Preserving the Intangible

As South Korea emerged from Japanese colonialism and the devastating Korean War, so modernization led to the rapid decline of traditional performance arts and crafts. The reasons were many, amongst them rapid urbanization, ¹ the emerging mass media – first radios, distributed as part of a policy intended to bring isolated communities into the government’s embrace, then television -, land reform and the mechanization of farm activities, and social change. ² Korean commentators routinely emphasize that Japanese colonial policies destroyed much of the indigenous heritage during the first half of the twentieth century and, in respect to the performing arts, court music clearly suffered: 772 musicians had been employed at the court institute, the Music Management Bureau (Changakkwa) in 1895, but less than 30 remained in the Court Music Bureau (Aakpu), also known as the Yi King’s Music Bureau (Yiwangjik Aakpu), ³ in 1945. Again, staged performances, emerging with the advent of theatres and the rise of a concert culture, created ruptures, p’ansori giving way to staged ch’anggŭk in which singers presented episodes rather than whole stories, a style denigrated as ‘piecemeal singing’ or ‘segmental episodic singing’ (Chan E. Park 2003: 107). Group performances were monitored and restricted by the colonial authorities: Hahoe t’al ch’um, the mask drama from Hahoe village in North Kyŏngsang Province, was performed for the last time in 1928; Songp’a sandae nori, a mask drama thought to descend from plays performed by troupes who were on the government payroll until 1634 in Songp’a, Kyŏnggi Province, was last performed in 1924 (Yi Pyŏngok 1985; Baker 1992: 4–5). Shamanism was repressed (Kim Seong Nae 1989: 213; Kim Chongho 2003: 160). In the 1930s, percussion bands, which had once been found in almost every village punctuating the peace of the countryside, largely fell silent as the Japanese war effort requisitioned metal gongs to melt down for armaments. In some cases, the need for communal activities declined; in other cases, such as the Songp’a mask drama where a flood wiped out the village in 1925, nature intervened.