TITLE: For the Eyes of the Dear Leader: Fashion and Body Politics in North Korean Visual Arts
SPEAKER: Suk-Young Kim
EVENT DATE: 06/27/2007
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 76 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Suk-Young Kim, a fellow at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, presents a program that provides insight on North Korean culture, politics and the leadership of Kim Jong-il titled "For the Eyes of the Dear Leader: Fashion and Body Politics in North Korean Visual Arts."
Kim explores how visual media, such as theater, film, magazine illustrations, paintings and posters represent and propagate the ideal body in North Korea. According to Kim, North Korea's political leaders have been preoccupied with how to dress people. Fashion, especially women's fashion, is seen as a national project, where beauty and politics meld to cultivate bodily discipline. As in many communist states, North Korean designers have been drawn to masculine, military styles that seem to embody revolutionary spirit. But women's fashion in North Korea also openly allows for a contradictory sense of traditional femininity.
Speaker Biography: Suk-Young Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Dramatic Art and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests span a wide range of academic disciplines, such as East Asian performance, gender and nationalism, Korean cultural studies, Russian literature and Slavic folklore. Her research has been acknowledged by the International Federation for Theatre Research New Scholar's Prize (2004), the American Society for Theater Research Fellowship (2006) and the Library of Congress Kluge Fellowship (2006-07). She is currently working on a book project titled "Illusive Utopia: Theater and Film in North Korea," which explores how the state produced propaganda performances intersect with everyday life practice in North Korea. Another book project documents the testimony of a North Korean labor camp survivor.
