Cripping Hwabyung: A Cripqueer Analysis of Korean Historical Drama Films
by Soo Jin Kweon
B.A. in English Language and Literature, February 2016, Chung-Ang University
A Thesis submitted to
The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
May 20, 2018
Thesis directed by
Robert McRuer Professor of English © Copyright 2018 by Soo Jin Kweon All rights reserved
ii Dedication
This thesis work is dedicated to my family, friends, and coworkers who have supported me throughout my graduate studies. To my coworkers at the GW Writing
Center and the GW Institute for Korean Studies: your support and patience has taught me more than I could have imagined. To Shin Young, Heewon, Ling, Cheng, Gina,
Catherine, and all my friends in the English Department who have helped me at every stage. And finally, I thank my mother, father, and my three sisters, Ye-Jin, Hye-Jin and
Yu-Jin, for being there from the very beginning. Thank you all.
iii Acknowledgments
I thank my thesis director, Professor Robert McRuer, and thesis reader, Professor
David Mitchell, for their endless patience, support and encouragement through the many revisions and drafts.
iv Abstract of Thesis
Cripping Hwabyung: A Cripqueer Analysis of Korean Historical Drama Films
This paper examines the ways in which cripqueer identities are portrayed in South
Korean films, specifically in the sageuk (Korean historical drama) genre. Korea’s long history of humiliation and subordination to foreign forces – most notably the Japanese annexation (1910-1945) – and Confucian ideology has had a great impact on the
construction of what William Reddy refers to as the “emotional regime”, which uses
“emotional suffering” to ensure the conformity of its constituents. The connection
between historical grievances and the culturally unique emotion of han (unresolved
feelings of unfairness, sorrow and anger) has made it possible for those diagnosed with
mental illness to become a staple metaphor of oppressive regimes and foreign
occupations in film. Through an analysis of sageuk films (2005-2016) that were widely
acclaimed in South Korea, this paper argues that cripqueer figures play integral roles
within filmic narratives that use constructions of mental illness and queerness to critique
Japanese colonialism, tyranny, and Confucianism. They also promote Korean national
pride through a professed embrace of marginalized identities. In the process, cripqueer
people are normalized as either acceptable normative queer beings or excluded as
dangerous abnormalities.
v Table of Contents
Dedication ...... iii
Acknowledgments...... iv
Abstract of Thesis ...... v
Introduction ...... 1
Chapter 1: The Mad Kings ...... 18
Chapter 2: Violence in A Frozen Flower ...... 28
Chapter 3: The Handmaiden ...... 50
Conclusion ...... 63
Works Cited ...... 65
vi Introduction
Both the history and culture of South Korea (hereafter Korea) paints a rather gloomy reality for its citizens. Korean history is marked by tragic and unresolvable events that instill feelings of humiliation and anger, and contemporary Korean society seems to offer little consolation for the present. Despite the outward appearance of technological advancement with the fastest Internet connection speeds, tall skyscrapers and high education standards, Korea is also one of the most hyper-competitive cultures in the world. Such conditions have created a culture where individuals feel that death is the only escape route.
In public health discourse, suicide has persistently been an issue. Administration after administration has attempted to implement effective policy measures to remove
South Korea from the top of the list of countries with the highest suicide rates. But despite the scramble of politicians and health professionals, Korea’s problem with suicide is not a recent phenomenon that stems from cyber bullying among teenagers or the wave of corporate downsizing due to the economic recession. Korea’s history of high suicide rates dates back to the colonial era when psychiatric data was first collected and compiled for reports. Between 1910 and 1942, the Government-General’s report recorded a staggering 58,053 completed suicides by Koreans (Yoo 121). The Korean media at the time placed much of the blame on colonial modernization’s effects, thereby suggesting that suicide was emblematic of modernization under colonial rule. Theodore Yoo’s
1 comprehensive work on the history of psychiatry in colonial Korea suggests that colonial authorities and Joseon era (1392-1910) Confucianism enforced an “emotion regime” where “emotional suffering” was also noted as the cause of emotion-related mental illnesses – all important concepts that I will return to momentarily (need citation). The
takeaway here is that the blaming of colonial authorities for making life unbearable for many Koreans as well as Confucianism’s continued influence on self-control through regulated emotions seems to have influenced the understanding of depression and suicide as emotion-based illnesses related to social environmental factors.
The correlation between social environment and mental health has become so well established among Koreans that narratives in films and television frequently use
mental illness as a way of discussing problems in society and vice versa. Although this phenomenon is not recent, it has become more frequent when it comes to the portrayal of
cripqueer characters in South Korean cinema (2005-2016). As if the usual catalogue of
hysteria, developmental disabilities, and memory loss had run its course, writers and directors have now capitalized on the global trope of queer as a way of telling stories
about Korean culture and society. Although it is not always immediately evident that a
character or narrative is indeed “cripqueer”, the aforementioned relationality between
socio-cultural environment and mental health makes any Korean narrative about the ills of society an implicit nod towards the unspoken inevitability of psychiatric disability.
2 OUR LOVE STORY AND A GIRL AT MY DOOR
I turn to two contemporary dramas to illustrate this point of how, even in narratives that do not deal with overt themes of mental illness, it is possible see themes of emotion-based psychiatric disorder. Recent independent films that draw upon tropes of the socially marginalized existences and hardships of lesbians gained attention and
popularity. Two films in particular – Our Love Story (2016) and A Girl at My Door
(2014) – exemplify realistic contemporary dramas that made the transition from indie
film festivals to commercial theaters with a help of a cult following. Such enthusiasm
stems from the story’s relatable plot lines and manageable depictions of female sexuality
that, unlike The Handmaiden (2016) which will be discussed later, did not veer into the
territory of eroticism.
Our Love Story, directed by Lee Hyunju, portrays the budding romance of 32-
year-old art student Yoonju (Sang-hee Lee) who despite her age has never been in a
relationship, and the younger but much more seasoned Jisoo (Sun-young Ryu). Their
story of love is framed by the hardships that arise from two social factors: the first being
Confucian social norms and their socioeconomic status as two fledgling young adults
commonly referred to as ing-yeo (잉여) or “leftover people” (i.e. unemployed young
adults). Both social characteristics are already closely related to the probability of
depression in young adults in South Korea who are currently extreme levels of mental
stress from the pressures of high youth unemployment rates on top of a social climate that
is hierarchical and based on social roles (Singh). This film points out the unique factors
3 of cripqueer experience in South Korea as being intertwined with emotions such as guilt and suppressed feelings of unfairness and anger.
Jisoo’s emotional distress is caused by years of playing the perfect – albeit boyfriend-less – daughter while secretly dating what appears to be a long lineup of women with whom she has enjoyed sexual relationships. Meanwhile, she is panicked and guilty about her treatment of Yoonju who tries to spend more time with her by making the long journey from Seoul to Incheon where Jisoo lives with her widowed father.
Afraid that her father would catch on to their romance, Jisoo leaves Yoonju alone for the night at a motel – a space almost exclusively reserved for sex in the Korean context – making the contrast of heterosexual versus lesbian experience cut deeper still. Jisoo uses excessive drinking to cope with the cultural pressure of performing the gender norms expected of them within the patriarchal Confucian family unit. Yoonju also feels this burden as she is neglected as a result: she is forced to lie that she has a boyfriend when by
Jisoo’s unassuming father’s assumptions remind her that women her age are expected to be married.
Similarly, A Girl at My Door’s Youngnam and Eun-jung must also adhere to these same unspoken but significant rules of gender normativity even though their families are never mentioned. Despite Eun-jung plans to escape the constraints of Korean society by immigrating to Australia, she is nonetheless burdened with the prospect of abandoning her old life including her ex-girlfriend whom she still loves. Youngnam is more adept at hiding her emotions compared to Eun-jung but is also heavily affected by
4 her role as a police inspector within the patriarchal society of the police force. The
importance of upholding the honor and social standing of the police community is clearly
shown in Youngnam’s brief conversations with two other members of the police force.
Both men make it very clear to Youngnam that her sexual identity has put their
immediate police alumni association in a difficult position. In a private conversation with
Youngnam, the superintendent assures that he does not hold any prejudice about “that
area” (meaning her homosexuality) but chastises her for disrupting the balance of the public service community and reputation of their alma mater. Despite her indiscretions,
Youngnam is given an opportunity to return to her post primarily because she is the hubae (후배 junior alumnus) of the senior intendent. In exchange for this reprieve, however, Youngnam is expected to conceal her sexuality, saving her superior and those around her the shame associated with lesbianism. Because of these enforced restrictions on her already constrained life, Youngnam takes to drinking excessively, going through several bottles of alcohol in the solitude of her apartment.
The recurring pattern of excessive drinking are all symptomatic drawings of a larger problem associated with social norms, and thus is worth wondering what sort of
bodily influence these psychologically damaging situations might have on a cripqueer
individuals. The immediate psychological problems based on the stories of these four
lesbian young women could range from depression, anxiety, anger, and paranoia. I use
the term, cripqueer, here to emphasize the suppression of anger, of feelings of unfairness
that stems not only from the pressure shown in the caring yet precarious father-daughter
5 relationship in Jisoo’s case and the barely contained anger of Eun-jung, the drink-and- puke approach that Yoonju adopts, and finally the drink-and-repeat ad-nauseum of
Youngnam demonstrates the complex webbing of emotions that are intricately bound to the cultural norms of Korean society. As such, cripqueer experiences that are specifically located within contemporary experiences of South Korea are complex and related to mental illness through an emotional regime that is specific to Korean culture.
I introduce these contemporary dramas to explore the ways in which cripqueer bodies are implicit in contemporary imagination even when crip-ness (i.e. disability) is not explicitly mentioned. This demonstrates an underlying recognition of queer experience and existence that is unique to South Korean society, specifically beginning with the family structure and perhaps, in Youngnam’s case, a broader community; one that extends towards collegiate relationships and further into professional and state institutions. Thus, cripqueer existence is more pervasive than, perhaps crip or queer existence in South Korean society.
However, contemporary films are not the main objects of analysis for this paper because of inherent limitations of the degree to which independent films can prove representative. Contemporary narratives that take place in modern day Korean society are restricted in terms of the inseparable discourse of identity politics. For example, there has yet to be a Korean film of which I am aware that has managed to create a contemporary plot featuring lesbian characters without the story revolving around the fact of their sexual identity as the problem because lesbianism is not yet socially accepted in Korean
6 society. Consequently, any story that features a queer character in Korea is also about
social discrimination and the experience of queer people as social minorities. Thus, in
order to expand my discussion of cripqueer-ness’s pervasiveness within South Korean
cinema, I turn to the sageuk films as a genre that opens up a space for a wider discussion
of Korean culture, politics and history.
Over the span of roughly a decade since the release of A King and the Clown in
2005, the deployment of cripqueer characters has become commonplace in the sageuk
genre. In examining sageuk genres, I demonstrate the scope of influence cripqueer
identities wield with their accessible categories of mental illness and queerness in a
variety of different narratives. Moreover, the genre of sageuk is intrinsically connected to
nationalism due to its basis in historical source material, making it far more useful in
discussing how cripqueer films service nationalist narratives. In many of the recent
sageuk films, mental illness has featured prominently as a character trope that functions
as an important driving force behind each of the narratives. Cripqueer-ness, with its
ability to provide an easily comprehensible conflict among characters, teases out the
many ways in which emotions and relationships intertwine in Korean culture.
THE EMOTIONAL SUFFERING OF HAN
The films that will be discussed in this thesis include an emotion-related disorder.
Therefore, any discussion of these narratives requires at the very least a preliminary discussion about emotion-based disorders and their relevance in Korean narratives. To
7 answer this question, I turn to Theodore Jun Yoo’s work on the intersections of mental illness, emotions, and Korean culture. In the chapter “A Touch of Madness: The Cultural
Politics of Emotion”, Yoo borrows William Reddy’s notion of “emotional regime” and
“emotional suffering” in order to conceptualize emotions in the context of colonial
Korea.
In The Navigation of Feeling, Reddy defines emotional regime as “the set of normative emotions and the official rituals, practices, and emotives that express and inculcate them, a necessary underpinning of any stable political regime (129).” Emotional regimes reinforce conformity through penalties on those who break norms. Through its enforcement of social norms and punishment of violators, emotional regimes are known to cause what Reddy terms “emotional suffering” which “occurs when high-priority goals are in conflict … and when all available choices seem to counter one or more high- priority goals (124).” In his analysis of Korean essayist Yi Gwangsu’s (1892-1950) critique of Confucianism, Yoo uses the conceptual tools laid out by Reddy in order to frame the Confucianist society of Korea as an emotional regime, a social system that was later controlled by Japanese colonialists to enforce and justify the colonization of the
Korean peninsula (Yoo 81-82). Confucianism, as noted in debates between Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) scholars, relied on “a standard code of ethics and ‘feeling rules’ that would govern social interaction and family relations” to regulate the problem of “excess and bad influences” (83).
In the Joseon era, the family unit functioned as the primary social institution of
8 the emotional regime, which relied upon the regulating control of the Confucian family ethics code (Yoo 84). Within the Confucian Joseon family, one’s role within hierarchical relationships was of utmost importance, such that the prioritization of the collective over the individual “facilitated as well as constrained emotional life” (84). Within this emotional regime of uri (we), Yoo points to han (한) and jeong (정) in his articulation of emotional suffering (87). Jeong is a type of affective bond that occurs between people (in other words, in the context of an interpersonal relationship) and is similar to an emotional state in which the self is conceived as part of a larger social context (84). While jeong is complex in the sense that it cannot be reduced to one singular emotion, it generally refers to a positive feeling that is shared among individuals within a group, leading to a congealing of social bonds. Han is equally complex as it also encompasses a wide range of emotions. In order to demonstrate the complexity of han, Yoo’s definition is quoted in full:
[H]an can be described intense suppression of anger that arises from
violation of jeong. It includes feelings of victimization, helplessness,
coupled with intense negative feelings of hate, unresolved resentment,
chagrin, and anger against injustices suffered because of an unfair social
situation. Such feelings of impotence can be felt individually or realized in
the form of a collective consciousness that can have fatal consequences if
“one harbors the han” (haneul pumda) or if it becomes “tangled and
9 cannot be untied” (hanaechinda) … People are described as suffering
from han when they stoically undergo hardship and suffering that they just
have to live with and passively accept as fate (palja). (87)
Thus, han and jeong are both essential emotions that operate within the emotional
regime in Korea. In sageuk narratives, feelings of han and jeong work in tandem as
characters engage in interpersonal conflict within the emotional regime and struggle
through emotional suffering. Though the causes of han are numerous, ranging from stress
to the loss of a loved one, unresolved han always results in the same accumulation of
unresolved emotions that leave permanent residues (88). Such build-up of unresolved
emotion is theorized as causing psychosomatic disorders. These disorders are significant
to the film analyses as they provide the framework through which sageuk narratives can
be understood.
THE STRETCHINESS OF CRIP
Robert McRuer has pointed out the flexible usage of term “crip” beyond its association with physical disability. In the introduction to Crip Times, he writes that recent studies “[position] crip as describing well what me might see as non-normative or nonrepresentative disabilities” (19). Crip’s elasticity allows it to encompass a more diverse range of embodiments and impairments that do not typically fall under the umbrella of “disability” (McRuer 20). Hwabyung is a clear example of a non-normative
10 disability as it is simultaneously a common term (colloquially used in South Korea) and
an ambiguous one (it is difficult to differentiate from depression or other stress-related
illnesses). In contemporary society, hwabyung is not considered to be as serious a mental
disorder as other more established forms such as anxiety, depression, etc. To crip
hwabyung, I argue, resuscitates the “fixed or deadened” (Chen quoted in McRuer 22)
discourse that surrounds mental illness in South Korea.
As McRuer concisely states, cripping unveils “the ways that bodies, minds, and
impairments that should be at the absolute center of a space or issue or discussion get
purged from that space or issue or discussion” (23). A discussion about purge of “bodies,
minds, and impairment”in the South Korean context would not be complete without a
proper cripping of one of the most pressing public health crises – suicide. In 2016,
Sungwon Roh et al. reported that suicide rates in South Korea were the highest among
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations for ten consecutive years (1). The same study notes that while 75.3% of those who attempted
suicide were diagnosed with more than one mental disorder, only 15.3% of those with
mental illness receive mental health care (7). The South Korean government has, for
years, been trying to solve the problem. In early 2018, the government released its first
attack against suicide under the Moon Jae-In administration with a detailed plan released
by the South Korean Ministry of Public Health (MPH). An infographic of the new policy
listed four major contributing factors to suicide in following order: poverty, failure (loss
of employment, competition etc.), isolation, and, significantly, illness (psychological,
11 physical illness) in last place (Heo, “1st in suicide rate”). This differentiation of illness
(which includes disability) as a distinct category quite separate from other socioeconomic
issues represents the perceived disconnect between social factors and disability in Korean
discourse on suicide. In large part due to the continuous prevalence of suicide and social
stigma that prevents people from seeking professional help, suicide in Korean society has
become normalized to the point where society has become desensitized. For this reason,
“cripqueer” is generative term for disrupting the norms of mental illness discourse but essential for the process.
THE INFLUENCE OF COLONIAL PSYCHIATRY
Turning to a brief history on colonial psychiatry – a subject that will be discussed in more detail later on in the analysis of The Handmaiden (2016)– it is worth noting that
the colonial Japanese had a great influence on Korean psychiatry. During the colonial
period, Japan’s German-influenced approach to psychiatry had a great impact on Colonial
Korea. German psychiatry was based in biology and did not take notions of psychoanalysis or subjective matters like individual patients’ emotions very seriously.
However, this was not the only type of approach that existed during that period. In 1923,
Australian psychiatrist and missionary Charles Inglis McLaren offered a counter-point to
the German-influenced biological psychiatry following his appointed as professor at
Severance Union Hospital in Seoul (Yoo 59). McLaren’s approach to psychiatry was
holistic, emphasizing “a focus on the soul as well as the body” (60). This led to the
12 development of models of treatment based on spiritual therapy that involved gaining a deeper understanding of the individual patient’s past, which he theorized prevented patients from being “reoriented in the present” (61). Yoo argues that McLaren’s approach to psychiatry continues to influence Korean society in terms of how it understands mental illness and medical treatment (65).
In fact, the emphasis on understanding an individual’s past as a process of treating mental illness is reflected in the way in which Korean psychiatrists have come to value patient narratives as essential part of hwabyung treatment. The process through which hwabyung became inextricable from a patient’s han reveals the transformation of what was once perceived to be a colloquial illness into an internationally recognized emotional disorder. This process is significant because it demonstrates how the correlation between han and hwabyung as portrayed in sageuk films is informed by a comparatively modern events.
Soyoung Suh’s article “Stories to Be Told” analyzes how Korean medical professionals reconceptualized hwabyung (fire illness) as a culture-bound mental disorder, which then went on to become an internationally recognized term for a Korea emotion-related disorder in the late ‘90s. Through an analysis of Korean medical discourse around hwabyung, Suh notes that it was not until the 1970’s when discourse surrounding the colloquial term hwabyung became etiologically linked with the emotion of han (87). Although the term hwabyung dates back to 17th century court records (Suh
83), the process by which hwabyung became associated with han began with the question
13 of how psychiatrists could frame hwabyung as a real diagnosis that could be recognized
both domestically and internationally. To do so required the task of explaining the exact cause of hwabyung. This led to contributions of psychiatrist Yi Shi-hyung who first theorized the oppressive socio-cultural conditions of South Korea as the cause of hwabyung (85), which then laid the foundation for subsequent research, most notably that of Min Sung-kil. In his attempts to locate a “’genuinely’ Korean factors that may affect mental health” (Suh 87), Min took an interest in the emotion of han and was able to establish “a uniquely national … expression of suffering” as the indigenous cause of hwabyung (Min cited in Suh 87). Furthermore, Suh notes that Min’s work was significant in establishing han as representative of “the uniquely Korean psychological state” (88).
Although the link between han and hwabyung was officially recognized as a culture-bound syndrome in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Illness (DSM) in 1994 (Suh 98), the definition of hwabyung is still debated among medical professionals. Some leading experts equate hwabyung with stress, some as an anger disorder, while others consider it a Korean manifestation of depression (98).
Suh argues that these discrepancies are largely due to the fact that the characterization of hwabyung as an indigenous Korean disorder was a strategy to obtain foreign recognition during a time when cultural psychiatry was on trend (100).
Despite this, one thing virtually all specialists agree on is the method of treatment.
The most important key to treatment is listening to the individual narratives of each
patient, such that the recovery of the Korean vernacular and “articulation of ‘Koreanness’
14 in medicine” (100) become ever more necessary. As Suh observes in her concluding remarks, in spite of the fragility of hwabyung’s uniquely Korean attributes, the continued usage of hwabyung among medical professionals “signifies a turn toward the indigenous initiative” which allows Korean doctors more room to “engage with more general concerns of medicine, such as to respect the stories of illness” (101). Hwabyung, in other words, is the perfect vehicle for any filmmaker that aims to create a story about “truly”
Korean conflict and suffering.
In summary, Suh’s important research highlights several important points for conceptualizing emotion and mental illness in a Korean-specific context. Firstly, the etiological link between hwabyung and han being a modern phenomenon means that hwabyung can be used to better understand narrative forms of madness in sageuk films as a commentary on contemporary Korean society. For example, The Throne (2015), a film based on the historical Crown Prince Sado of the Joseon Dynasty, deals with the relationship between the character Prince Sado and his father King Yeongjo; a relationship so strained that Sado develops hwabyung. An analysis of this film that looks at the correlation between the character Sado’s emotions and his mental health should not be taken as commentary on whether or not Prince Sado actually had a diagnosable form
of hwabyung. Instead, reading the character’s behavior and emotions not as simple ill-
tempered personality traits a but as symptoms of hwabyung opens up a space where one
can delve deeper into the correlation between the conflict-ridden father-son/king-heir
dynamic and the emotional regime. Secondly, the emphasis on the role of narrative in the
15 treatment process recognizes that The Throne (and other sageuk narratives) is a form of narrative therapy for and by its crip characters. The treatment in this context does not refer to an actual cure for Prince Sado’s hwabyung. Instead, reflecting on McLaren’s emphasis on understanding a patient’s past, sageuk films like The Throne are able to narratively deliver the cripqueer body from the past and reorient it in the present for modern Korean audiences.
Chapter 1 gives a comparison between two sageuk films, The Throne and The
King and the Clown (2005), in order to tease out the ways in which these narratives render cripqueer identities as the narrative prothesis. By doing so, I attempt to flesh out the essential role of cripqueer identities in narrative explorations of emotion and mental illness. Furthermore, these films showcase the effects of emotional suffering in
Confucian society by adapting the so-called “mad kings” from the annals of Korean history.
Chapter 2 examines A Frozen Flower (2008) as a narrative that also prostheticizes cripqueer identities in order to scaffold a queer love triangle. Similar to The Throne and
The King and the Clown, A Frozen Flower is based on yet another mad king, this time from the annals of the earlier Goryeo dynasty (918-1392). However, I read A Frozen
Flower as essentially a tale of Confucian society and thus must similar to Joseon dynasty narrative despite its anachronistic usage. The reason for this will be explained further in the next section where I explore all three films as meaningful discursive texts in which emotion and politics are exposed as driving factors within Korean society both past and
16 present.
Finally, Chapter 3 analyzes The Handmaiden (2016), which uses cripqueer identities as a metaphor for the colonized Korean whose inferiority is later revealed to be the false construct of Japanese colonizers. This anti-colonialist rhetoric leans heavily on the narrative prosthesis of the mentally ill cripqueer body that is later stripped of its disability and returned to a state of able-bodied queerness. This section emphasizes both the indispensable role cripqueer identities play in this anti-colonialist rhetoric, and the problematic erasure of those cripqueer identities in imaging the independent, decolonized
Korean as an able-bodied queer identity.
17 Chapter 1: The Mad Kings
As David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder note, narratives crave aberrancies to the
point where “[d]eviance serves as the basis and common denominator of all narrative”
(55). It is small wonder that many of the sageuk films have a preference for historical
figures who are presumed to have been mentally ill. Korean history, for obvious reasons,
only recorded the mentally ill of prominent historical figures, namely the members of
royal families. The following section analyzes two sageuk narratives that depict two well-
known historical figures who have been posthumously diagnosed with psychiatric
disorders (Yoo 33).
The immensely successful 2005 surprise hit The King and the Clown (왕의 남자,
Wang-ui namja) directed by Lee Joon-ik features the historical figure Yeonsangun (1476-
1506), the tyrannical Joseon king who is famous for his bloody literati purges and acts of
vindictive violence. Yeonsangun’s violent behavior and hedonistic pursuits have made him one of the most well-known mad kings in Korean history (Yoo 38). Following the success of this sageuk sleeper hit, Lee went on to direct another sageuk about yet another
famous mad king in his 2015 film The Throne (사도 Sado) which was based on the
Crown Prince Sado (1735-1762) of the Joseon dynasty.
While distinct in their own ways, these two films share several overlapping
themes. Mental illness is pervasive in both of the mad kings and the escalation of events
largely revolves around the king’s mad behavior. Through these scenes of madness, the
18 operations of emotional regimes and emotional refuges are laid out. For instance, The
Throne uses han and hwabyung to explore the fraught father-son relationship between
King Yeongjo and Prince Sado. In addition, The King and the Clown and A Frozen
Flower both employ violent cripqueer kings to progress a narrative of oppressive cultural norms and rituals. Understanding how sageuk narratives use cripqueer identities to explain the Confucian culture in Korea today can help one understand the ways in which
Korean society is understood as an emotionally oppressive culture even to this day.
THE THRONE AND THE KING AND THE CLOWN
The Throne directed by Lee Jun-ik follows the character Crown Prince Sado, who
is known for the tragic death of a young prince who suffers from the constant public
derision from his father, King Yeongjo, who believes his son to be unfit for the throne.
Eventually, Sado’s mental health deteriorates to the point where his violent behavior.
Coupled with this strained relationship culminates in Yeongjo’s unorthodox punishment;
Sado is imprisoned in a rice box until, after seven days, he dies of starvation and
suffocation. Early in the story, King Yeongjo’s dismissive attitude towards his son’s
feelings of ulhwa (울화 depression and anger) echoes the expectations within the
contemporary Korean society.
The second film, The King and the Clown, released earlier in 2005, is based on
the life of the tyrannical king Yeonsangun. The film follows the story of two clowns,
Gong-gil and Jang-saeng, who put on traditional Korean folk arts performances to earn
19 money on the streets. Gong-gil is often sought after by wealthy yangban class men for his
feminine beauty. Though Gong-gil finds these advances difficult to refuse given their
financial predicament, Jang-saeng intervenes to protect him. The two later form a larger
performance troupe, gaining immense popularity with the locals by satirizing King
Yeonsangun. Subsequently, they are appointed as royal court jesters for the king who
becomes enchanted by the performances and takes a particular liking to Gong-gil.
Meanwhile, a political plot unfolds that makes use of the political satire of the troupe’s
performance into a political tool of the crown which slowly exposes the extreme
reactions of Yeonsangun to his childhood trauma.
The two films The Throne and The King and the Clown offer insight as to how
emotional refuges function within Confucian society. Firstly, both stories feature kings
who are restricted by li (禮) or ye (예) in Korean, the rules of propriety in Confucianism.
Within the court culture of the palace, li plays a central role in the emotional regime as
kings are expected to act and behave in a certain way depending on the situation, the relationship, etc. This establishes a source of emotional suffering, exacerbated by the familial tensions and drama that each king must endure. Secondly, the two kings seek out emotional refuges to release their feelings of constriction. For Prince Sado, the emotional refuge takes the form of shamanistic funeral rites and rituals; for Yeonsangun, it is traditional folk arts. Thirdly, both films utilize some form of mental disability to serve as the driving force. This leads to the climax of a film where the characters are embroiled in violent conflict. These comparisons illustrate the integration of mental illness within
20 sageuk stories that often deal with the political tug-o-war of nation-building, the stressful
relationship between parents and children, and the pressure to conform – all still very
relevant aspects of everyday Korean life. Furthermore, the films demonstrate how
emotional refuges can be co-opted by the nation as a political tool.
In The Throne, Prince Sado grows to resent the future that his father has planned
out for him. Although the prince shows much promise at a young age and is adored by his
father, Sado tires of his studies and begins to neglect them, preferring more artistic
pursuits such as painting, and playing outdoors. This troubles and angers King Yeongjo who initially swallows his discontent, keeping the han he feels at seeing his son neglect his duties as heir to the throne appalling. By the time Prince Sado is a young adult, King
Yeongjo becomes more aggressive in chastising his son’s many failings – everything from the way he dresses to his decision-making in the royal court. Yeongjo frequently belittles and humiliates his son in public and punishes him in various ways. For his insolence for violating proper conduct, Sado is excluded from visiting his late grandfather’s mural; verbally abused in public; and blamed for the death of his grandmother. Sado’s han builds daily as he is unable to confront his father or repair their crumbling relationship no matter how hard he tries.
Similarly, The King and the Clown’s Yeonsangun harbors emotional pain that stems from a strained relationship with his father and the traumatic loss of his mother.
Yeonsangun’s mother was sentenced to death for treason. Traumatized by the loss of his mother, he displays signs of yearning for maternal love. For instance, his relationship
21 with queen consort Noksu, while sexual, nonetheless represents a substitute for a mother
figure. Noksu offers him “breastmilk” during sexual foreplay, cradles him and uses baby-
talk. Yeonsangun seeks solace in Noksu’s arms as he feels burdened by the constraints
placed on his actions. He expresses confusion and frustration at the fact that his vassals –
whose sole purpose is to counsel him – advise him against appointing Jaeng-saeng and
Gong-gil’s troupe as the royal entertainers based on the tenets of li. The combination of
the traumatic memory of his mother’s execution – the details of which are concealed
from Yeonsangun until much later on in the film – and the daily stressors of conforming
to the strict Confucian doctrines and rituals of court life takes a toll on Yeonsangun.
The han that accumulates through years of being bound to the Confucian
philosophy of li makes life unbearable for the two kings, pushing them to seek spaces of
escape. In both films, the emotional refuge provides an outlet for “safe release from
prevailing emotional norms and allows relaxation of emotional effort” and also has the potential to threaten the existing emotional regime (Yoo 124). As a grown man, Sado turns to shamanist funeral rites, beating drums along with a blind shaman in front of his grandmother’s burial shrine and lying inside a casket to simulate his own death – a performative act of suicide. When his mother comes to visit him in the mountains where he has set up his ritualistic space – a literal emotional refuge where he can avoid feeling the pain of life through the pretense of death – he explains to her that he acts this way
since his father, King Yeongjo, “treats me as though I were a dead person” (죽은 사람
취급 jukeun saram chwigeup). He also takes up drinking during the mourning period
22 following his grandmother’s death. Drinking alcohol during this period is violation of the
rules of Confucian conduct, something that is not taken lightly by King Yeongjo. After a
heated dispute between father and son, the king upends a basin of water over Sado and
leaves in disgust. Though he does not explicitly state it, the king is concerned that the
prince’s erratic behavior will cause problems for the ascendency of the throne as well as
the proper maintenance of kingdom. Having been thoroughly humiliated by his father,
Prince Sado is forced to return to the palace.
Meanwhile, The King and the Clown’s well-known use of traditional Korean folk
arts such as jultagi (tightrope walking) and pansori, far from being a shoe-in for the chance at winning cultural brownie points from film critics, plays an integral part of the overall film narrative for its role as both emotional refuge and a tool of political manipulation. The two main protagonists of the film, street clowns Gong-gil and Jang- saeng, represent the very lowest rank on the Joseon era social hierarchy. The pair form a performance troupe and are eventually appointed as royal jesters Yeonsangun takes
immense pleasure in the performances, sometimes occasionally joining in to play an
impromptu character. For Yeonsangun, the troupe’s performances are a perfect place to
shed the burdens of Confucian conduct.
In one scene, Yeonsangun becomes so irate with the restrictions placed upon his
commands that he runs directly to where the troupe is practicing, picks up a drum and beats it maniacally until the drum skin splits open. The clowns play along despite being unnerved by the king’s unusual behavior, and thus maintain Yeonsangun’s sense of
23 freedom through performance arts. Later on, he summons Gong-gil to his private chambers where he literally greets Gong-gil with an enthusiastic “Let’s play!” (놀자
Nol-ja) and watches with rapt attention as Gong-gil puts on shows first using cloth hand puppets then shadow puppets using a lamp. Yeonsangun participates in these puppet performances to tell the story of how, as a young prince, he begged his father, the king, to let him see his mother who had been sentenced to death. Gong-gil feels sympathetic towards the king and thus building an emotional connection with him. Thus, through emotional regime of performance art, two characters of completely different social classes are able to share jeong. At the same time, the jeong between the two characters suberverts and disrupts the established power dynamics between Gong-gil, Jang-saeng,
Noksu, and Yeonsangun.
EMOTIONAL REFUGE AS POLITICAL TOOL
Emotional refuge, as per Reddy’s definition, is two-fold: firstly, it functions as a
safe haven where emotional norms are allowed to be relaxed. Like the clown’s satirical
plays about the king’s relationship with the former ki-saeng (courtesan) Noksu,
traditional folk arts can offer “harmless” entertainment while also posing a potential
threat to the ruling political regime. In both films, the narratives establish emotional
refuge which are then used as a political tool that can strengthen the authority of the
throne.
Turning back to Yeonsangun, I argue that his fascination with the troupe’s plays
24 stems from the fact that he is allowed to freely express himself by watching or
participating in the performances. Folk arts ability to influence the king’s mood does not
go unnoticed by eunuch1 Cheo-seon who plots to eliminate specific vassals within the
royal court by manipulating the performances. By playing on the naivety of the clowns,
Cheo-seon convinces the troupe to put on a play in which Yeonsangun’s mother is
wrongfully framed for treason by other members of the royal family. Yeonsangun reacts
badly to this performance, rushing to Gong-gil who plays his mother, and holding “his
mother’s” limp body. Enraged, Yeonsangun slaughters several members of the royal family members in the audience. Although Cheo-seon’s plan to increase the political
power of the throne by eradicating the opposing members of the court backfires because
of the unexpectedly extreme reactions of Yeonsangun, his use of folk art performances as
a propaganda tool acknowledges the subversive role that emotions play in Korean
society. His failure to anticipate and control the king’s emotions due to the
unpredictability of Yeonsangun’s mental state demonstrates the complex relationship
between mental illness, volatile emotions, and the subversive nature of emotional refuge.
In Sado’s case, the emotional refuge takes the form of shamanistic rituals which
include themes of death and madness. After returning to the palace, Sado becomes more violent. He develops a fear of clothing, tearing at his garments and attacking his
1 Here, eunuch refers to naesi (내시), servants who held important positions within the royal court and served the king.
25 frightened servants. He even beheads one of his eunuchs, and brandishes the severed
head in front of his wife, mother, son and sister. His mother attempts to protect her son by
pleading to King Yeongjo that Sado is mentally ill and unable to control his behavior.
King Yeongjo, however, is unsympathetic to his son’s health problems and publicly
declares that Sado is a national traitor. When Prince Sado pleads his innocence to his
father, explaining that his violent threats to his family members was the result of his
ulhwa (a combination of feelings of depression and anger), King Yeongjo scoffs:
“Ulhwa? It would be better if you just went mad and lost your mind!” (울화? 차라리
미쳐발광해라!) This distinction between emotions such as ulhwa or han and madness
suggests that King Yeongjo does not think matters of emotion or mental illness very
seriously (understandable, given that Confucianism is all about controlling such frivolous extraneous emotions).
Ironically, death and madness are used to save the throne and the safety of the royal family from political opponents. After the death of Prince Sado, his title as prince is reinstated by King Yeongjo who destroys official documents regarding Prince Sado’s assassination plot so that his son dies not as a traitor of the state who tried to kill the king but a son who went mad and tried to kill his father. This revised characterization of
Prince Sado ensures that the royal family is protected from political opponents who argue against the validity of Prince Sado’s title and his lineage since, during the Joseon
Dynasty, those accused of treason were usually sentenced to death along with their families.
26 King Yeongjo instructs his grandson and heir to the throne never to speak of
Sado’s name again. He then lets out a low moan of anguish, crying tears that he has not
shed in years to express the sorrow of his son’s death. The posthumous name “Prince
Sado” reflects this unresolvable han, as “Sado” (思悼) means “to think of with sadness”.
As discussed above, han and hwabyung, emotional regime and refuge, and the
cripqueer all take up prominent roles within sageuk narratives. The relationship between emotion and mental illness act as the driving force of conflict in narratives that heavily
rely on the ability to speak to emotional suffering of characters, and to the contemporary
Korean who goes about one’s daily life immersed in a contemporary version of the same
conflicts. By positioning madness and play as both emotional refuge opens up an avenue
where one can examine how mental illness has often been metaphorized as escape from
Korean society and used to criticize Confucian society.
27 Chapter 2: Violence in A Frozen Flower
In 2008, A Frozen Flower (쌍화점 ssanghwajeom) starred two top-billed actors
in a story based off of the historical figure King Gongmin. This Goryeo Dynasty (819-
1392) king is thought to have suffered from a psychotic disorder after the passing of his wife Queen Noguk (Yoo). King Gongmin, a monarch who, despite his controversial mental problems and sexual conduct with male subjects, is still revered in Korean national history as a national hero – a uiin in Korean – for outwitting the Yuan-Chinese
Empire and temporarily restoring national autonomy and pride to the Korea’s Goryeo
Kingdom. While the film acknowledges its artistic liberties by leaving the character of
the king unnamed, the nod to its historical source material is easily recognizable for many
native Korean audiences.
In fact, this was not the first time that King Gongmin had been revived in popular
culture as shown on various television adaptations. For instance, one of plotlines of the
2012 television series Daepoongsoo (대풍수) starred actor Ryu Tae Jin as King
Gongmin and highlighted the character’s descent into grief-induced debauchery following the death of Queen Noguk. In one episode, Ryu’s Gongmin drunkenly gropes around a room blindfolded as young men playfully evade his advances (12/12). In the end, he is brutally stabbed to death by the same young men he adored. A similar representation of King Gongmin is shown in the popular television program called No
Way I’m an Adult (어쩌다 어른) where experts on a variety of fields deliver “premium special lectures” on a variety of topics to South Korea’s adult audience. In the 70th
28 episode of the lecture series, Seol Min Seok, a famous history teacher and CEO of an
educational services company, describes the forlorn King Gongmin as a tragic man who
was so devastated by his wife’s passing that he vowed never to love another woman, and choosing instead to fornicate with men (“History Digest - Goryeo”).
However, the theatrical release of Flower in 2008 did mark a departure from these earlier televised adaptations for several reasons. Firstly, the unnamed king never is never in love with his wife but rather falls from his position of power after he is betrayed by his
male lover. This reversal was also unique because it explored themes of sexuality in a far more explicit and direct manner compared to previous sageuk films. Secondly, while
Queen Noguk has always been viewed as a one-dimensional figure whose role in history was limited to being a supportive spouse who dies in childbirth, the Queen character in the film is a third wheel.
Moreover, the film brought to the fore what could not be broadcast on television.
Yu Ha’s use of the Goryeo Dynasty dispels a common myth in South Korea, one that characterizes homosexuality as entirely alien to Korea’s traditional culture and history. In fact, same-sex desires in Korea has been recorded throughout many dynasties. In his chapter “Male Concubine”, Carter J. Eckert presents the observations of George C.
Foulk, an American Naval Attaché who diligently recorded his experience in Korea during the late Joseon Dynasty, to demonstrate the existence of non-normative desires and practices in Korea’s premodern history. Among Foulk’s notes, brief mentions of male penetrative sex suggest that despite the dominant ideology of Neo-Confucianism
29 during that era what happened behind closed doors was an entirely different matter
(Eckert 237). Although Eckert concedes that Foulk’s observations do not definitively
prove the existence of homoerotic practices during the late Joseon Dynasty, his pursuit of
an elusive “history of homosexuality” in Korea attempts to convince contemporary
Koreans who are hesitant to “consider the possibility that such [homosexual]
relationships might somehow also be inscribed in Korea’s own premodern past” (237).
A Frozen Flower’s reimagining of King Gongmin allowed many viewers to
discuss the topic of gender identity. Among some online news articles, commentators
gave various readings about the character of Hong-rim who has sex scenes with both the
king and the queen and therefore might be interpreted as heterosexual or bisexual. For the
most part, however, the discussions did not lead to a political or activist response to address issues of discrimination against queer people per se because the story on the surface did not deal with the sexuality as a basis for overt forms of discrimination such as bullying, physical violence, or loss of opportunity. One review, published in the webzine
Neo Na Uri Rang which is written by members of the Homosexuality Rights Alliance
(동성애인권연대), expressed disappointment at the representation of queer people in the
film. The biggest problem, the author argues, is the fact that the film represents homosexuals as “a king blinded by love and power”, concluding that “as a homosexual,
this film is discomfiting.” The main conclusion of this review revolves around the
representation of homosexuality in mainstream films as negative and villainous,
especially in the context of Korean history. “[H]istory has never placed homosexuals in
30 the mainstream”, the review laments. “Even if that person was a king, history has never once thought of them as a human being.” This social realist perspective of A Frozen
Flower laments the inaccurate depiction of queer figures as evil and antagonistic.
However, one should recall “that which parades itself as ‘fixing’ the historical record often ends up in the pathos of an individual life or in the falsely superhuman portrait of the overcompensating crip” (Darke cited in Mitchell & Snyder 23).
The same review, however, does touch upon moments of potential. In the beginning half of the article, the reviewer notes that the film reverses the usual oppressed figure of homosexuals by replacing them with a heterosexual couple who tries to flee from the tyrannical homosexual king in fear for their lives so that an audience would easily relate to the oppressed situation of homosexual characters. Furthermore, the author suggests that the film explores themes of how oppressive powers force individuals to adopt specific sexual identities, giving Hong-rim as an example of someone who is not given the freedom to explore his own sexuality openly.
This idea of “oppressive society” and its negative impact on Korean homosexuals specifically is largely informed by contemporary Korean culture which is influenced by homophobia and Western identity politics. However, given that the narrative takes place in a time when neither Western religion nor contemporary politics had any meaning, the narrative gives us the opportunity to shift the context of “oppressive society” to
Confucian Joseon society and its impact on all Koreans. This framework allows more room to explore A Frozen Flower as incredibly generative text that lays out how
31 emotional suffering caused by conflict among actors who are closely involved in the maintenance of a political regime occurs within the context of Korea. Through this circulation of suffering among subjects of the nation, violence becomes a centralized theme of the plot, ultimately culminating in the bloody deaths of the two main characters.
Thus, the film’s narrative uses cripqueer characters not to make social commentary on the situation of cripqueer experiences either in the past or the present but to employ them to create a narrative that deals with how the emotional regime regulates individuals through emotional suffering. As I will discuss, these kinds of narratives are almost entirely reliant on pre-established notions of what social status queers occupy in contemporary Korea in order to ensure that emotional suffering is recognized in relation to cripqueer individuals.
Therefore, narratives regarding emotional suffering and emotional regime employ contemporary understanding of cripqueer experiences of suffering to convey meaning.
A Frozen Flower draws on jeong in its exploration of themes pertaining to the emotional regime that regulates and maintains a nation, and the emotional suffering it causes. Jeong, as mentioned previously, is not a feeling that exists within an individual but between individuals or within a larger collective. This affective bond congeals the sense of uri (we) within which hierarchical relationships (Yoo 84). These hierarchical relationships include that of sovereign and subject (ui), father and son (chin), husband and wife (byeol), elder brother and sibling (seo), and senior and junior (sin) (Deuchler quoted in Yoo 84). Among these, Flower primarily deals with relationships between sovereign and subject, and husband and wife by queering ui and byeol. Using these
32 notions, the narrative poses the question: what are the processes and consequences of
jeong violation? As the tragic ending suggests, the violation of jeong leads to a process of
violence and the collapse of the nation-state system, thereby reiterating the essential role of emotional regimes which Korean culture and society is bound by. But in between scenes of violence, there is always a submission to control of the emotional regime.
Another point of interest that I would like to emphasize is the fact that characters oftentimes do not express emotions. Instead of attributing this to a case of poor acting skills, I argue that the constant use of deadpanning and roundabout indirect dialogue exemplify the commonplace usage of chemyeon (체면) and nunchi (눈치) in Korean society. Yoo invokes Erving Goffman to explain how chemyeon functions as tool of emotion management:
When individuals assume an established social role, they must engage in emotion
management to maintain a presentation of self that conforms to a set of culturally
sanctioned rules to minimize the chance of disagreement or an embarrassing
scene. This means that people assuming the role find “a particular front that has
already been established for it” and through “dramatic realization” behave
accordingly to the environment in which they are embedded… From this vantage
point, individuals must adhere to a set of complex rules called chemyeon (saving
face), a Sino-Korean compound consisting of the characters of “body” and “face.”
… the concept of one’s face (or a “social face,” according to Goffman) … it is
33 much more accentuated in its function and social contexts among Koreans, for
whom one’s behavior must comply with the expectations of uri …(86-87)
The constant self-regulation of emotions also manifests in the passive form of
communication and an intuition for situational tact called nunchi. Yoo argues that, due to its indirect nature, nunchi “require others to be able to read “the [nunchi] act,” hold back, deliberately display more than they actually feel, or manipulate chemyeon to meet the expectations of others to maintain the uri dynamic (Yoo 87).” Such tools of emotion management are reflected in the cautious pokerfaced expressions and indirect methods of communication among the three characters in A Frozen Flower. This regulation becomes
one of the main factors that builds suppressed han within characters that later manifest in other symptoms and actions such as rage, suicide, and physical violence against others.
The following section analyzes key scenes from the film to illustrate how
cripqueer identities become vital elements in explicating the emotional regime of
patrilineal empires and the normalization of violence via emotional suffering. The first set of scenes analyzes the regulation of love and sexuality through a Reddy’s notion of
“induced goal conflict” which functions as a management tool, ensuring the conformity
of the individual within a community (124). The second set of scenes demonstrate how
emotional suffering evolve into violence. I argue that this emotional suffering falls
perfectly within the category of han, which then leads to variations of han-venting or hwabyung. Each character exhibits signs of what is read as mental illness, whether it be
34 in the form of unbridled rage and acts of violence either inflicted upon others or oneself.
SCENES OF REGULATION
Earlier, I argued that A Frozen Flower should be read as if it too place in the
Joseon period which was heavily influenced by Confucianism. Although the Goryeo
dynasty was not predominantly Confucian, the only surviving historical records were all
written after the fall of the Goryeo Kingdom by Joseon scholars. Because of the
circumstances by which sovereign leadership changed hands near the end of the 14th century, Joseon scholars had political reasons for painting King Gongmin in a negative light. By discrediting King Gongmin’s legacy, Joseon scholars could further legitimize the new Joseon dynasty as a necessary consequence prompted by the incompetence of the former royal lineage. Given these circumstances and the scarcity of surviving Goryeo texts in general, King Gongmin’s story, whether accurate or not, cannot be completely divorced from Joseon culture and politics. Furthermore, as Flower is a film created in contemporary times that harbors more influences by its closest historical era, the narrative itself is more reflective of the current Confucian-influenced society and culture.
Thus, I read the film through Yoo’s theorizations of Confucianist society as a powerful emotional regime.
Soon after the title credits roll, the narrative jumps forward in time and straight into a frenzied chase scene. Hong-rim, the commander of the gwonryongwi (the fictionalized version of the historical king’s guard jajewi), and a few of his other men on
35 horseback chase down two other members who are fleeing on one steed. One of the
runaways is revealed to be a woman in disguise. The gwonryongwi member who is trying
to escape with his lover begs Hong-rim to let them pass, knowing that the punishment for
desertion is execution. In order to serve the nation properly, the king’s guard is sworn to celibacy, unable to marry or bear children to start one’s own family. This control over the guard’s jeong outside the boundaries of the sovereign-servant relationship (ui) ensures
constant loyalty to the kingdom and the unbroken continuation of the male bonds that are
developed literally over an entire lifetime. Hong-rim is caught in a moment of goal
conflict. On the one side, he values the life of his soldiers, even when they have deserted
their post. On the other side, his loyalty to the sovereign through ui stipulates that he turn
the deserter in to face the consequences of his actions. Through Reddy, Hong-rim’s
dilemma can be defined as “induced goal conflict” which refers to “the effects at a
distance (the determent or exemplary effects) of policies or torture, punishment,
exclusion, or imprisonment which sanction deviance from an emotional regime” (129).
The induced goal conflict is designed so that the decision ultimately results in his
emotional suffering since he cannot achieve both goals.
Hong-rim ultimately decides to take the deserter back to the palace and attempts
to circumvent the penalization of the non-conformist runaway by appealing directly to the
King. Under ordinary circumstances, this plan would likely backfire as Hong-rim is
violating the social norms that prohibit the lower-class subject from questioning the laws
set out by the sovereign. However, Hong-rim’s intimate relationship with the King,
36 cultivated since their childhood and strengthened throughout their adult years, allows
Hong-rim to plead his case. This appeal for mercy then triggers an induced goal conflict for the King who must grapple with either committing to his duties as sovereign by ordering the execution or appease his lover by showing compassion to one who has violated the tenet of ui (a concept similar to righteousness, in this context the fulfillment of a subject’s duty to a sovereign). Choosing the latter would require an act of deviance – that is, shirking his duties as an enforcer of rules to favor the personal request of his male lover. On the other hand, denying the request would cause him emotional pain. In the end, the King is swayed by his affections for Hong-rim and allows the deserter to return to his post among his comrades. This decision is met with much relief and celebration among most of other gwonryongwi members but exacerbates an ongoing conflict between the deputy commander Seung-gi who expresses indignation and jealousy towards the commander for his influence over the King. Thus, despite Hong-rim’s good intentions and attempts to sidestep any real consequences of his subversion of rules and consequences, he only succeeds in circulating the conflicts and the disrupting the jeong in other relationships.
The King, much like his lover, attempts to avoid the strict regulation of the emotional regime but at a great cost. For instance, his exclusive affections for Hong-rim puts the Queen in a position of perpetual neglect and loneliness. From the very beginning when she arrives in Goryeo as a princess bride from the Yuan Empire, she is ignored by her husband. Her emotional suffering is perhaps greater than others as her role as a
37 woman as a wife and a loyal companion to her King demands obedience, keeping her
feelings doubly suppressed. Her attempts to be intimate with the King, if only for the
purpose of fulfilling the duties of childbearer, are also coldly rejected. Later on, the
Queen reveals her feelings of loneliness and jealousy towards Hong-rim, demonstrating
the extent to which her emotions have been buried for the duration of a long loveless
marriage. The Queen’s confession exposes the han that has built up as a result of the
King’s continued violation of jeong.
To the outside world, the King and Queen are an affection couple who care for
each other within the respectable boundaries expected from a Confucian society. Without
sincere jeong between the King and Queen, however, there are no heirs, a problem that
quickly becomes a major source of conflict within the love triangle. The Yuan Empire
takes the opportunity to deliver a thinly-veiled threat: should the royal family fail to
produce their own heir, an heir will be assigned to the family, thereby cutting the royal
lineage and increasing the political power of Yuan. In one scene, the Queen delivers an
impassioned speech to the court vassals, declaring that to acquiesce to the terms of Yuan
would be tantamount to eliminating the Goryeo Kingdom. However, without her
husband’s commitment to having a child together, her loyalty and devotion is a fruitless endeavor. While the tenets of byeol refer to the clear division of roles for husband and
wife, the King is incapable of fulfilling this role of husband (and as sovereign) by
impregnating his wife. He stoically refuses the queen’s persuasions, stating that he
“cannot lie with women” (여자의 몸을 품을 수 없다 yeoja-ui mom-eul pum-eul su
38 eobda). In spite of all this, the King is also impacted by emotional suffering because his desire to maintain an exclusive relationship with Hong-rim conflicts with his desire to fulfill his duties as King. Therefore, all members involved are emotionally affected by the situation.
QUEERNESS
Up to this point, the operations of the emotional regime have all been expressed through the narrative vehicle of queerness. With the contemporary understanding of queer sexuality, the process of induced goal conflict becomes easily recognizable. This is especially relevant because the film deviates from the original history of King Gongmin
who did, in fact, love and bed his wife as well as fornicate freely with other men and
women. During his rule, Gongmin grew fond of a commoner named Ban-ya and sired a
son in 1365, later to be crowned King Uwang, born mere months after Gongmin’s
beloved Queen Noguk had died (Lee 425). Later in 1372, Gongmin formed a group of
personal guards called Jajewi which consisted of good-looking young boys. These young
Jajewi members were known to frequently join the king in his bed chamber
(Goryeosajeolyo 370). For the purposes of creating an easily comprehendible love-
triangle, however, Flower’s version of King Gongmin is constructed according to the
conventions of a homosexual man as understood by the general Korean public. With non-
polyamorous queer characters and the elimination of the common practice of polygamy
in royal families, the plot does not become overly complicated and allows the narrative to
39 focus on the dynamics of the three main characters and their emotional changes. This
reinvention of King Gongmin also has the added benefit of ensuring that he is a character
for whom audiences would likely feel sympathy compared to characters who practice
polygamy or polyamory as such concepts are uncommon and generally associated with
unfaithfulness.
In the latter half of the film, the ostensibly able-bodied queer characters shift into
a representation of cripqueer. The suppressed han created by the continued fracturing of
jeong culminate in violent reactions that I read as a form of han-puri (venting of suppressed han), a known symptom of hwabyung. The destructive behavior of hwabyung ends with literal destruction of the cripqueer bodies which are then resurrected in an end- credit scene as once again rehabilitated queer bodies. The scenes of violence and the ending’s resurrections of the King and Hong-rim are analyzed to further elaborate these points.
FROM EMOTIONAL SUFFERING TO VIOLENCE
The film’s portrayal of the King makes a concerted effort to characterize him as a compassionate and strong leader. For example, the King orders a coordinated purge of the pro-Yuan vassals for plotting a coup against the throne. Moreoever, his interactions with the Queen also show that, despite his usual coolness towards her, he respects and cares for her well-being. Thus, when he sets into motion a plan that requires his lover to
impregnate his wife in his stead, the decision is framed as an act of necessary sacrifice –
40 even a sacrifice on the part of the King who, given total freedom over the situation, would never have asked anything from his wife except to keep her distance. In simple terms, the queerness of the King and the rhetoric of “for the good of the nation” function as the unfortunate but reasonable justifications for which the King forces two people to participate in rape. Thus, the queering of the sovereign and the appeal to a sense of nationalism solidifies the character as a victim of the emotional regime.
The Queen’s victimization is thus reframed as an act of patriotic self-sacrifice.
Per Ernest Renan’s definition:
The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of endeavors,
sacrifice, and devotion … ‘having suffered together’ and, indeed, suffering in
common unifies for more than joy does… A nation is therefore a large-scale
solidarity, constituted by feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past
and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. It presupposed a past; it is
summarized, however, in the present by a tangible fact, namely, consent, the
clearly expressed desire to continue a common life. (19)
Based on this definition, the Queen’s declaration that she is a Goryeo-in (Goryeo citizen) despite being a princess of Yuan China entails that she demonstrates her loyalty to the Kingdom by consensually participating in the collective suffering. The Queen’s immediate reaction to “consensual” impregnation by Hong-rim is never shown on-screen.
41 Instead, a very brief shot condenses her predicament with a close-up of the Queen’s face.
Sitting silently in an empty room, she stares into space, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, as her tightly sealed lips twitch slightly as an audio overlay repeats her husband’s
words: “for the future, there is no other way” (훗날을 위해서 다른 방법이 없다
hutnal-eul wihaeseo dareun bangbub-i eopda). Her troubled yet carefully controlled
expression belies the emotions she might rightfully feel – anger, indignation, horror,
disgust –as she buries her han in order to fulfill what Renan refers to as the spiritual
principle of the nation: “present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to
perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form” (19). Her
“choice” to follow through with her husband’s plans in securing the dynasty’s future
leads to serial state-sanctioned rape with her “consenting” partner, Hong-rim.
Hong-rim, unlike the Queen, vocally expresses his refusal on screen when he first
learns about the plan. However, his protests have no effect on the matter and are quickly
replaced by implied “consent” as the scene immediately cuts to a montage of the lead-up
to the first attempt at impregnation. The montage consists of an elaborate fertility
ceremony, and a special preparation, throughout which The Queen maintains an
unreadable expression. When the husband and wife are finally alone together, he takes
off her outer robe, and gently lays her down on the bed. His expression too is stoic as he
places a hand on top hers and bends down to place a kiss on her lips. The awkward
interaction between the stoic Queen and the equally stoic King demonstrate the extent to
which emotional control are essential to an enduring political regime. Once Hong-rim is
42 sent in as the substitute, however, the Queen shows signs of emotional suffering, her nose reddening as tears form in her eyes. Hong-rim, noticing her tears, moves away from her.
With the throne at stake, however, the two resume the attempts for several more nights.
Unknown to them, the King sometimes watches them through a gap in the sliding doors, an unspoken sadness in his eyes. For the good of the nation, all three suffer in silence.
As we have seen so far, the rules laid out by the emotional regime are very simple: one must not feel anything outside the set of normative emotions if the nation is to maintain itself. For Hong-rim, the King, and the Queen, the goal set by the national interests of the throne is to produce a child to pass off as the King’s legitimate heir. As the plot progresses, however, the Queen and Hong-rim begin to develop feelings for each other and they meet in secret. For the Queen who has never received love, her clandestine relationship with Hong-rim serves as an emotional refuge, a safe space where she can admit to missing Yuan and the loneliness she has felt during her marriage.
Although this emotional refuge starts out harmlessly in the sense that it does not directly threaten the nation in a conspicuously disruptive way (after all, the entire point of the initial plan was to have Hong-rim impregnate the Queen anyway), this all changes as the emotional refuge of their relationship enacts its potential to “shore up or threaten the existing emotional regime” (Reddy 129). When the King learns of a political plot orchestrated by some of his pro-Yuan advisors and the Queen’s own brother. Hong-rim is given special orders to quietly eliminate the brother. The Queen, having caught wind of this plan, privately begs Hong-rim to spare her brother. Hong-rim accepts her request
43 after some hesitation despite the fact that he is committing treason against the King,
thereby deviating from the norms set by the political and emotional regime of the nation.
As a result, Hong-rim’s decision to prioritize his love and desire for the Queen disrupts the affective bond between himself and the King.
This violation of jeong between sovereign-subject and husband-wife relationships does not go unnoticed for very long. Under the pretense that he has no idea of their ongoing romance, the King suggests that Queen resume the impregnation sessions – but this time, with deputy commander Seung-gi. This strategy ensures that he instills upon the two people several key emotions: fear, guilt, and han. The Queen begs Hong-rim to run away with her, echoing the actions of the deserter and his lover at the beginning of the film. In contrast, Hong-rim fears the consequences of running and rejects her plea.
Her subsequent suicide attempt, though another significant example of the violence that can be caused by the emotional regime, is obscured by the consistent focus on the conflict between the cripqueer men. Hence, her emotional distress and suppressed han are relegated to the role of a peripheral plot device which services the overarching narrative of fraught romantic entanglement. Her suicide attempt is a direct response to Hong-rim’s refusal to run away with her rather than the result of years of hwabyung resulting from suppressed emotions, while simultaneously an event that triggers sympathy from Hong- rim who relents and resumes their secret trysts.
Their final tryst quickly leads to an escalation of violence. In an outburst of rage that has been accumulating throughout his life – the build-up of suppressed han caused by
44 the suzerainty of Yuan, the pressure to produce an heir, and the betrayal of his two trusted
allies – the King orders the castration of Hong-rim and locks him in a cell where he lies
utterly defeated and lifeless. Speaking through the bars of the cell, the King offers Hong-
rim a chance to return to him and resume his role as loyal servant and lover. Far from
reaching anything close to a reconciliation, the Queen, Hong-rim and the King turn on
one another, forever severing all affective bonds. The Queen enlists the help of deputy
commander Seung-gi to assassinate the King; the King purges those (including many of
Hong-rim’s comrades) who know about the unborn baby’s paternity; and Hong-rim
returns to assassinate the King. Both Hong-rim and the King are fatally stabbed in the end
and the narrative concludes with a sweeping shot of the destroyed throne room, perhaps
an allusion to the actual collapse of the Goryeo Kingdom in 1392 just eighteen years after
King Gongmin’s suspected assassination.
These various escalations of extreme emotional responses and behavior show the
consequences of emotional suffering, which is at once the foundation of the nation
(according to Renan) and the whip that keeps would-be non-conformists in their place
(according to Reddy), results in the literal destruction of the cripqueer bodies.
Meanwhile, the Queen, still pregnant, is literally removed from the scene, thus finalizing the end of the love-triangle that allegorizes both a threat to the collective community and the will to save it.
45 CRIPQUEER IDENTITIES IN A FROZEN FLOWER
The trajectory from jeong-violation to hwabyung and violence positions the cripqueer body as a metaphor for the damaging nature of emotional regimes. The death of the two cripqueer characters seem to simultaneously critique the emotional regimes, and suggest that opposing the emotional regimes results in the instability and inevitable dismantling of a nation. Should the film then be read as a warning to those who wish to have it both ways: on the one hand, opposing the political regime and cultural norms of
Korean society (the initial relationship between the King and Hong-rim, and later the romance between the Queen and Hong-rim); on the other hand, striving to reserve the nation which depends on the emotional management of its citizens?
Although this question is not explicitly addressed, the ending scene presents a somewhat wishful and problematic compromise. In the final two scenes of the historical drama, the two main characters -- the unnamed King and Hong-rim -- are revived from their bloody deaths for a heartbreakingly wistful could-have-been reunion which takes place in an alternative fantasy. In the first short scene, a hazy overlay indicates a flashback (or perhaps even a dream sequence) where the two men are once again young boys. When the prince asks the boy Hong-rim if he wants to live in the royal palace together, Hong-rim replies in earnest: “I want to live with your majesty forever!” The second scene takes place in a picturesque field of long green grass through which the two men, once again adults, gallop side by side on horseback, exchanging affectionate smiles as they draw their bows in unison. Both scenes are situated as unachievable fantasies or
46 bygone childhood memories that could only ever happen in such a dream world where
the two are isolated and immune to the rest of society. In this utopic society the nation is
retained as a heartwarming nostalgic backdrop to the two boys’ affectionate banter.
Similarly, the second scene shows a continuation of this freedom represented by a wide-
open field with the constraints of the nation and its emotional regime completely stripped
away, palace walls and all, in a timeless realm of emotional refuge.
The Queen, meanwhile, is literally displaced from these reunions in the imaginary
haven. This quiet omission of the character who bears a significant amount of the
emotional suffering through multiple rapes and a failed suicide attempt reflects the
implicit erasure and normalization of her sacrifices and suffering. The Queen and her
unborn child are excluded from the ideal imagination of unthreatening, masculine able-
bodied queer bodies.
Thus, A Frozen Flower strategically metaphorizes the able-bodied queer as a representation of what is desirable (though perhaps not feasible or in any way perfect) for the Korean nation. In contrast, the cripqueer bodies (prior to their uncripping) function as
vehicles of a much more exciting and dramatic plot, a metaphor for the ruinous foregone
conclusion of emotions run amok. The Queen is figured into the plot as the to-be-
victimized female body that must bear suffering as wife and queen. Her suffering is
normalized in the end as opposed to mourned as a tragedy. What is left for the audience to contemplate is the longing for a space where Koreans can somehow have it both ways
– a standing nation and the space to feel impossible emotions – without having to
47 confront those left out. The film closes out with the literal and figurative removal of the love triangle it originally started off with: the mad King, the castrated commander, and the suicidal Queen. This leads to the limitation of such narratives that are perhaps generative in terms of explicating the oppressiveness of emotional regimes in Korean societies but does not extend any reprieve for cripqueer characters unless they are killed or healed.
This trope of killing off and/or imagining characters in their able-bodied versions has thus far appeared in The Throne, The King and the Clown, and A Frozen Flower.
However, A Frozen Flower is the first in the lineup to actually situate queer bodies as the
“ideal” in opposition to the cripqueer body. In the previous two films, queerness in itself is not the main theme of the narrative (albeit a useful narrative device) whereas A Frozen
Flower’s main story revolves around the King who is legibly queer. A brief comparison illustrates this point in more detail. Referring back to previous sections, The Throne acknowledges and criticizes the Confucian culture that caused the father-son rift that causes han and hwabyung. Furthermore, the erasure of memory at the end where official records of Sado’s crimes are literally washed away in a stream maintains the history of his mental illness to protect the legacy of the royal family. Although the intentions are to coverup the political implications of an assassination attempt (treason), the preservation of hwabyung serves as a reminder of the cripqueer’s presence within the narrative.
In The King and the Clown, Yeonsangun is presumably overthrown by the mob led by court officials for his despotic rule. Gong-gil and Jang-saeng’s spirited
48 conversation about being reborn as clowns again in the afterlife foreshadows their deaths but their fate is left to the imagination as the scene freezes while the two are in midair, a shot reminiscent of the ending of Thelma and Louise (1991). Much like A Frozen Flower,
A King and the Clown ends with a reincarnation scene in which all the members of the clown troupe meet again, happily playing musical instruments in the mountain.
Compared to the dream-like grass fields at the end of Flower, The King and the Clown emphasizes the bond between all the clowns rather than highlighting the queer romance between Gong-gil and Jang-saeng.
Therefore, A Frozen Flower separates crip from queer by uncripping the cripqueer body in favor of the able-bodied queer. This association of the unblemished queer body as a metaphor for the ideal coupling is taken one step further in The Handmaiden which not only presents queerness existing in the vague utopic land of imagination but offers it up as the final winning conclusion to a Korea that has shed itself of the most significant source of han in history – the Japanese colonization of Korea.
49 Chapter 3: The Handmaiden
The Handmaiden (2016) is based on author Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith and retains many of the plot points of its source material. Much more so than the original novel or an earlier BBC television adaption, the film featured explicit erotic content, making “a spectacle of pornography” as Sarah Waters put it in one interview
(Armitstead). In contrast, mental illness was not considered a topic of discussion in many of the critical reviews despite the fact the film spectacularizes madnss as much as eroticism. As The Handmaiden was openly described as a narrative concerning the colonial period and class rather than gender or anything remotely related to mental health, this gloss regarding mental health is perhaps unsurprising.
Set in 1930’s Korea, The Handmaiden is a love story of deception between a
Japanese heiress named Hideko and her newly appointed handmaiden Sookhee. Together, the two women outwit and escape Hideko’s abusive uncle Kouzuki and The Count, a
Korean con-artist masquerading as Japanese nobility. Through a series of cleverly crafted plot twists, the story that starts off as a typical con-artist falling in love with the target of the scam quickly veers into the more complex territory of eroticism, queer sexuality, ethnic identity, national betrayal, and colonial past. Here, too, cripqueer identities play narrative prosthesis to the overarching theme of how oppressive the colonial period was, how corrupt Korean men masqueraded as Japanese men, and how women both Korean and Japanese suffered from the munhwa tongchi (문화통치 cultural rule), the enforced
50 adoption of Japanese culture which is mostly depicted in terms of the erotic literature that
Hideko is forced to read and perform.
Director Park Chan-wook’s visual masterpiece serves as a critique of pro-
Japanese ideologists during the Japanese Occupation of Korea. Through an analysis of
The Handmaiden, I want to explore how the prosthetisizing of cripqueer idenitites and the narrative of queer love construct a story that critiques pro-Japanese Korean identity as one that indiscriminately melds a hodgepodge of “superior” imperial culture together.
This use of queer bodies in many ways obscures and obstructs a proper reading of mental illness – not to mention queerness.
Secondly, I argue that while the trope of mental illness is played out in a way that dispels patriarchal myths stemming from colonial psychiatry that influenced the gendering of mental illness in Korea, the narrative ultimately marginalizes cripqueer identities in favor of able-minded and able-bodied queer bodies. This is achieved through
the multiple plot twists where the surface layer of the beginning sets up a cripqueer
character but then leads to an uncripping of the character meant to subvert the colonized
Korean. In the process, suicide is disassociated from mental illness to rehabilitate the
Korean psyche from colonialist discourse on Korean inferiority.
MENTAL ILLNESS AS A CRITIQUE AGAINST JAPANESE COLONIZATION
The Handmaiden initially constructs mental illness as the result of childhood
trauma. In Part I, the audience is led to believe that Hideko suffers from night terrors in
51 which she is visited by her late aunt who committed suicide from a tree visible from
Hideko’s window. Sookhee treats Hideko as one would a child or one of the babies she helped raise in the baby mill. In her eyes, Hideko is a delicate, naïve girl who knows nothing about the world, especially about sex, and lives at the mercy of her heartless uncle and the scheming Count who seek to take her fortune through marriage. Hideko represents the stereotypical image of a helpless victimized Korean, infantilized by the colonial rhetoric that subjugate Koreans. The only source of solace afforded to the orphaned heiress is the equally orphaned but much more street-smart Sookhee with whom she develops a mother-child relationship, which then gradually becomes romantic.
At the close of Part I, The Count succeeds in eloping with Hideko who brings
Sookhee along. As the days go by, Sookhee’s inner monologue expresses fear that the lady will “go mad for real” if the plan does not progress more quickly. Finally, a day arrives when two Japanese psychiatrists come to evaluate Hideko for her delusions. The psychiatrists question Sookhee about what course of treatment she believes the lady should receive, to which Sookhee responds as practiced: “I believe she should be kept in a place where she cannot harm herself or those around her.” This response references the typical course of action that was taken against the mentally ill in colonial Korea, where people who displayed abnormal behavior or other signs of oddities – especially the type perceived as a threat to the colonial authorities – were referred to asylums by the colonial police (Yoo 58). This scene thus invites audiences to feel sorry for Hideko, an innocent young woman who is conned and wrongly imprisoned in a mental institute for her
52 psychiatric disorder. However, the narrative does not quite subvert the notion that the
mentally ill are inherently dangerous and should be incarcerated. In short, Hideko is still
the victim of con-artists who collude with the colonial system to steal. By the time
Hideko reaches the asylum, afraid of the screams that emanate from its intimidating stone
walls, she is the epitome of helpless naïve colonized woman.
In a surprise twist, Part II upends this notion of helpless frailty in spectacular
fashion: Hideko is actually the opposite of what she appears to be – in Sookhee’s words:
napeunnyeon (남쁜년 bad woman or bitch). Furthermore, flashbacks reveal that Hideko
is the farthest thing from an innocent child and has only pretended to be helpless and naïve to gain Sookhee’s sympathy and trust. From the beginning, Hideko has plotted to swap identities with a naïve orphan girl by placing her in an asylum in her name and later splitting her inheritance with The Count. Furthermore, her bedtime terrors are revealed to have been an act, and her pretense of having no knowledge of sexual acts is reversed. She has, in fact, been raised on Japanese erotic literature, forced to perform readings in front of Japanese men under her uncle’s instructions. Hideko – and by extension the Korean victims of colonialism – is not a product of nature, as the Japanese authorities’ eugenic logic would suggest. She is a victim of nurture, abused and tortured by Japanese sympathizers like her uncle Kouzuki and his ex-wife-cum-accomplice Madam Sasaki, yet another Japanese sympathizer. Hideko is neither naïve nor mentally frayed from the memory of her aunt’s suicide. Rather, she is surprisingly resilient and resourceful given her horrific circumstances. An earlier scene reveals Hideko confiding in Sookhee that she
53 wishes that she had never been born. In light of her circumstances, one can immediately deduce that her desire to commit suicide stems not from a childish guilt over a mother’s death in childbirth but an extended period of psychological torture and abuse.
As such, the film’s narrative uses mental illness in the context of the colonial period to critique the Japanese colonizer’s psychological and physical abuse of Koreans.
Through multiple reversals that gradually peel back the layers of colonialist rhetoric of the Korean psyche, the film retaliates by employing feminist cripqueer characters who combat patriarchal oppression, which then services a larger goal of representing the strength and resilience of Koreans who endured and fought back against colonial oppression. That being said, the film’s use of cripqueer within the narrative does slide into ableist territory by the latter half of the film. In the terms of Mitchell and Snyder, the suicidal cripqueer is a narrative crutch that serves the anti-colonial rhetoric by invoking the history of psychiatry in colonial Korea (55). Intrigue is kept apace through the familiar terrain of colonial history and the unfamiliar terrain of mental illness, the cripqueer romance between infantilized, delicate lady and the motherlike handmaiden operationalizes itself at the level of spectacle.
The following section examines the ways in which a film that seems successful at touching upon a multitude of identities within an anti-colonial narrative does so by creating a stark distinction between madness and queerness.
54 UNCRIPPING HIDEKO
As discussed above, The Handmaiden’s ability to adapt a British novel into a narrative about the devastating costs of Korea’s colonial era depends on cripqueer
characters. This section focuses on the specific ways in which this anti-colonialist
narrative rehabilitates the identity of colonized Koreans through the uncripping of Hideko
in the final act.
In one of Hideko’s flashbacks, her younger self sits across from her uncle and
aunt. The uncle tells his young niece in Japanese, “I know you’re a bit insane. Not
surprising looking at the state of your matrilineal bloodline.” He glances sideways at his
wife, the sister of Hideko’s mother. Her expression, rigid and eyes unblinking, does not
react let alone object. Kouzuki continues, “That’s why I’m training you, so you’ll come
to your senses. If not, we might need to send you to a place in Japan called an ‘asylum’.”
As he gleefully lists the various gruesome “treatments” that “rational Germans”
implemented on their patients, Hideko’s aunt begins twitching, still wide-eyed, until she
reaches her breaking point and makes a frenzied dash for the exit. Kouzuki, acting as
though this were a regular occurrence, signals to Madam Sasaki who presses a switch. In
an instant, a gated door slams shut in front of the aunt before she can exit. The sudden
clang of the metal gate seems to snap her out of the wild compulsion; she hurriedly
returns to her seat, this time taking the steps down to the lower landing instead of
clambering over the edge of the landing.
The threat of Japanese asylums that triggers the aunt’ sreaction is based on actual
55 colonial history. Theodore Yoo’s It’s Madness comprehensively details the history of psychiatry during the colonial period and its German influences. With Japanese colonial powers came a project to modernize all aspects of what was deemed a primitive and unsophisticated nation. Among those, the strive for medical advancements brought in
Japanese psychiatry and medical schools. In 1924, the Government-General founded the
Keijo (Gyeongseong) Imperial University in Korea and established the Keijo Mental
Ward in 1928 (Yoo 66). Japanese psychiatry was heavily influenced by German psychiatry to the point where written German was necessary in medical studies and
German classes were part of the medical school curriculum. The German influence caused a shift in Korean psychiatry to move from treatment-based approaches to research-based approaches. This could only have exacerbated the suspicions of Koreans who did not trust the facilities that were set up by the colonial authorities. Consequently, psychiatric institutions came to be associated with exploitation and discipline rather than a place of care (49), especially because since most psychiatrists were Japanese. As second-class citizens, only a handful of Koreans were allowed to entry into medical school and university and research faculty positions were monopolized by Japanese doctors (Yoo 51). Adding to the negative perception was the fact that Keijo Mental Ward routinely discharged patients who were not deemed useful for medical instruction and research. In addition, the Kraepelinian psychiatry, which was highly influential in Japan, and its basis in eugenics and Social Darwinism would have played a role in justification for colonizing Korea as an inferior nation riddled with mental weaknesses.
56 Given this context, the history of psychiatry and psychiatric institutions in
colonial Korea makes mental disease a handy shorthand for colonial abuse and control. In
the latter half of the film, Hideko’s aunt is revealed to have been gruesomely tortured and murdered by her uncle who later hung her body to conceal her cause of death and no doubt for his own twisted amusement. This entire subplot rejects the colonial psychiatry of diagnosing Koreans, especially women, as particularly prone to mental illness, and instead blames Japanese sympathizers like Kouzuki and colonial authorities for having directly caused the deaths of Koreans through a combination of psychological and physical torture.
DISASSOCIATING SUICIDE FROM MENTAL ILLNESS
Compared to A Frozen Flower, The Handmaiden takes a step further in
establishing the idea that rehabilitating Koreans from colonial figurations of inferiority.
In the process of doing so, suicide is also detached from its association with mental illness. For many of the characters who are preoccupied or utterly indifferent to death, the narrative changes the notion of suicide from an irrational act to a rational one, thereby uncripping suicide and suicidal people.
The plot twist of Part II reveals the ways in which suicide functions, not as a possibility caused by early childhood trauma but as a necessary alternative to that same trauma. In Part II, shortly following her aunt’s “suicide”, Hideko asks her uncle why her aunt’s appearance did not match that of the descriptions of hanged people in the book she
57 is reading. Her uncle then takes her down to the basement where he shows and describes
the things he did to her aunt when she was captured mid-escape, a preview of what would
happen to Hideko should she dare to run. The transition from a young Hideko’s terrified face to the present-day Hideko’s emotionless one makes it clear that Hideko has long
been resigned to her fate of lifetime confinement to the mansion.
The fact that Hideko lives under the absolute control of her uncle explains the
reason behind her preoccupation with suicide while simultaneously absolving it of its
relation to irrationality or mental illness. By this I mean to emphasize the fact that
throughout the course of the film, suicide shifts from an act of mental instability or
irrational thought to a rational and therefore able-minded one. Placed in the historical
context of colonial Korea, Koreans who committed suicide – roughly 58,000 completed
suicides between 1910 and 1942 (Yoo 121) – are metaphorically rehabilitated from the
colonialists’ rhetoric of Korean feeble-mindedness. Likewise, Hideko’s preoccupation
with death is rendered as a necessity of her situation. Instead of being suicidal due to
“irrational” mental illness, her motivation for self-harm is ironically turned into a rational
act of self-preservation and self-protection. It is the only choice she has of escape before
her marriage to her uncle which would mean the loss of her great inheritance as well as
loss of whatever freedom she had left over her body. Part of the reason she agrees to forgo her original plan of suicide is because The Count appeals to her sense of unfairness
by arguing that her death may grant her freedom but inevitably result in her uncle gaining
her inheritance. It is worth noting that his argument is not only that she would be doing
58 her terrible uncle a failure by killing herself, she would also be indirectly giving away her father’s money. The Count’s persuasiveness is important because it references the Joseon era’s Confucian ideals that regulated emotions while emphasizing the importance of filial piety. Of course, the ultimate deal-sealer for Hideko is the promise of a guaranteed insurance plan in the event that she is captured during her escape. To sway a reluctant
Hideko, The Count presents her with a small vial of concentrated opium as a wedding gift. Thus, suicide is reimagined, not as a psychiatric disorder, but as a choice made out of desire to escape from oppression. Her decision to opt into an escape plot sensibly covered by a death insurance policy pays off as Hideko is relieved of her “crip-ness” and granted a happy ending as able-bodied, able-minded queer women who escapes the colonial tyranny to live a happy life with her equally able lover Sookhee.
While Hideko’s reason for suicide is reversed from irrational to rational, Sookhee experiences the opposite. When Sookhee is sent to the asylum in Hideko’s place, the assumed madness of Sookhee causes her not only to be incarcerated but marked for death. The transition from rational to presumed madness positions her within the walls of the asylum where, as later revealed to Hideko by The Count, orders have been made for
Sookhee’s murder. “Even from Sookhee’s perspective, what would be the point of living in a place like that?” (숙희 입장에서도 그런대에서 오래 살아 뭐하겠습니다?) he
asks. This rhetorical question implies that life is not worth living in a mental institution,
especially for Sookhee whom he knows to be able-minded, and that living as a mentally
ill person – whether real or fabricated – is worse than dying.
59 Again, a rationale for ending life is created. If Hideko’s suicide is justified
because she is making a rational decision of choosing a cleaner death and escaping the
abuse of her uncle, Sookhee’s death is justified based on the assumption that living a life
in a mental institution as an assumed patient is comparable if not similar to such abuse –
such that enduring such abuse through sustained life would actually surmount to
irrationality or madness. In both cases, suicide becomes a method of escape that liberates
one from the “real” madness of living under colonial rule. The only way to avoid death,
then, is to strip oneself of the taint of the mental crip – the mental crip that enables the
narrative to work at all – and escape through a different path. For Hideko, it is leaving the mansion she has been imprisoned in from the age of eight, and for Sookhee it is the literal escape from the asylum, the physical space of mental illness that allows them to reunite, successfully board a ship to Shanghai, and achieve a happy ending.
Returning to idea of death insurance, the rationale behind suicide equally applies to the apparent “losers” of the elaborate plot. For example, The Count’s prioritization of death over certain kinds of life also applies to himself. Once The Count is double-crossed and wakes up to find himself in the company of Kouzuki’s hired thugs, his response is not one of fear but a humorous request for his pants. On the way to the mansion where a basement torture chamber awaits him, The Count calmly pulls out his cigarette case with his bound hands and immediately lights up a mouthful of cigarettes in one go. The comical scene ends with the two thugs sitting adjacent to The Count grimacing and coughing while the car makes its way toward the mansion
60 As expected, Kouzuki is unhappy with how Hideko has managed outwit him,
destroying his collection of erotic literature before her escape. Kouzuki tortures The
Count for his deceit which ironically mirror Kouzuki’s own actions. Among other things,
both men have masqueraded as Japanese nobility, plotted to inherit Hideko’s fortune
through marriage, and were fool enough to be tricked by – to use Kouzuki’s words –
“that young bitch” (그 어린년). However, The Count demonstrates incredible composure given that his fingers are being sliced off, and politely asks his torturer for a cigarette. As it turns out, the remaining cigarettes in his case are all laced with mercury which vaporize when smoked. Consequently, Kouzuki dies of mercury poisoning before he can castrate the con-artist. The Count follows suit, dying a charismatic death after a short monologue expressing gratitude that he was able to keep his penis intact. Although the Count does die, the manner of his death illustrates the rationality of suicide which costs him his life but retains his manhood, and has the added bonus of killing the real villain of the story – the true Japanese sympathizer.
In conclusion, the normalization of cripqueer to able-bodied queer abandons crip- ness at the end after it serves its purpose in creating a compelling narrative that critiques colonial psychiatry’s employment in controlling the peninsula. Everything is tied up with no loose ends: the Japanese sympathizer uncle dies a pathetic death in his own basement from mercury poisoning; the charismatic Count who also participated in the roleplay of
Japanese is punished although with a bit more dignity. In the final scene, the two now able-bodied queer lovers – having shed the stigmatizing overlay of mental illness –
61 engage in a final reversal by taking the metal beads that were once used by Kouzuki to
punish Hideko and repurposing them for sexual pleasure. The final happy ending of two uncripped able-bodied women comes at the cost of othering the cripqueer, and obscuring
its essential contributions to sageuk narratives.
62 Conclusion
Mental illness and queer sexualities permeate the sageuk genre as an essential driving force behind narratives that expose the extent to which emotions are carefully regulated within South Korean society. William Reddy's conceptualization of emotional regime and emotional suffering have been used as frameworks for analyzing the importance of the emotional regime in sageuk films of the last decade or more. The
Throne utilizes hwabyung, han and jeong to explore the complicated father-son relationship between a sovereign and his heir as a reflection of a Confucian-influenced
South Korean society. The King and the Clown employs the cripqueer love triangle between mentally unstable sovereign and two clowns, and positions traditional Korean folk arts as a form of emotional refuge, while A Frozen Flower's love triangle examines the violence that stems from emotional regimes.
In examining The Handmaiden, I argued that the ubiquity of cripqueer identities within the sageuk genre has also been utilized in telling anti-colonial nationalist narratives that seek to heal the image of Koreans. However, in the process of prostheticizing the cripqueer body, the narrative offers the uncripping of cripqueer as the metaphoric solution to Japanese colonial oppression. By discrediting cripqueer in favor of a newly able-bodied queer, the film marks the cripqueer identity as undesirable despite its
pivotal role within the narrative.
Much like the history of hwabyung, sageuk represents the quintessential genre
63 that can both localize and globalize Korean cultural narratives. Its ability to incorporate
Korean history, culture and experience enables the films to explore themes that are
specific to Korea. However, while such narratives have been successful in telling stories
about emotions and culture that are unique to Korean experiences, it has often come at
the cost of othering the subjects of the very tropes that propped up the stories from the
start. As serious an issue as suicide and mental illness are in South Korea, it is ironic that
the narratives that probe at the very heart of Korean emotions are the ones that also
disregard the cripqueer in mental illness. The aim of cripping hwabyung, thus, is to
ensure that the emotions are never separated from mental illness, and that the uncripping
of cripqueer idenitities is not falsely equated with the ideal of the rehabilitated Korean.
64 Works Cited
“Kwieo bo-da deo kwieo-han – yeonghwa ssanghwajeom-eul bogo 퀴어보다 더
퀴어한- 영화<쌍화점>을 보고” [Queerer than queer – after watching the film
Ssanghwajeom]. Neo, na, Uri, “Rang” 너,나, 우리 “랑” Jan 30 2009.
Lgbtpride.tistory.com. Accessed April 15 2018.
Eckert, Carter J. “Male Concubine: Notes on Late Choson Homosexuality by an
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