Kang Baek Lee (born 1947) is a South Korean playwright.
1. Life
Kang Baek Lee was born in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province. He experienced the April 19 Revolution of 1960 in his hometown as a child and remembers being struck by the irony of how a political protest could turn into a joyous occasion. The family moved to Seoul the following year when Park Chung-hee seized power with a military coup, ostensibly in the form of a military parade that Lee witnessed on the streets. Lee counts these memories, as well as his experience of contracting polio from contaminated water as a child refugee during the Korean War, as having influenced in his writing. [1]
Lee made his literary debut in 1971, when his play Daseot (다섯 Five) won the Dong-a Ilbo New Writer's Contest. He later joined the Gagyo theater company. Over his career spanning 50 years, Lee has written 47 plays. His ninth volume of complete works was published by Pyongminsa on May 31, 2022. He taught at Hanyang University, Chung-Ang University graduate school, and Korea National University of Arts before becoming a professor of playwriting at Seoul Institute of the Arts in 2003, where he remained until his retirement in 2013. Lee has received every prestigious theater award given to a playwright in the country, including the Korea Dramatic Literature Award, the Seoul Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Republic of Korea Literature Award, the Dong-a Theater Award, the Baeksang Art Award, the Seoul Theater Festival Award, and the Seoul International Theater Festival Award.
2. Writing
Kang Baek Lee is best known as the premier writer of social commentary in the form of allegories, a form made necessary to skirt draconian censorship laws rigorously enforced up to 1989. His Five and Pasukkun (파수꾼 Watchman) are examples of Lee's allegorical style in the early plays. However, it would be a mistake to categorize Lee solely as an allegorist. Later he wrote more about metaphorical and existential themes as in Gyeolhon (결혼 Wedding) and Misulgwaneseoui hondongwa jeongni (미술관에서의 혼돈과 정리 Chaos and Order at a Gallery), and he borrowed the themes from popular Korean folk tales and narratives as shown in the case of Bomnal (봄날 Spring Day), a multidimensional tale that delves into the consequences resulting from neglect of these relationships within a family and, by extension, within the South Korean nation as it underwent explosive economic growth in the 1980s.
Lee's visual language is both extraordinary in its range and impressive in its theatricality: people as works of art hanging on a wall in Chaos and Order at a Gallery; the personification of a child's spirit before the child is born and the use of living dancers as bodhisattva statues in Neukkim, geungnakgateun (느낌, 극락같은 Feeling, Like Nirvana); a stream of sand pouring down in a stream of light in Jinttam heulligi (진땀 흘리기 Cold Sweat); and the battle of personified good and evil spirits in his musical for children, Samsinhalmeoniwa ilgobaideul (삼신할머니와 일곱아이들 The Love of Grandma Stork). Observers have noted a “distanced,” objective quality in Lee's dramas, one that sets his work apart from plays that have a cause-effect, climactic moment, followed by a resolution of the opposing forces. There is no question that he values the opposition of ideas in the theater. Aristotle placed plot first in importance in drama, followed by character and thought. Kang Baek Lee's works seem to reverse that order. [2]
While Lee's works are anti-realistic in style, they clearly resonate with social realities. He weaves Confucian values throughout his works: affection between fathers and sons; justice; relationships between husbands and wives; deference to elders; and trust. His works occupy a very special place in the Korean dramatic milieu which has generally set a high value on realism.
Reference
[1] Kee-Yoon Nahm, The Theatre Times. 15 Sep 2019. https://thetheatretimes.com/entering-yellow-inn-a-conversation-between-the-playwright-and-translator-part-2/
[2] Lee, Kang Baek, et al. Allegory of Survival : The Theater of Kang-Baek Lee. Youngstown, N.Y., Cambria Press, p. ix. https://read.cambriapress.com/reader/9781934043929/ix
