The Review of Korean Studies
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- E-ISSN2773-9351
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ISSN : 1229-0076
National Division, Rural Lives, and Anti-war Sentiment in Cha Beom-seok's Forest Fire
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Abstract
Realist playwright Cha Beom-seok’s name is synonymous with the Korean stage. Despite a significant body of work, his 1962 play Forest Fire has attracted the most attention achieving both critical and commercial acclaim during the socio-economically difficult time that was post-war South Korea. Academic work on Cha’s writing naturally focuses on the realist elements of his plays, although a number of studies focus on thematic elements of anti-communism across his plays due to the trend of nationalistic writing that stressed anti-communist rhetoric in the post-war years. Despite this interpretation, there is also a significant amount of evidence that points towards a more balanced, anti-war stance especially relating to Forest Fire. This work explores a number of ways in which Cha presents anti-war views rather than attacking a particular ideology, such as his exploration of distrust and suspicion as a symptom of ideological conflict on village dynamics, war’s destructive effects on human beings abilities of feel love and sexual fulfillment, and also the way in which the stage and set design can be used to convey his views on the effects that the war had on Koreanness.
- keywords
- Cha Beom-seok, Forest Fire, Sanbul, realism, Korean War, Korean theatre, anti-war
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