Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-w7rtg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-04T18:24:46.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Theatre Censorship in South Korea: a Nation in Permanent Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2018

Extract

Between 1975 and 1988, the Korean Public Performance Ethics Committee (KPPEC) censored obscene language, body exposure, and extreme violence, as is common in all forms of theatre censorship. However, the KPPEC focused in particular on depictions of the President of South Korea, and proscribed any work that challenged or even questioned the public image of the President as a strong leader for a nation in crisis. Despite the official abolition of censorship in 1988, it was discovered in 2016 that a blacklist had been in operation that excluded ‘left’ and ‘pro-Pyongyang’ theatre directors and actors from accessing public funding. By exploring the process of censorship, Seong-kwan Cho in this article interrogates the relationship between the theatre and the nation. Seong-kwan Cho is a lecturer at the School of Global Communication at Kyung Hee University. With Jae-beom Hong, in his current research he has been exploring North Korean performance, and his article on this subject is forthcoming in Asian Theatre Journal.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)