ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the life and learning of an illiterate Korean woman, So-shim, in terms of the figuration of formalizing. It discusses So-shim's skills in terms of socially underprivileged women's knowing and learning. Women are usually oppressed and discriminated against in social, economic and political processes, and So-shim's life and learning in twentieth-century Korea are no exception. But the sociocultural changes caused by the rapid developments in Korean society had great effects on her life. The establishment of National Intangible Cultural Asset status played a significant role in formalizing her ganggangsullae skills and indeed her life itself. It becomes a force in formalizing So-shim's subjectivity as a ganggangsullae singer and providing the conditions for her to formalize her life itself. The learning and teaching of ganggangsullae depended exclusively on oral practices, since no one who had inherited knowledge of ganggangsullae could read or write. When So-shim learned ganggangsullae in 1920s, it is embedded in everyday women's life in Jindo.