신자유주의시대, ‘조선 여성’을 기억하는 한 방식- 새로움과 전형성이 교차하는 <대장금> -

Abstract

This study aims to review the discourses on the global consumption of ‘Daejanggeum,’ a Korean TV series, and explore the neo-liberal ‘needs’ that produces this attractive heroine. During the last 10 years, since the TV series was broadcast on MBC from September 2003 till March 2004, the people of South Korea and other nations have been infatuated with this female expert chef’s success story. Many South Korean scholars have praised this TV series as a case of overcoming the western mainstream popular culture. Some of them even found the possibility for a ‘female alternative narrative’ in the TV series. They argue that the subversive subjectivity of East Asian women can be found in the heroine of the TV series. Has this beautiful, self-cultivated heroine really achieved her own alternative woman’s life in the drama? Can we really find a possibility for a “subaltern subjectivity” through her?In this paper, I explore this question through discourse analysis, comparing ‘Daejanggeum’ story with prototype image of Korean traditional women in the modern society. In the collective memory of modern Korea, a “traditional Chosŏn woman” is basically the symbol of “suppression.” Since the 1970s, several books on ’Ijo YeoIn’ have been published and many ‘historical dramas’ were created. Through these literary and dramatic representations, the public memory of ‘traditional women’ has been invented. Thus invented public memory became the very basis on which the modern gender relationship was constructed. Daejanggeum’s story contains some “new” ideas about traditional women, but it does not go beyond a recursive representation of traditional women in the modern society. The “new ideas” are nothing much more than the factors reflecting the changes in women’s role in the world dominated by “neo-liberalism.” This paper is a critical review of the phenomenon of appropriating the images of traditional Korean women in the context of neo-liberalism. I argue that, despite of the seemingly new and alternative representation of a traditional woman, “Janggeum” does not deviate much from the old “typicality” of “Chosŏn Woman.”