[KS] Choson Dynasty Sexuality

[Frank Hoffmann]

>But if you wish to contemplate the notion, look carefully at the 
>painting of the two cats, one of them up in the tree.  Believe it or 
>not, that's an "erotic" painting.

Well, have some real cats in your house, and you will notice very 
quickly they are up to only one thing -);  Pleasure.

 From the 1990s on, with the democratization of South Korea, a huge 
bulk of literature on various aspects of sexuality in culture was 
published. The very large majority of works I saw here and there are 
of pretty poor quality, mostly very populist writings. The _Han'guk 
ui ch'unhwa_ book that Joshua Van Lieu mentioned here is actually one 
example for such publication -- badly edited. No wonder then that all 
the antiquarian booksellers along the P'yonghwa Market display the 
book with the back cover up, not the front cover -- but still have it 
on display.
Psychology has just been as underdeveloped in Korean academia as art 
history. And without these two, I wonder how much the field of 
literature can produce on such topics, without an environment that 
has fosters such studies.

Frank




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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws