A Mad Mother and Her Dead Son : The Impact of the Irish Theatre on Modern Korean Theatre

During the colonial period (1910–1945), Korean intellectuals introduced Irish artists and their works to the public through newspapers and magazines. Because of the political similarity between Ireland and Korea at that time, these intellectuals considered Ireland as an ideal to emulate. The impact of the Irish dramatic movement on modern Korean theatre was significant, in that it provided a direction for Korean intellectuals involved in establishing modern theatre. One of the most famous modern Korean plays from this period, Yu Ch’ijin’s A Mud Hut was indirectly influenced by Irish playwright Sean O’Casey whose trilogy is based on Dublin’s working class. The work of another Korean playwright, Ham Sedŏk’s Sanhuguri , was indebted to the works of J.M. Synge, whose plays deal with Irish peasants. In their plays, Yu Ch’ijin and Ham Sedŏk depict the miserable lives of some common Korean people as realistically as they can, by imitating the writings of Sean O’Casey and J.M. Synge. The main motif that appears in their works is that of a mad mother and her dead son. In Yu Ch’ijin’s play, this motif is represented by the land as an absent space. In Ham Sedŏk’s play, it is illustrated by the sea as an absolute space of fate. The mother figure in both plays is presented as a languid, defeatist and self‐pitying figure who is confronted by the colonial reality represented by her dead son. Through these images, the future is portrayed as hopeless. This paper attempts to shed a light on a particular strand of modern Korean plays and their emergence under the influence of Irish theatre in the early twentieth century.