[KS] Kisaeng

[Lauren W. Deutsch]

To add a little twist to this timely topic (I'm writing a piece about the film incorporating the role and representations of women in performing arts for an upcoming Kyoto Journal special issue on "gender".) 

I have met in Los Angeles, my home, a contemporary "gisaeng", proprietress of an upscale norebang frequented by Koreatown "elite". She has since abandoned that business, underwent a naerimgut due to simbyong and has set herself up formally as a Buddhist-influenced shaman. Additionally, she purchased an extant afterschool enrichment "school" business to run with her adult son. This woman is quite fashionable, educated, a talented musician and very sharp. 

Lauren Deutsch

-----Original Message-----
>From: "J.Scott Burgeson" <jsburgeson at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Jan 18, 2006 9:03 PM
>To: Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
>Subject: Re: [KS] Kisaeng
>
>--- Pete Morriss <pete.morriss at nuigalway.ie> wrote:
>> Intrigued by all the publicity about the filming of
>> Memoirs of a Geisha, one of my students asked me if
>she
>> could find out more about the Korean equivalent.
>
>
>I would like to stress that there are at least three
>distinct
>moments or periods of gisaeng culture in Korea, and
>that the final
>or current phase offers an interesting contrast with
>Japanese
>geisha and modern (or postmodern) Korean approaches to
>traditional Korean culture. There was the pre-modern
>gisaeng period, up til the start of the 20th century,
>the colonial period moment and then the
>post-Liberation moment. The Japanese modernized and
>streamlined the gisaeng system in order to regulate it
>commercially, health-wise and so on. Many Korean
>nationalist historians argue that this was a
>perversion of the "true" or "pure" spirit of Korean
>gisaeng culture (as if any culture were such a static
>"essence"!), but one could argue that the gisaeng
>system
>would have been forced to undergo streamlining and
>regulation with the coming of modernity regardless of
>whether or not the Japanese were the driving agents of
>such change. The gisaeng system was officially shut
>down after Liberation out of desire to appear more
>modern and progressive on the part of South Korea's
>new leaders, many of whom were inspired by Christian
>and Americanized notions of shame and morality. The
>gisaeng 
>tradition, as it were, survived unofficially and in
>debased form, and even
>persists today in limited traces.
>   In contrast to the film Memoirs of a Geisha, which
>one might argue is an
>Orientalist representation of traditional Asian
>femininity adopted from a
>Western perspective, contemporary Korean gisaeng might
>best be described
>as a self-Orientalized simulacrum of traditional Asian
>femininity adopted
>from a Korean--rather than strictly
>Western--perspective. Unlike in the past, gisaeng of
>today lack any sort of training in the arts or
>letters, and are merely chosen as attractive models on
>which to hang a few signifiers of "traditional"
>culture--hanboks, hair pins and the like. They
>represent a sort of depthless embalming of traditional
>culture that could only be derived from a profound and
>radical alienation from that same traditional culture.
>As a result, few wealthy modern Korean men see gisaeng
>as very interesting or appealing, and prefer instead
>to go to top-class room salons in Kangnam where the
>hostesses are far more sophisticated than the average
>contemporary "gisaeng" (and of course tend to be far
>more "enhanced" physically through the supplements of
>plastic surgery in its myriad forms). Thus, the last
>remnants of gisaeng culture will slowly fade out and
>disappear altogether, if foreign tourists cannot be
>counted on to hold up and support the industry on
>their own--which many might consider a sort of living
>death in any case. In fact, the last gisaeng house or
>yojong in Insadong was shut down last summer, and
>replaced with a parking lot no less!
>   A triumph of Westernized modernity--and the
>automobile, of course!--over Korean tradition! RIP!
>   --Scott Bug
>
>
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Lauren W. Deutsch
835 S. Lucerne Blvd., #103 
Los Angeles CA 90005
Phone: 323 930-2587
e mail: lwdeutsch at earthlink.net