Title: Colonial Diva and Unclaimed Memory: The Cultural Politics of Korean Popular Music under the Japanese Occupation Period
Speaker: Prof. Yongwoo Lee (Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, CUHK)

Time: 4:30 – 6:00 pm
Venue: LG01, Hui Yeung Shing Building

Delivered in English, all are welcome

Synopsis:
Lee Erisu, frequently designated as the "Diva of the Century," was among the initial popular vocalists and Shinpa actresses in Korea during the Japanese colonial period, following the release of her 1927 recording of "Ruins of Hwangsŏng." She recorded a variety of popular songs in both Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea, thereby establishing herself as a cultural icon of inter-Asian colonial modernity. The legendary recital of "Ruins of Hwangsŏng" in 1933 prompted collective mourning for lost sovereignty, functioning as a metonymy of "ruined country" and evoking anti-Japanese patriotism. Moreover, Lee Erisu's presence exemplified the modern woman figure and the concept of free love. In 1932, at the zenith of her renown, Lee Erisu receded from public view and rumoured to take her own life with a married man with whom she was infatuated. After 75 years of disappearance, she was found in a sanatorium in 2008, but was severely disoriented and in a state of advanced age, at the age of 98. The nature of her relationship to the colonial past was becoming increasingly obscure. This research, which is a study of cultural memory of the colonial period, focuses on Lee Erisu’s life trajectory, the colonial structure of the phonograph industry and its cultural discourse in relation to addressing the embedded structures of Japanese colonialism, and the impact of Lee’s stardom on socio-cultural morals and values, as well as the invention of a new modern female subjectivity. This talk attempts to elucidate hitherto untouched narratives of Lee Erisu’s career and music. This talk aims to elucidate the various discourses of acoustic modernity, the concept of modern free love as ambivalent senses of desire and reversion, and the accounts of the audience’s reception of her music as both passive resistance to and ambivalent desire for colonial modernity.