Princess Pari in Nora Okja Keller's comfort woman

Positions

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 2004, Pages

  Lee, Kun Jong ^a  

^a Korea University   (South Korea)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950449661     PISSN: 10679847     EISSN: 15278271     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10679847-12-2-431     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Nora Okja Keller, "Author Questions," in Comfort Woman (1997; reprint, with a reader's guide, New York: Penguin, 1998), 6
2. Keller has repeated her unique experience in several interviews. See Burl Burlingame, "Sweet Smile of Success!" Honolulu Star-Bulletin, April 1, 1997, starbulletin.com/97/04/01/features/story1.html; Keller, interview by Martha Cinader, June 1997, www.cinader.com/planetauthority/AuthorInterviews/ Keller.html
3. Keller, interview by Danna Schaeffer, April 20, 2000, www.bookradio.com/interviews/keller/html/keller01.html
4. Min-hee Kim, "'Comfort Women': Account of Dark Past of a Korean-American Family," Korea Herald, September 3, 1997
5. Laura Noguera, "Sudden Comfort," Daily Bruin, March 10, 1998, www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/DB/issues/98/03.10/ae.keller.html
6. and Sung-jin Yang, "Keller Inspired by 'Comfort Woman,'" Korea Times, January 13, 1998
7. Keller, interview by Cinader
8. Kathleen Brogan, Cultural Haunting: Ghosts and Ethnicity in Recent American Literature (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 153
9. Heinz Insu Fenkl, "Steeped in the Waters of Memory: Nora Okja Keller," review of Comfort Woman, Korean Culture 19 (1998): 20
10. Youngsook Kim Harvey, Six Korean Women: The Socialization of Shamans (St. Paul, MN: West, 1979), 238
11. Chungmoo Choi, introduction to The Comfort Women: Colonialism, War, and Sex, ed. C. Choi, special issue of positions: east asia cultures critique 5 (1997): xiii
12. See Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women (Parkersburg, IA: Mid-Prairie Books, 1999), 72-74, 86-87, 94, 192-93, 206n31
13. The 1992 Korean Japanese play, We Do Not Forget, featuring "the ghost of a comfort woman suicide [who] tells her story through a shamanistic medium," is another artistic representation of comfort women in the context of Korean shamanism. See George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (1995; reprint, New York: Norton, 1997), 252
14. See Brogan, Cultural Haunting, 157
15. Gregory Paul Choy, "Sites of Function in Asian American Literature: Tropics of Place, Agents of Space" (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1999), 140
16. and Gayle K. Sato, "Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman and Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life: Gendered Narratives of the Home Front," Asian American Literature Association Journal 7 (2001): 29-30
17. Elaine H. Kim, "Dangerous Affinities: Korean American Feminisms (En)counter Gendered Korean and Racialized U.S. Nationalist Narratives," Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism 6 (1999): 12n12
18. Sato, "Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman and Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life," 30
19. For all forty-seven versions of Princess Pari, see Jin Young Kim and Tae Han Hong, eds., Pari kongju junjip (The Complete Versions of Princess Pari), 2 vols. (Seoul: Minsokwon, 1997)
20. Adapted from Kyung Chae Pae, Pari Kongju (Princess Pari), in Kim and Hong, 1:117-49
21. For good studies of the shamanistic narrative, see Tae Han Hong, Seosa mookok, "Barigonju" yeonkoo (A Study of the Shamanistic Epic, Princess Pari) (Seoul: Minsokwon, 1998)
22. and Michael J. Pettid, "From Abandoned Daughter to Shaman Matriarch: An Analysis of the Pari Kongju Muga, a Korean Shamanistic Song" (PhD diss., University of Hawai'i, 1999)
23. See Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (1982; reprint, Berkeley, CA: Third Woman, 1995), 167-70
24. Cha's adaptation of Princess Pari was noted by Walter K. Lew and Shu-Mei Shih. See Walter K. Lew, Excerpts from: ΔIKTH/DIKTE for DICTEE (Seoul: Yeul Eum Publishing Co., 1992), 14-19
25. and Shu-Mei Shih, "Nationalism and Korean American Women's Writing: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee," in Speaking the Other Self: American Women Writers, ed. Jeanne Campbell Reesman (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 157
26. Keller, e-mail to author, October 3, 2000. The Korean shamanistic narrative was introduced to the American reading public quite early. Ever since it was introduced as "The King's Seventh Daughter" in 1947, the narrative has been published in abridged and adapted forms, under the titles "Princess Pari," "Princess Bari," "Princess Pali," or "Pali Kongju (Princess Pali)." It was included in the collections of Korean folktales, published in a scholarly journal, and summarized in studies of Korean shamanism. See Frances Carpenter, Tales of a Korean Grandmother (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1947), 204-10
27. Duk-soon Chang, ed., The Folk Treasury of Korea: Sources in Myth, Legend, and Folktale, trans. Tae-sung Kim (Seoul: Society of Korean Oral Literature, 1970), 64-73
28. Tae-Dong Lee, "Princess Pari," Korea Journal 18.6 (1978): 52-57
29. In-Hak Choi, A Type Index of Korean Folktales (Seoul: Myong Ji University Press, 1979), 196-97
30. Shin-Yong Chun, ed., Korean Folk Tales (Seoul: International Cultural Foundation, 1979), 18-19, 97-106
31. Jung Young Lee, Korean Shamanistic Rituals (The Hague: Mouton, 1981), 7, 167-70
32. Alan Carter Covell, Ecstasy: Shamanism in Korea (Elizabeth, NJ: Hollym International, 1983), 75-78
33. and Laurel Kendall, Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life (1985; reprint, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1987), 154
34. and Peter H. Lee's "The Abandoned Princess."
35. See Pettid, "From Abandoned Daughter to Shaman Matriarch," 249-98
36. and Peter H. Lee, ed., The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 298-330
37. Keum Ju Hwang, "I Would Rather Die Than . . . ," in Kim-Gibson, Silence Broken, 15-19
38. Keller, Comfort Woman (New York: Viking, 1997), 49. Subsequent references to Comfort Woman are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text
39. Pae, Pari Kongju, 139
40. Keller's Saja reminds one of the gluttonous Cerberus, who guards the gate of the underworld in Greek mythology, since he keeps the gate of the other world and opens it only with the offerings of foods. But Saja, who takes the spirit of the dead to the other world, is different from Chasa, who keeps the gate of the other world in Korean shamanism. See Il Young Park, Hankook mookyoeui ihae (Understanding Korean Shamanism) (Waegwan, Korea: Benedict, 1999), 169-70
41. Kendall, Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits, 154
42. The only case of a spirit trapped in the body of a fish in Korean folktales can be found in the legend of the wooden fish in Buddhist temples, recorded in a Buddhist sutra. But the moral of the Buddhist legend is the assiduous devotion to Buddhist studies and has nothing to do with filial piety, the moral of Princess Pari. See "Moko (Wooden Fish)," May 13, 2000, kyongbuktour.or.kr/kyoungju/korean/bulkuk2-4-5.html
43. The fish is a cod. For other purposes/symbolisms of dried cods in Korean shamanism, see Heung-Yoon Cho, Hankookeui shamanism (Korean Shamanism) (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 1999), 165
44. Kendall, Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits, 5, 115
45. and Tae-gon Kim, Hanguk musok yongu (A Study of Korean Shamanism), 3rd ed. (Seoul: Chipmundang, 1985), 316
46. The lyric lines of Soon Hyo's "river song" (71-72) are not exactly the same as those of "Nodle Kang-byon." But this is not unusual, since singers of a folk song have sometimes played variations on the lyric lines, reflecting their circumstances and moods. For the complete stanzas, see Chang Bae Lee, ed., Minyo jipsung (A Collection of Folk Songs) (Seoul: Kooklip kookakwon, 1955), 228
47. See Ha Jin Uhm, Chosun minyoeui eurae (The Origin of Korean Folk Songs) (1992; reprint, Seoul: Yesool Kyoyook Choolpansa, 1994), 24
48. Chang Ho Choe, Minjok soonankieui kayodeuleul deodeumeo (Studying Popular Songs in the Age of National Ordeal) (1997; reprint, Seoul: Pyongyang-Choolpansa, 2000), 38
49. Patricia L. Duncan, "A History of Un/Saying: Silences, Memory, and Historiography in Asian American Women's Narratives" (PhD diss., Emory University, 2000), 235
50. Harvey, Six Korean Women, 65-66
51. Cho, Hankookeui shamanism, 50
52. Pettid, "From Abandoned Daughter to Shaman Matriarch," 173
53. Hicks, The Comfort Women, 176, 178
54. and Keith Howard, "A Korean Tragedy," in True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women: Testimonies Compiled by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan and the Research Association on the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, ed. K. Howard, trans. Young Joo Lee (London: Cassell, 1995), 8
55. Hyunah Yang, "Revisiting the Issue of Korean 'Military Comfort Women': The Question of Truth and Positionality," positions: east asia cultures critique 5 (1997): 65
56. C. Choi, "Nationalism and Construction of Gender in Korea," in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism, ed. Elaine H. Kim and C. Choi (New York: Routledge, 1998), 13
57. C. Choi, "Nationalism and Construction of Gender in Korea," 13
58. Terry Hong, "The Dual Lives of Nora Okja Keller," interview with Nora Okja Keller, AsianWeek.com, April 4-10, 2002, www.asianweek.com/ 2002_04_05/arts_keller.html
59. See Hicks, The Comfort Women, 159, 176
60. Elaine H. Kim, "In the Aftermath: Korean American Survivals of U.S. Wars in Asia," Asian American Literature Association Journal 7 (2001): 2