[KS] The 103rd Yonsei-KF Korean Studies Forum (Hyuk-Rae Kim, Yonsei University)

[Renate Clasen]

The Korean Studies Program and the Korea Foundation would like to
invite you to attend the 103rd Yonsei-KF Korean Studies Forum.

Title: "Age of the Cadre: North Korean Literature and Film of the 1980s"
Speaker: Immanuel Kim, PhD candidate at the University of California’s
Program in Comparative Literature
Date: WEDNESDAY, November 17
Time: 6 p.m.
Location: Room 702, New Millennium Hall, Yonsei University

No RSVP required. For directions, please refer to
http://gsis.yonsei.ac.kr/html/content.asp?code=001007.

Questions? Contact renateclasen at googlemail.com

This is the ONLY forum in the fall semester 2010.
We hope to see you on the 17th of November.

Sincerely,

Hyuk-Rae Kim
hyukrae at yonsei.ac.kr
Professor of Korean Studies
Graduate School of International Studies
Yonsei University

biography |  Immanuel Kim received his BA at the University of California,
Irvine in English and Comparative Literature, and studied under Jacques
Derrida and J Hillis Miller. He, then, went to England to receive a MA at
Warwick University in Philosophy and Literature. Now, he is at the
University of California, Riverside as a PhD candidate in the Comparative
Literature department, specializing in North Korean literature and film.


abstract | In 1972, the DPRK revised its Constitution with a new set of
discourses that claimed the family as the cell of the society. The explicit
emphases on collectivity over individualism and severe punishment for those
who betray the DPRK were methods of enforcing the people to continue with
their struggle for revolution. The Party called this “continuous revolution”
(*gaesok hyeokmyeong*), which ran alongside “family revolution” (*gajok
hyeokmyeong*).

 In this paper, I will discuss two works: Baek Nam-ryong’s novel
*Beot*(Friend) (1987) and a comedy film series called
*Wuri Jip Munjae* (Our Family’s Problem) (1973-1988). In these two works,
the nuclear family faces internal problems that threaten the harmony, the
collectivity of the family unit. In Baek Nam-ryong’s *Friend*, the central
characters plead for a divorce, and in *Our Family’s Problem*, the
characters entertain individualism that becomes the source of all social
problems.

 In these two works, the main cadre disciplines, critiques, and controls the
characters in the narrative. I call this *self-reflexive criticism*, where
the subject and the object of criticism are based on the same referent. In
other words, the main cadre (the subject) critiques the other cadres in the
narratives (the object) for intervening in other people’s personal matters,
which the main cadre does himself in order to resolve the problems. I hope
to reveal some of the social problems that emerged in the 1980s in North
Korea by showing the relationship between the cadres and the people in these
two works.
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