1950-60년대 여석기 연극비평과 현대성의 의미

Abstract

The prominent persons as the 1st generation of theater critics after liberation from Japan are Oh Hwa-Sup and Yoh Suk-Gi. Among them, the one who showed well the evolving process and development of theater criticism is Yoh Suk-Gi. Therefore, it is meaningful to guess the evolving process and development of theater criticism in the 1950–60’s through Yoh Suk-Gi. This study aimed to analyze them focused on the his writings and literatures published in cultural magazines, which would end up pursuing the modern drama. The modern drama had been used as comprehensive concept in the 1950–60’s, but they were narrowed down to the experimental drama in the 1970’s. More specifically, they are the works of non-realism genre. The concern in the position which has the duty to make a progress of Korean drama by accepting the foreign influence as a scholar of English may be the introduction of foreign drama or theory which can be harmful to Korean drama. It is because his pursuit of universality as a scholar of foreign literature is working for Korean drama at the least although it has the limitation which is eventually explainable with Western aesthetic concept. Sinpa drama to him seemed to be falsely introduced to harm Korean drama. Hence it is a future task to settle drama which can remove this adverse effect. The concept of modern drama which Yoh Suk-Gi pursued was to solve this problem. Another is that the modern drama is the limited universality pursued within the influence of American culture represented by Congress of Cultural Freedom(CCF). The effect of cold war at that time prevailed Korea as well as East Asia and Europe affecting many intellectuals. There is no doubt that the post-war Korea was greatly influenced. Yoh Suk-Gi also took part in executive committee in Korea of Congress of Cultural Freedom(CCF). The direction of modernity of Korean drama based on these two backgrounds was made. Yoh Suk-Gi chose the way to highlight different things of non-realism from previous ones by not emphasizing the context of realism and expressionism drama continued from Ibsen to Strindberg. This view takes more account of changed form than consistent mind of modernity. The accepting traditional play also focused on the form rather than the content. This pursuit made some fruitful results in 1970’s because it gave an impetus to recognize Korean traditional play as a momentum to overcome the locality of Korean drama which was far away from the main stream of international drama. However, the limitation that the direction of modernity was already fixed to one side should be clarified.