TV Drama Hanna’s Echo (2002) and a North Korean Heroine Epic in 2000s
Tuesday, February 11, 4 pm, HG 1010
This lecture analyses the North Korean TV drama Hannah's Echo (Hanna-ui Meari, 2002), which was produced following the signing of the North-South Joint Declaration on June 15, 2000 and the image of female warriors in North Korean films during the reign of Kim Jong-il in 2000s. Hannah's Echo dramatizes the lives of Gang Gyu-chan, chairperson of the Jeju Island branch of the Workers’ Party of South Korea, and his wife Go Jin-hui, director of the women’s division of the party. In the early 1990s, Go Jin-hui’s legacy was revived in North Korean novels and television drama to reinforce North Korea’s ideology of self-reliance and bolster public confidence in achieving autonomous reunification. This explains how Hannah's Echo contributed to the construction of North Korean unification discourse, focusing on the representation of female heroines in North Korean popular media. Furthermore, this lecture discusses how female characters are being depicted in North Korean media of the 2000s in support of the legitimacy of hereditary rule.
Jeenee Jun serves as an Associate Professor at Hankyong National University, South Korea and works as a theater critic and dramaturge. She has published a number of books and articles, notable among which are Theater and Gender : The Cold war and Gender Politics in North and South Korea 1945-1980 (2024), Future of Human, Future of Theater: History and Imagination of Korean SF Theater (2022), Sensibility and Ideology of Theater in the 1940s (2015), Korean Cinema between 8.15 Liberation and the Korean War (2017, co-authored), and Hollywood Prism (2017, co-authored). Professor Jun can be reached via email at midory81@hknu.ac.kr.