any 
literate. Just the other day I ended up reading a 
short report about a German writer I know from 
long ago ... that author is best known for an 
imaginary report of a meeting between two poets 
and their discourses around 1800--but that 
meeting never happened. That is not a new genre. 
Stephen Epstein and a colleague just wrote a 
piece about an up-to-date version of such a 
genre, a fictitious report--a "documockery" that 
got a 500,000 views on YouTube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLA6Bk_ivs, "The 
True Origins of Pizza": find the essay here: 
http://japanfocus.org/-Rumi-SAKAMOTO/3629
Now, that may not be a 100% match, and after all 
we are 75 years apart, but it demonstrates my 
point.



>As to why there are no other reports of 
>Josephine Baker's trip to Chongjin I can only 
>speculate. Frank is asking why, (...) That's an 
>easy one, they have not gone back and dug their 
>way through obscure Chogwang articles nor have 
>very many people read Yi's essays.

Sorry, can't believe that. Since the 1990s we 
have wonderful tools ... a very large percentage 
of colonial period newspapers and magazines are 
digitized and even the content is searchable. 
Please go here:
http://www.koreanhistory.or.kr/index.jsp
or directly to the search window:
http://www.koreanhistory.or.kr/eng/srchservice/detail/mainDetailSearch.jsp
Enter Josephine Baker (In Han'gûl) as a search 
term, and the only item that comes up is the 
article Tonga ilbo article you mentioned earlier. 
SOMEONE researching issues in the colonial period 
and having some interest in music or dance would 
have seen something ... that is no scientific 
proof, of course, yes, but believe me, a visit by 
someone already so well known in East Asia in the 
mid-1930s, especially since 1936 and her big 
success in Paris, such a person would have gotten 
some ink here and there. If not in Korea, sure in 
China and Japan.


>As to point three, it was a literary 
>convention of the time to use an initial to 
>identify not only places, but people (as can be 
>seen above e.g., "R"). Both Yi Hyoseok and Yi 
>Sang make abundant use of this convention, and 
>that much more so in their essays than in their 
>fiction because, no doubt, they are talking 
>about reality.  I hope this helps.

Not a "convention" -- it was mostly either one of these two:
(a) Japanese censorship, where entire syllable or 
words were replaced by X or by circles (one for 
every syllable, in good and "honest" Japanese 
fashion), and sometimes after the author was 
getting back the manuscript he was then allowed 
to use a Latin Letter as a placeholder.
(b) A mockery by Korean writers (and also 
Japanese) to made it appear as if a text had been 
censored ... usually done with words or names 
that one could indeed anticipate would be 
censored. That then became part of the colonial 
tool set of writing. (Note that up to the Park 
Chung Hee era, if not Chun Doo Hwam, this 
censorship tool was continued in the South.)

Starting with this kind of censorship issue, 
writers like Yi Sang, whom you also mentioned, 
then made a true art from this. That is true. 
***But*** when someone writing a "harmless" 
REPORT about a visit in Chôngjin ... and if 
Chôngjin is then referred to as "C-Harbor," then 
this indicates he is writing literature. The 
place name is very likely *obscured" this way 
exactly because the reported story did not happen 
in that particular place. Why otherwise doing 
this with a city name?


Best,
Frank



-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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