Korean Drama Under Japanese Occupation

From the publisher’s website:

From 1910 to 1945, Japan occupied Korea and controlled every aspect of the Korean life. This book selects three plays by two prominent Korean writers, Ch’i-jin Yu and Man-sik Ch’ae, who ventured to voice anti-Japanese sentiments in their plays despite the harsh censorship.

In The Ox, two brothers suddenly find their lives and futures disrupted by the disappearance of their family’s aging ox. The Shack depicts the destruction of a family that has already been progressing toward doom under the roof of the crumbling shack. In Memorial Day, the young protagonist discovers that his family’s past converges repeatedly with the major historical upheavals of Korea.

THE AUTHORS
Ch’i-jin Yu (1905-1974) is one of the most important modern playwrights in Korea. He wrote more than forty plays and directed nearly one hundred. Ch’i-jin Yu was one of the first Korean playwrights to publicly voice anti-Japanese sentiments in his plays. Man-sik Ch’ae (1902-1950), though not the leading force of the Korean theater, is arguably the most intriguing writer of the colonial period. His Memorial Day is now considered one of the representative plays of that period.

THE TRANSLATOR
Jinhee Kim is Assistant Professor of Korean/Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Her principal research interests and publications focus on world drama, modern Korean Literature, and Korean American literature.