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Some Korean leaders ofsinpatheatre during the 1910s had ambitions to

educate and enlighten the public through theatre. They thought of theatre as a means

of social education and enlightenment:

당시 연극인들의 포부와 경륜은 자못 커서 … 사회교육이라는

커다란 곳에다가 그 목표를 두었었다. … 우리는 연극은

사회교육을 위하여 가장 효과적인 방도라는 신념 하에 움직인 것이 사실이다. (Yi Gi-se 1937)

Theatre practitioners at that time had great ambitions of social education ...

We [theatre practitioners] were engaged in theatre in the belief that theatre

was the most effective method of social education.18

However, the influence ofsinpaon the public showed the opposite. The second

decade of the twentieth century was a period when the Korean people were

politically, economically and culturally oppressed by the colonisers: The Japanese

colonisers monopolised Korea's natural resources, controlled finance and public

service enterprises, uprooted possible political opposition, and broke up rural

communities. This was also the ‘dark period’ when the human rights of the Korean

people were denied under martial law. However, the repertoire ofsinpatheatre was

far from the social reality that the Korean people faced politically and economically.

Rather, it dealt with the pre-modern sentiment:

18

Unless otherwise specified, English translations of all quotations from Korean texts are my own translations.

５２ 신파극 레퍼터리가 대부분 헌신의 강제, 의무에의 인종, 따라서 자유와 자아의 포기이며 인간의 상실이요 …추악한 축첩이라든가 고부간 갈등 또는 금전을 사이에 한 부모형제간의 상극, 반상의 대립 등이 … 뒤얽힌 가정비극이 대부분 차지했다. (Yu M. 1997: 79-81)

Most ofsinparepertoire dealt with forced self-sacrifice, submission to

duty, and thus abandonment of one’s self and freedom and denial of

humanity. … [Most of the repertoires were] family tragedies caused by

concubinage, the struggle and conflict between mothers-in-law and

daughters-in-law and between nobles and commoners, and strife between

parents and children over money matters.

The repertoire encouraged sentimentalism, submission to the stronger and a

taste for tragic beauty: it admired the sorrow of parting rather than the pleasure of

reunion, death rather than life, sacrifice rather than love, and submission rather than

resistance (Yi D. 1981: 66). Thus, contrary to the intentions ofsinpaleaders,sinpa

theatre during the 1910s made no contribution as a social instrument to awaken or

enlighten the public. Far from leading to a nationalistic awakening of the Korean

people, its role was merely that of a form of popular entertainment. There were

several reasons whysinpatheatre became cheap and popular as Yu Min-yeong points

out (1997: 81-82). First of all, the suppression and censorship of the theatre made it

impossible to perform artistic plays that described the reality of colonial Korea.

Sinpatheatre practitioners also had some responsibility for this trend. Most of them

were not sufficiently well educated and had no historical consciousness. So they

５３

staged by third-class Japanese theatre companies. As a result,sinpatheatre in Korea

helped to form and shape the Korean people in a way that enabled the colonisers to

dominate and control them easily. In addition to the extinction of traditional Korean

theatre,sinpatheatre weakened the discernment and judgement of the Korean people

and paralysed their consciousness by encouraging frustration, tears, abandonment

and escapism. The Korean public, addicted tosinpa,became increasingly nihilistic,

pessimistic and defeatist, and tried to forget the sorrows of a homeless race with

tears. In this way,sinpatheatre discouraged their spirit of resistance and

independence (Yu M. 1982: 100; Han H. 1956: 237-38; Seo Y. 1975: 21).Sinpahad

little effect on the Korean people except to reinforce the values that the Japanese

wanted to reinforce. Furthermore,sinpadelayed the development of modern theatre

in Korea: at a time when modern theatre had not yet been developed into a set of

recognisable conventions, melodramaticsinpa,which was not modern in a strict

sense, was transplanted into Korean theatre.

Accordingly,sinpatheatre could not continue to enjoy popularity among the

Korean people. The Korean public who visited theatres to seesinpa,initially out of

curiosity, increasingly became tired of this type of theatre. At the end of the 1910s,

the Korean audience rapidly decreased; most of the audience were pro-Japanese

Koreans, either wealthy leisured women or students who were studying in Japan

(Seo Y. 1975: 21). The negative influence ofsinpaalso incurred criticism and attacks

from Korean intellectuals.Sinpatheatre was regarded by Korean intellectuals as the

theatre of propaganda, reactionary ideas, the provocation of animal instincts, the

preaching of extreme individualism and the disregard of human beings and life (Han

H. 1956: 237-38). Therefore, the underlying risk was thatsinpatheatre would be

subverted at any time. The rapid decline ofsinpafrom the 1920s onwards proved

５４

companies lost their dominance in the capital of Seoul and had to travel from

province to province, with somesinpatheatre leaders abandoning this form. Yi Gi-se,

one of the leaders of thesinpatheatre, quit thesinpatheatre movement and turned to

other cultural enterprises immediately after the March First Independence Movement

of 1919. Yun Baek-nam, anothersinpaleader, also quitsinpatheatre and turned to

the modern Korean theatre movement (Yu M. 2006a: 179). A new form of theatre

came to dominate the Korean stage at this time.

1.3. Resistance and Subversion: the Modern Korean Theatre Movement