Yeo Seokgi

Yeo Seokgi (or Yŏ Sŏkki, 여석기; Korean pronunciation: jə.sək.gi; in Hanja, 呂石基) is a Korean theater critic and English literature scholar. He is known, along with O Hwaseop, as the first-generation scholar of English literature after Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule. Yeo is also renowned as the publisher and editor of Theater Criticism (연극평론), “the first Korean Journal of Theater Criticism.” His works include 20th Century Literary Theory (20세기문학론), The Reality of Korean Theater (한국연극의 현실), Hallucination and Reality (환각과 현실), which he co-authored, and Comparative Studies of the East-West Theaters (동서연극의 비교연구). He was an English professor at Korea University from 1953 to 1987, and he received the Medal of Honor in Civil Merit (국민훈장) from the Korean government in 1972 and 1987 and the Order of Cultural Merit (문화훈장) in 1996.
== Life ==
Yeo was born in Gimcheon Gyeongsangbuk-do (김천시 경상북도), Korea, during the Japanese occupation. After completing his secondary education in Japan Higher School (구제 마쓰에 고등학교), he enrolled in the English department of Tokyo Imperial University (동경제국대학) in 1942. In 1944, he was drafted by student conscription, which ended with Korean Independence in 1945. He transferred to Keijo University (경성제국대학) in 1946, which is currently Seoul National University. After graduating in July 1946, Yeo worked as an instructor at the humanities department of Seoul National University. A year later, he moved to Daegu College of Education (대구사범대학) where he worked for seven years. Beginning in 1953, he held the position of English professor at Korea University until his retirement in 1987. Yeo passed away in 2014.
== Works ==
=== Early Criticisms in the 1950s and 1960s ===
In the mid-1950s, Korean newspapers started to regularly allocate space for theater reviews. Yeo started his career as a critic in 1954 by writing an introduction of Ernest Hemingway, winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in literature. Yeo’s criticisms were mostly published as serials in the Chosun Daily (조선일보), and they focused on the performances done by major theater companies at the time such as Shinhyup (신협), the Korean National Theater (국립극단), and the Korean Drama Center (드라마센터) where Western classics were thriving. Yeo was particularly interested in plays, including Greek tragedies, Shakespeare, and modern dramas by Ibsen or Chekhov.
In 1955, Yeo traveled to the United States in support of the Korean American Foundation (한미재단) and acquired a graduate degree in English from the University of Missouri. This allowed him to deviate from the English pedagogy prevalent in Korea and Japan, which focused on lexical annotations and literary sentiment. Instead, he brought alternative literary theories into Korea including New Criticism, which flourished in the United States in the 1960s. These theories became the foundation of his later studies in “modernizing traditional theater” and “Asian play theories.”
Yeo was largely influenced by Eric Bentley, particularly his book The Playwright as Thinker: A Study of Drama in Modern Times (1946). Referring to Bentley’s effort to introduce Bertolt Brecht to English theater, Yeo was also interested in developing a new perspective for understanding modern plays in a global context and applying this perspective to Korean theater. For example, he attempted to locate Korean traditional performances in the field of theater as a varied format of farce. Along with his arrangement of Korean theater in a global context, he criticized melodramatic sentimentalism imported by Japanese culture, which disrupted “comic spirit(희극정신)” of the South Korean theater as a universal value. By accommodating foreign theories, Yeo organized the foundation of Korean drama criticisms, bringing up diversified topics in the field of theater.
Yeo emphasized modernity as the utmost value of theater. In “Modern Significance of Modern Art (현대예술의 현대적 의미)” in 20th Century Literary Theory (1966), he suggested five contemporary characteristics of modern theater: 1) the tendency of anti-realism, 2) the deconstruction of the modern self, 3) the cognition of Freudian unconsciousness, 4) the traits of mechanic civilization, and 5) the admiration toward primitivity.
=== Later Criticisms in the 1970s ===
Despite some major critics such as Yeo and Hwaseop O and their press reviews in the 1950s and 1960s, theater criticism in Korea was still an uncultivated field that lacked expertise. Although there was Korean Theater, the only theater journal at the time, it was failing to play an adequate role in criticism; despite Korean theater being significantly influenced by foreign plays, it did not introduce foreign plays and theories.Kim, Yungyeong (2005). Research on the Theater Criticism of Suk-Kee Yoh: Focusing on the Journal, the Dramatic Critic and His Critical Essays in the 1970s [여석기의 연극 비평에 관한 연구: 계간지 『 연극평론』 간행과 70년대 비평 활동을 중심으로] (in Korean). Seoul: Sangmyung University Graduate School of Art and Design Master's Thesis. p. 35.
To address the absence of proper criticism, Yeo published the first issue of Theater Criticism in 1970. Based on his ideas of world theater and modernity developed in the 1950s and 1960s, Theater Criticism analyzed Korean theater and introduced foreign plays. Theater Criticism introduced “avant-garde and experimental trends” to Korean theater where realism exclusively dominated, and it established the concepts of “Korean theater aesthetics,” “Asian play,” and “Asian theater aesthetics” by approaching traditional Korean performances with a modern perspective.
The writers and editors of Theater Criticism were mostly major scholars and critics of English literature such as Sangchul Han, Minyeong Yu (유민영), and Dong-il Cho (조동일). Despite the journal’s focus on scholarly writings and critiques, its members actively participated in the field of theater and educated theatricians through the Drama Centre and Playwriting Academy (한국극작아카데미). Thanks to this effort, Theater Criticism published twenty issues for a decade, unlike other journals that mostly ceased publication after 5–7 issues.
In 1974, Yeo published The Reality of Korean Theater (1974), his first collection of essays in criticism. This book led Korean theater historian Minyeong Yu to assess Yeo as “the first specialized theater critic.” Yeo also attempted “enlightened understanding” of public modern theater by writing Modern Plays: Trend and Playwrights (1973). This book supports Korean theatrical attempts, including Deokhyeong Yu (유덕형) and Minsu An’s (안민수) experimental cruel theater influenced by Antonin Artaud; the adaptation of Korean traditions done by Taeseok O (오태석), Daeseong Yun (윤대성), and Gyeongsik No (노경식); and the modernization of Korean “playfulness” (연희성) and its pathos. Such interest reflects Yeo’s third-world cultural consciousness and later resulted in his book Comparative Studies of the East-West Theaters (1987), which illuminates Artaud’s dramaturgy in depth.
=== Shakespeare Studies ===
Although Yeo actively participated in criticism, he identified himself more as a theater scholar. As a Shakespeare specialist, Yeo emphasized a totalized approach to the text, which deviates from the textual exposition and lexical analyses that pervaded Korean education at the time. He focused on how Shakespeare achieved dramatic unity by examining the relationship between the text and staged performances. Yeo particularly criticized the rationalistic or psychologistic approach to Shakespeare’s plays, both of which reduce the work to a mere textual plane analyzed solely through the lens of realism, ignoring the performative plane. For example, his examination of Hamlet attempts to broaden the analytic sphere that centers the character Hamlet (e.g., Freudian interpretation, T. S. Eliot’s analysis of objective correlatives); he claims that Hamlet should be understood as a composite of the inwardness of character and a microcosm of Denmark as a political/historical entity and that the format of the play should be seen as a virtual world. Such an approach paved the way for interaction between scholarly theater studies and theatrical practice.
Yeo’s Shakespeare studies are evaluated as successful mediatory research. His research on Hamlet is assessed as an attempt to question the distance between academia and the public. Yeo’s work, which embraces perspectives on Renaissance theater history, literary criticism, and performance criticism, effectively takes the contemporary reception of Shakespeare into account. Yeo’s multi-level analyses of Shakespeare’s texts are considered as a scholar-director’s mediatory approach that provides valid questions of postmodern hermeneutics.
== Publications ==
* History of English Literature (영문학사, 1962)
* 20th Century Literature (20세기 문학론, 1967)
* Contemporary Theater (현대연극, 1969)
* The Reality of Korean Theater (한국 연극의 현실, 1976)
* Hallucination and Reality (co-authored, 환각과 현실, 1982)
* Comparative Studies of the East-West Theaters (동서연극의 비교연구, 1987)
* Essay Shakespeare Selections (에세이 셰익스피어 명작선, 1991)
* Cinemania (씨네마니아, 1996)
* Journey with Hamlet, Encounter with Lear (햄릿과의 여행 리어와의 만남, 2001)
* My Lectures on Hamlet (나의 햄릿 강의, 2008)
* Seokgi Yeo: My Life, My Studies, My Theater (여석기 나의 삶 나의 학문 나의 연극, 2012)
== Honors and Positions ==
* 1972 Medal of Honor in Civil Merit (Magnolia Medal) (국민훈장 목련장)
* 1985 Dong-Rang Award of Theater (동랑연극상)
* 1987 Order of Civil Merit (Peony Medal) (국민훈장 모란장)
* 1996 Order of Cultural Merit (Silver Certificate) (은관문화훈장)
* 1969–1971 President of The English Language and Literature Association of Korea (한국영어영문학회 회장)
* 1982–1984 Chair of The Shakespeare Association of Korea (한국셰익스피어학회 회장)
* 1962 Director of Drama Centre (드라마센터 초대 연극아카데미원장)
* 1966 Jury Member of Asia Film Festival (아시아영화제 심사위원)
* 1970–1980 Publisher of Theater Criticism (『연극평론』 발행인)
* 1975–1984 Chair of International Theater Institute of Korea (국제극예술협회 한국본부 위원장)
* 1982 Director of International Cultural Foundation (국제문화재단 이사)
* 1983 Jury Member of Manila International Film Festival (제2회 마닐라국제영화제 심사위원)
* 1987–1991 President of International Association of Theater Critics Korea (연극평론가협회장)
* 1988–1991 Director of Korea Arts & Culture Education Service (한국문화예술진흥원 원장)
* 1992–1994 Chair of Korea Broadcasting Commission (종합유선방송위원회 위원장)
* 1984 Chief Director of Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (국제교류진흥회 이사장)
Category:South Korean film critics
Category:English literature academics