Dressed to Kill: Women's Fashion and Body Politics in North Korea

Details

Category: Gallery

Exhibiting Korea
A New, Monthly Series of Gallery Talk Programs at The Korea Society

with

Suk-Young Kim
Professor of Theater at the University of California at Santa Barbara

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Communist regimes are often described as "drab," but North Korea is highly fashion conscious-a place where style and politics go hand in hand.

For decades, North Korea's political leaders have been preoccupied with designing uniforms for almost every sector of society. Fashion, especially women's fashion, is seen as a national project, meant to promote group identity and ideology. Like many authoritarian regimes, North Korean designers have been drawn to masculine, military styles that seem to embody revolutionary spirit. But women's fashion in North Korea also allows for a contradictory sense of traditional femininity.

Suk-Young Kim, Professor of Theater at the University of California at Santa Barbara, will discuss the purpose of state-directed fashion in North Korea, as well as the ways in which the country's dress codes affect women's body politics.

About the Presenter

Suk-Young Kim is an assistant professor of Theatre at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her research interests include East Asian performance, gender and nationalism, Korean cultural studies and Russian literature. She has received the International Federation for Theatre Research's New Scholar Prize (2004), the American Society for Theater Research Fellowship (2006) and the Library of Congress Kluge Fellowship (2006). Her articles have appeared in Theatre Research International, Theatre Journal and The Drama Review. She is currently working on a book project titled Illusive Utopia: Theater and Film in North Korea, which explores how propaganda performances affect everyday life in North Korea.

Photo: from Chosŏn Yesul (조선예술), September 1981

Registration Fee:
Single-Program Ticket: $5 (members) / $10 (non-members)
Series Pass (for all seven monthly gallery talks): $20 (members) / $50 (non-members)
buy tickets online or use the fax registration form (pdf)


Exhibiting Korea
A New, Monthly Series of Gallery Talk Programs at The Korea Society

Exhibiting Korea, a new monthly series of presentations on the fine arts, film, fashion and architecture of the Korean Peninsula, is debuting this April. Series programs will address contemporary trends in cultural expression in Korea, and take audiences back to important movements they might have overlooked. These gallery talks, given by top experts, critics and artists, will put the colors and shapes of modern Korea on display-and explain the cultural and historical contexts behind them. Please join us.


Other Programs in this Series
(all held at The Korea Society Auditorium, 6:30 PM)

Date	Title	Speaker
April 5	How Did Korea Become a "Land of Apartments"?	Valérie Gelézeau
May 24	The Forgotten Legacy of the Minjung Art Movement in South Korea	Soyang Park
June 7	The Modern Boy and Modern Girl in Colonial Korea: 1910-45	Yeon-Shim Chung
July 12	Film Screening of A Petal and Q&A with actress Lee Young-Lan	Lee Young Lan
October 25	Dressed to Kill: Women's Fashion and Body Politics in North Korea	Suk-Young Kim
November 15	The Kyopo Project	Cindy Hwang