Nam Center Colloquium Series | Yusin Redux: Satire and Democratization in South Korea

Ahead of a hotly contested presidential race in 2012, a controversial painting by the artist Hong Sŏng-dam depicted the then candidate Park Geun-hye giving birth to her famous father, whose Yusin regime (1972-1979) had once turned South Korea into an anticommunist police state. The painting proved prescient. The four years that followed Park Geun-hye's victory at the polls may be characterized as Yusin Redux for its systematic attempt to roll back the democratic process in order to vindicate or reinstate the legacies of her father's rule. Looking back on Park Geun-hye's presidency from the vantage point opened up by its abortive end in impeachment, this talk will analyze several important cultural works of satire as examples of "laughtivism" in order to reflect on the significance of Yusin Redux in the history of South Korean democratization.

Youngju Ryu is Associate Professor of Korean Literature at the University of Michigan. Her publications include Writers of the Winter Republic: Literature and Resistance in Park Chung Hee's Korea (University of Hawai'i Press, 2016) and Cultures of Yusin: South Korea in the 1970s, forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press.