Society for Ethnomusicology

Sdosori (Northwestern Korean Lyric Song) on the Demilitarized Zone: A Study in Music and Teleological Judgment Author(s): Joshua D. Pilzer Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Winter, 2003), pp. 68-92 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852512 Accessed: 09/03/2009 23:15
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Society for Ethnomusicology and University of Illinois Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethnomusicology.

http://www.jstor.org

VOL.47, No. 1

ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

WINTER 2003

Sodosori (Northwestern Korean Lyric Song) on the Demilitarized Zone: A Study in Music and Teleological Judgment
JOSHUA D. PILZER / University of Chicago

ne of music's most interesting powers is its capacity to make things seem possible within its privileged domain, and to leave behind a residue of this sense of possibility. In this article, I give an example of people discovering possibilities through music, people who think, feel, and perform traditional music as a confrontation between reality and dreams. I explore some of the possibilities that music embeds and reveals, some musical techniques of their discovery, design, extraction, and circulation, and processes of revealing, interpreting, and creating the conditions for possibilities. Because I believe that music functions to reveal possibilities, this essay looks forward to a time when music scholars are as concerned with music's potentials as with describing and interpreting its functions. In recent decades, there has been a biennial concert of S6dosori, a Northwestern Korean singing style, on the South Korean edge of the lethal belt of truce territory separating North and South Korea, known in Korean and in international parlance as the Demilitarized Zone (hereafter DMZ). The hourlong concert accompanies a Confucian ancestral worship ceremony that Northern Korean families living in South Korea perform on the East Asian lunar New Year (s6llal) and Harvest Festival (ch'usok, August 15th of the lunar year) at the Imjin River. While the pilgrims bow before the altar, a predominantly female group of singers, most of whom are from the North or of Northern Korean descent as well, stand with their backs to the barbed wire and observation towers and commemorate in song the victims of a century of suffering. Their songs, predominantly secular lyric songs of turn-of-thecentury kisaeng (female professional entertainers) and other entertainers from northwestern Korea, take on the patina of the sacred in this setting, and echo as a prayer for the resolution of fifty years of national and familial division.
? 2003 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

68

Pilzer: S6dosori on the Demilitarized

Zone

69

As most audience members will tell you, the concert is "just a bunch of old songs from North Korea." But the singers artfully arrange the songs in a narrative structure for performances such as this one so that they describe three stages along a trajectory of human experience: first sorrow and reflection, then death and transcendence, and finally a sex- and death-ridden celebration. The singers offer this musical system as a means towards overcoming the material and emotional circumstances of familial and national the political to the spiritual, the material to the ideal, and division-welding relatively stable mythic structures to activities of social transformation. As with other progressive aspects of East Asian modernity, this perspective of overcoming cuts against old essentialisms that found stasis in "the Orient" and new essentialisms that discover and enforce cyclical time in East Asian cultural production. Music and Teleological Judgment

On the DMZ singers situate the details of musical performance within a long-range musical form that relies on goals for social transformation, which in turn rely on concepts of how things are and should be. This process bears many similarities to Immanuel Kant's "teleological judgment," the faculty with which "we attribute to nature our concept of a purpose (Zweck)l in order to judge its product" (Kant [1790] 1987, 8: 1, emphasis added),2 although we must proceed carefully in the comparison.3 For Kant, teleological judgment is the process of organizing the elements of an extant system-whether natural, social, economic, political, technological, or musical-around human purposes, which are themselves organized around principles attributed to an a priori ground of being (i.e., nature, human and otherwise). Music, in its referential opacity, bases some part of its relative autonomy, on its energies which lack a single purpose-which are, in Kant's terms, without being inherently purposeful.5 Teleological judgment in purposive music is a struggle over if and on what terms music is to give up its autonomy and become attached to particular ends. In musics which foreground teleological judgment, people link different types of purposive musical elementsformal propulsions such as tonal/modal trajectories, patterns of ornamental a sense of purdensity, rhythmic sequences, and emotional expressions-to and they authorize this purpose with reference to concepts of a ground pose; of being, which is, cyclically, thought to be the primordial origin of purposive forms in the first place. Such musics are techniques for returning to such a ground, real and imagined, for getting "back to the basics," and beginning again in harmony with basic cultural principles and conditions of being, which are renegotiated in their retrieval. The chain of teleological judgment, in music and elsewhere, can be described as a cyclical process of designing

70

Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

and linking these four distinct categories of thought and being: purposive phenomena, purposes, principles, and grounds. Put another way, teleological judgment in music is a series of discoveries and declarations of culturally constituted a priori "conditions for the possibility." It "discovers" and naturalizes ways that musical forms depend on purposes, that purposes rely on principles, and that principles depend on a ground of being. The structure of this article follows this process of linkage in the DMZ concerts, showing how musical elements are harnessed to a purpose of union, how the state of union breaks through to concepts about being, and finally, how the end of the concert "begins again" out of that ground. But first, I venture a description of the historical formation of social purposes and musical forms. The DMZ: the Final Borderpost6 Myriad musical forms enact teleological systems that pass through suffering to its relief, suggesting that the varieties of human suffering are purposeful events on a structured path towards an improved or even ideal state.7 Tracing three religious pilgrimages across Europe, Philip Bohlman describes how pilgrims' physical and musical journey mirrors a spiritual one. Pilgrims sing to embody their connections to "a sacred genealogy that will empower them to look beyond the boundaries of the present, which quickly have proved insufficient to chart the continent's future" (1996:451). Each trek terminates at a "final borderpost"-a shrine, church, border, or other heavily symbolic location that manifests the atmosphere of a spiritual, emotional, and/or political purpose. The purpose is final in the sense that it is an end, the furthest outpost of one's understanding of a thing, the furthest known goal of a teleological scheme. In cases where musical activity represents a journey, music itself can be such a final borderpost.8 The DMZ is Korea's final borderpost, both literally and symbolically. After nearly fifty years of national division, it manifests an atmosphere of dystopian timelessness that threatens and provokes a final purpose of union (t'ongil). Union is a central theme in the multi-layered conceptual and affective work of South Korean teleological judgment, one that predates the DMZ and dreams of national unification but has been given new life post-1945. In contrast to Western teleologies, rooted in Christian notions of original sin and Enlightenment conceptions of historical progress which presuppose the absence of a perfection that must be gained or regained throughout history (or death), most Korean teleologies presuppose a perfect nature that is ever-present "ground from which we begin." present but alienated-an "Transcendence" in the context of Korean Buddhism does not mean going beyond the world but rather overcoming flaws in the human condition, reach-

Pilzer: S6dosori on the Demilitarized Zone

71

ing through to an immanent perfection (Buswell 1991:57-58). This presupposes an inseparability of ideality and materiality which is also present in Korean shamanism, where the dead "transcend"their mortalityby reunification with a spirit world which is sensuously present, and in which social harmony consists of a complementary infusion of spirit and matter (Kim 1998:94). This disposition also carries over to some forms of South Korean Christianity,which arrived in Korea in the late eighteenth century, but expanded rapidly in the post-Korean War era.9 As I discovered as the result of six months of study, interviews, concert attendance, and ethnography with S6dosori singers in 1997, the S6dosori repertoire is most influenced by shamanism, with its assimilated elements of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The S6dosori singers are syncretic Christians,Buddhists,and shamanists,often espousing devotion to more than one religion. These spiritual programs, like musical forms, are variously shaped and harnessed to the singers' other concerns-for nation building, national reunification, and reunification with family and loved ones in the alienated North. They come together in performance as a loose background of ideas of human spiritual nature that conditions and encourages the purpose of union. Most importantly, singers underpin notions of familial and national reunification with tropes of passion and love. As Sheila MiyoshiJager notes in her study of the discourse of reunificationin the 1980s student movement, the concert of (predominantly) love songs on the DMZ portrays the alienated North and South as separated lovers, thereby displacing the anti-communist rhetoric of post-division South Korean military regimes and their American big brothers (Jager 1996:7). The singers on the DMZincarnate the ubiquitous figure of the woman tormented by her undue separation from loved ones, present in Korean literature and song at least since the turn of the second millennium C.E. (Jager 1996:4). They represent a woman's passion and love as a natural condition that makes union just and possible. Each of the singers I interviewed spoke to me repeatedly about the multilayered purpose of union. Mastersinger O Pongny6, eighty-four at the time and the last living nationally recognized master of the tradition, told me how she worked for the day that she could be a musical instrument of national reconciliation, teaching her style to a new generation of singers in the North as a way of reunifyingnational culture.Just a few years before her own death, Mrs.O told me of her hope that she would yet be reunited with her husband, who was kidnapped and most likely killed almost fifty years earlier by North Korean troops. Just before a performance, Yu Chisuktold me tersely that the concerts were intended to "makeus feel better";she later elaborated by telling me about the unificatory aspect of the concerts and S6dosori in general: "We begin alone with a sorrowful spirit, and end together in joy." For the

72

Ethnomusicology,

Winter 2003

singers on the DMZ, the aura of hope surrounding the final purpose of union is regenerated through music, which opposes, in dialectical fashion, the concrete form of its opposite-the border, the death strip that is the utmost manifestation of division and hatred. The History of Sodosori in South Korea

In the brief period between the division of the Korean peninsula by the American military in 1945 and the ceasefire of the Korean War (1950-3), nearly two million Northern Koreans fled to the South, escaping the North Korean communists and a roving front that swept south in two overwhelming waves. Among this group was a handful of professional singers of S6dosori, a collection of professionalized folk songs and vocal styles from the Northwestern provinces of Hwanghae-do and P'y6ngan-do. These singers were the heiresses to the traditions of P'y6ngan-province kisaeng, the broad category of female entertainers who entertained Korean royalty, aristocracy, and commoners in the late Choson Dynasty (on the S6dosori lineage, see Han 1996, v. 1: 33; Yi Ch'angbae 1976: 273; on the kisaeng, see Lee 1979). The Py6ngan-province kisaeng learned songs and regional modal configurations of both provinces, using a modified version of the Hwanghae-provincial singing style for those pieces. What received the post-Korean War coinage "Sodosori" were songs made popular by famous northwestern kisaeng of the 1920s and '30s, who sang them in Korea and Japan within the entertainment complex of the colonial period, in which kisaeng were hired for private parties, government banquets, theater concerts, radio performances, and 78 recordings. In the wake of migration and the devastation of the Korean War the performing scene of the colonial period all but evaporated, and each of the migrant singers struggled for financial stability. Some began teaching in the south, but initially found little interest in their music among the North Korean migrant community, swept up in the race to rebuild and further modernize the new republic. But beginning in the late 1960s and '70s with the revival of traditional Korean culture initiated by military dictator Pak Chung Hee, the singers of Sodosori were gradually integrated into South Korean performing arts institutions-first the Art and Traditional Music High School (yesul kugak hakkyo), and then government institutions such as the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts (kungnip kugagw6n) and the Three singersTraditional Music High School (kugak kodanghakkyo). Kim Ch6ngy6n, and O Pongnyo, were designated bearers of Chang Haks6n, "Intangible Cultural Assets" (muby6ng munbwajae) by the Office of Cultural Assets (munbwajae kwalliguk); they received stipends and were able to increase their lesson fees once awarded this status.

Pilzer: S6dosori on the Demilitarized

Zone

73

In the feverish race for a place in the canons of national culture and in the politics of migrant identity and national division, the S6dosori repertoire has undergone a subtle refinement, involving the adoption of aristocratic ornaments and tempi, standardization, a magnification of characteristics indigenous to the northwest, and a covert politicization (see Pilzer 1999).1" Uniqueness of timbre, ornamental technique, microtonal preference, variation technique, and other elements of personal style had been cultivated among aspiring practitioners of S6dosori before the war; but, participating in the self-conscious formation of national culture, post-war singers prioritized codification over the development of signature styles. As with other traditional forms such as sanjo (solo instrumental suites) andp'ansori (epic musical storytelling), heretofore nonexistent "schools" (ryu) formed around famous performers, bearing the imprint of Japanese colonial pedagogy. The South Korean national culture bureaucracy deemed multiple styles to be authoritative and worthy of preservation under the Cultural Assets system, but did not encourage the development of new styles."l But due to the singers' persistent cultural valuation of individual style, students continued to develop distinct musical personalities to some extent, based on increasingly subtle distinctions. For the purposes of understanding how singers confront the atmosphere and the structures of division on the DMZ, the most important element of Sodosori's post-war transformation in the South is its politicization, three aspects of which I discuss below. First, S6dosori's refinement process bears traces of national division, which has inspired singers to intensify emotional expression and regional distinctiveness, and to foreground transcendence narratives and themes of separation and union. Second, the term S6dosori is itself political, a post-division national-cultural invention (Yi Pohyong, p.c.) that canonizes the pre-war singing practices of the Pyongyang kisaeng who had gathered together songs from the two culturally and musically distinct northwestern provinces (Hwanghae and P'y6ngan). As a consolidated category of "North Korean music," it augurs against the pervasive similarities of repertoire and modal configurations that link the style of the near-northwestern province, Hwanghae, and its South Korean neighbor, Ky6nggi province (Yi Pohy6ng 1992). Contemporary singers and scholars call attention to these similarities to prove the absence of a cultural rationale for division. Finally, as a kind of Northern Korean traditional music actively promoted in South Korea while neglected in the North,12 S6dosori became a showpiece of South Korean cultural authenticity during a dictatorial period when legitimacy was in short supply. To this day, the government mobilizes Sodosori in the public sphere to demonstrate the cultural bankruptcy of communism and the justness of reunification under South Korean capitalism and democracy. The DMZ ceremony and concert are sanctioned and monitored by the

74

Ethnomusicology,

Winter 2003

government, and funded by anti-communist Northern Korean migrants' associations (such as the Office of Five North Korean Provinces); so the concerts exemplify how politics intrude on the most personal and sacred realms of the lives of Northern Korean residents of South Korea and on the life and music of the S6dosori scene. Nonetheless, as we shall see, in the inner life of the performances these passionate and virtuosic women singers retrieve music from its political enframement by the state and the migrants' associations, not only by portraying the North and South as alienated lovers. By emphasizing the regional distinctiveness of the northwest and the heterogeneous nature of reunion, the singers stand to the side of dominant discourses of North-South relations in South Korea, which assert the importance of regaining homogeneity (Grinker 1998). The relative autonomy of the Sodosori singers on the DMZ from the various political powers that envelop them is served by the prevalence of "performative" structures (those that promote creativity and improvisation) as opposed to rote or "proscriptive" structures (Sahlins 1985:xi) in the Sodosori tradition. S6dosori convention encourages individual agency through song and lyric selection, song ordering, modulation, ornamentation, motivic substitution, gesture, dance, and a (compromised) imperative to develop recognizable personal styles. On the DMZ, singers co-evolve music and teleological programs through such tactics, through the recursive reformulation of songs and the structures of performance. The DMZ Concerts: Linking Musical Forms to Purposes

For three decades, on lunar New Year's Day and the Fall harvest festival, several thousand North Korean immigrants to South Korea have made their way by car and bus back to the border for a memorial gathering dedicated to North Korean ancestors and loved ones still living across the border, called the chaeibuk pujo handong kyongmo taehoe, the "North Korean Migrants Ancestral Worship Gathering." They travel to the Imjin River, and the imjin'gak, a monument to the victims of the Korean War and the North Korean refugees in South Korea (see Figure 1). Here, families perform chesa, the ancestral worship ceremony, for their ancestors in North Korea. From a view tower, one can look across the river into the Demilitarized Zone; the mountains of North Korea lie in the hazy background. Facing northwest, one can see the heavily guarded Bridge of Freedom (Chayu ui tari) carrying a dormant railroad track across the river.13 Pressed against the barbed wire fences and the lethal stillness of the DMZ, pilgrims bow to their North Korean ancestors also and also to loved ones still living across the border. As a border-crossing gesture of love, the ceremony becomes a prayer for national unification. The song concert, which is the

Figure 1. The DMZ and the Imjingak on 16 September 1997 just before the North Korean Migrants Ancestral Worship Gathering and the Sodosori concert.

76

Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

only known instance in the Korean peninsula of a performance of traditional lower-class secular music permitted during ancestral worship (Byong Won Lee, p.c.), complements the atmosphere of prayer by evoking the places and traditional sounds of the northwest. It is September 16, 1997. After speeches, a brief performance by a marching band, and several North Korean migrant anthems such as "Kohyang saenggak" (Thoughts of My Hometown) and "Kohyang uii pom" (Spring in My Hometown), the ceremony begins. In the flat area in front of the ancestral altar, eighty-four-year old mastersinger O Pongny6 and her students get ready to perform songs of northwestern Korea. The concert has come together in the usual way. Rehearsals started several months ago. Mrs. O, together with S6dosori Preservation Society director Yu Chisuk and their students, made all the decisions together in a hierarchical way, deferring to Mrs. O in the last instance. The senior members decided on the songs and the order of performance, assigning each singer a certain number of verses. More talented or senior students would sing the most, and Mrs. 0, who tired easily, would only sing the opening pieces. A senior student wrote out all of the lyrics, with performers' names beside each verse, and gave a Xerox copy of the lyrics to each singer. The group worked out a skeletal choreography for the concert, deciding who would come forward to sing in what order, choosing some of the dance gestures they would perform throughout, and who would play which drum. The concert would have no accompanying instrumentalists-the migrants' associations' honorarium was too small to hire them. The singers also decided not to wear uniform hanbok (traditional Korean costumery) for this particular concert; and so they appear on the edge of the DMZ each wearing different colors, all of their own choosing. The performance proceeds from slow, seated lyric songs (chapka) to increasingly fast and strophic folk songs (minyo) and dance ballads (s6nsori san t'aryong), moving through a chain of rhythmic patterns with an overall accelerating trend, spanning a tempo range from about 50 to 160 beats per minute. Thematically the songs form a rough triptych-a contemplative section, in which singers ruminate over the difficulties of life, expressing sorrow and loss; a transitional section, with songs of death and ascension; and a celebratory final section, with strophic folk songs describing a carnival of sex, death, and reunion with nature: this section slows and relaxes towards its end. In its outline, the concerts' sectional structure approximates other Korean forms such as sanjo (solo instrumental suites), sinawi (group improvisation), salp'uri (stylized exorcism dance) and sections of kut shaman ceremonies (k6ri). The three- or sometimes four-part sectional meta-structure of much Korean traditional folk performance allows for a regular sequence of sorrowful contemplation, ascension, and celebration (possibly followed by relaxation)-a ritualistic catharsis (see Howard 1989:210). This

Pilzer: S6dosori on the Demilitarized

Zone

77

meta-structure,although not invented in Korea's tragic moder era, increasingly predominates the scene of traditionalmusic performance.Most Sodosori concerts, on the DMZ and elsewhere, follow this general pattern. On the DMZ, the shift from sorrow to celebration is accompanied by a move from solo performance, which figures isolation, to dynamic responsorial singing, which figures a broken collectivity made whole again. The songs are particularly suited to their task of unification: as sound, they extend beyond the barbed wire fences, crossing into the North and scattering over the river towards the mountains just across the border; as songs of the Northern homeland, the songs haunt the South with the iconic sounds (timbres, ornaments, etc.), mythical figures, and place-names of the North; and as Korean "traditional" music, preceded in the ceremony by a Western-style marching band and anthems, the songs suggest a journey into a Koreanness that is older than the border. Audience members, mostly old immigrantsexhausted from the long wait to visit the altar,follow the songs into this collective space. They sit together listening to the songs and talking about their hometowns and favorite places in the North, and of their youth underJapanese colonialism. One man in his eighties tells me about his visits to the old colonial red light district in Pyongyang, where he would hear kisaeng singing. Many of the older audience members slip into a waking dream or flat out fall asleep. The women's voices distort through the tiny PA system like the old crackling 78s that circulated in the 1930s; they cut through the howling riversidewind like voices out of the past. Part One: Songs of Sorrow The slow and mournful songs of the contemplative section are drawn from P'y6nganProvince, in the mountainous far northwest. Singersoften told me how Py6ngan's long and cold winters, its history of seclusion, rebellion, and oppression by central authority shaped the music to be mournful yet resolute. Music from P'y6ngan Province is characterized by multiple types of vibrato, rangingfrom about 50 to nearly 700 cents in width, that both singers and scholars often liken to sobbing: singer Yi Chiny6 called the Py6ngan vibrato "thesound of tears"(nunmul sori), and Yu Chisukcalled it "thesound of spiritual implosion." Elizabeth Tolbert has characterized such sounds as "icons of crying" (1990:90). A small group of the senior singers perform seated, with an atmosphere of extreme restraintpunctuated by occasional emotional outbursts (see Figure 2). One singer plays the changgo (hourglass-shaped drum) throughout; but the performers sing alone in turn, and each creates an atmosphere of isolation and suffering. Singer Yu Chisuk (at center in Figure 2) told me "These songs are filled with mournful supplication (aewon) ... they are about the

78

Ethnomusicology,

Winter 2003

Figure 2. A performances of "Sushimga" (Song of Sorrow). From left: Singers Yi Chiny6, Yi Chisuk, and their teacher, and late Human Cultural Asset O Pongy6 (right).

evanescence of life (insaeng musang)." She explained that the sense of evanescent life in these early songs is accompanied by a sense of its pointlessness. Taking these elements as part of a total structure of feeling (Williams 1977), in these songs the mournful spirit slowly implodes under the vacuum pressure of a fleeting and purposeless life. The reckless cruelty of Korea's twentieth century, in which the Korean peninsula, its families, souls, and bodies were devastated and cut in two by colonialism and war, offers a kind of proof of this purposelessness. But at once, Mrs. Yu told me, "in the depths of this sorrow, we find something so precious and fleeting, and so we cherish sorrow." Two feelings clash: the senses that the evanescence of life is proof of both its purposelessness and its preciousness. The songs move along dialectically, in slow/fast pairs, the first in an unhurried and relatively free rhythm, the second highly structured and often twice as fast, as if time was stopping and starting again and again. In this ruminating first section, the theme of separation is omnipresent: If I could visit my beloved In dreams as often as I like The stone road before her'4 gate Would turn to sand. The more I long for my lover's flowered face, The less I know what to do.15 -"Sushimga" (Song of Sorrow), performed by Kim Kwangsuk.

Pilzer: S6dosori on the Demilitarized Zone

79

Throughout twentieth-century South Korean music history the lost lover, nim, has often represented lost national sovereignty, and loved ones lost to colonial-eraforced labor conscription, uprisings,wars, massacres,and purges. On the DMZ, singers and audience members reconfigure the literal and metaphorical meanings of the lost beloved, referencing real loved ones lost to war and borders, lost hometowns, and the alienated North in general.16 Furthermore,female performers sing texts written from a male perspective17 (a practice that hearkens back to when professional female entertainers performed male-voiced songs of unrequited love for the vicarious pleasure of their patrons), thereby weaving performers and spectators together in longing for a lost beloved with many possible meanings. Singingof nim (beloved) O Pongny6 thinks of her husband, and her lost child. In the crowd, Kwak Hy6n thinks of the streets of Py6ngyang where he was a teenager. When I asked singer Yi Chiny6 if the beloved had anything to do with political reunification, she sang and explained one of her favorite verses: Mybeloved'splace is not farfromwhere I livefromNorthto South. It'sonly fifteenmiles18 So why do we live like this, in such longing... Thoughthe springlakesareeverywherefull, Thoughthe wateris so deep, Whycan'the come ... Thoughsummercloudscrowd the mountain peaks, Andthoughthe peaksareso high, Whycan'the come?19 -"Yokkum Sushimga" (ExtendedSongof Sorrow), Yi Chiny6. performed by Ms. Yi expressed her amazement at this text, which originated like most of the S6dosori texts in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, and yet seems to foreshadow the division of the peninsula so perfectly. She told me that her personal beliefs about the North were one reason why she chose this verse among many others to sing-she, like many other thirty-something Koreans,was politically active in the student movement of the 1980s, which state, and protested worker mistreatment,U.S. imperialism,the authoritarian national division. But among the singers, verses like this one are not bound to any one political orientation. The verses express singers' desires for reunion in a most general way. Therefore despite the overwhelming sense of loss, drift, and resignation, the songs reach out to the idea of union, seeking to believe in its possibility. Union here is not yet an embraced purpose, but merely a wished-for purpose. Singers express this desire for purpose as a subtle strength, in both musical and physical restraint and in sudden dynamic and emotional outbursts. Strength accumulates as the various purposive elements of the performance-the sobbing vibrato, the shifts in tempo, the lost beloved, and so

80

Ethnomusicology,

Winter 2003

on-are bound together by the desire for purpose, and finally by the purpose of union itself. This accumulation is traceable in the pattern of accelerating tempo: slow/fast song pairs are linked together in order of increasing tempo, creating a slow-fast-slow-fast effect that accelerates overall, and almost every song accelerates from beginning to end. The increasing density of emotion is also audible in the progressive frequency of the "icons of crying," which, as O Pongny6 told me, include not only vibrato cry-effects but also textual references to crying and the lost beloved: We're hand in hand, my beloved and I And when my beloved cries I cry, and when I, then he. Love, oh my love, don't cryif you cry so much, my love for you will fade.2" -"Yokkum Sushimga"(Extended Song of Sorrow), performed by O Pongnyo. Part Two: Songs of Overcoming

Subtly and with a strength that accumulates throughout performance, singers eventually break through to songs of overcoming and finally celebration and reunion. All these songs originate in Hwanghae province, the near northwestern region, and the singers explain that because the songs originate in this fertile, affluent plain, they are faster and livelier than the far-northwestern pieces which begin the concert. The concert has shifted from the mountainous isolation and modal/musical specificity of the far northwest to a sense of togetherness based on the proximity and musical affinities of the near northwest to Kydnggi Province, where the concert on the DMZ takes place, and where the singers live. The shift of geographic region involves a modal transformation, including a change in ornamental techniques. While the singers of the DMZ concerts are all trained in the "sobbing" vibrato style of the far-northwest, in this latter section of the performance they use a mild version of the deep vibrato/ tremolo of near-northwestern Hwanghae Province, which, as singer Yu Chisuk, Yi Chiny6 and others note, sounds more like laughter than crying, especially in conjunction with the faster tempi of the Hwanghae songs. Yu Chisuk explained that this second regional style is the sound of "spiritual explosion," contrasting with the "implosion" of the far northwest. The sudden outbursts of volume, ornamentation, tempo, and gesture in the first section turned inward according to the aesthetics of implosion; but in the new modal/affective configuration these outbursts grow in magnitude and take on the character of explosions, progressively effective "breakthroughs" (Adorno [1960] 1992:6) to new thematic sections and atmospheres. Not surprisingly, the most dramatic transformative breach comes in the

Pilzer: S6dosori on the Demilitarized

Zone

81

middle of the first slow/fast song pair sung in the new musical system. The songs, "Sany6mbul" ("Buddhist Chant on the Mountain") and its fast counterpart, "Chajin Y6mbul" ("Fast Buddhist Chant"), are songs of death and transcendence. The pair of songs developed from the final section of the nearnorthwestern shaman ceremony, in which a shaman enacts a recently deceased spirit's path to heaven,21 calling on the Amita Buddha22 (Korean: Amit'abul), incorporated into Korean Shamanism as a death-god, to ease the spirit's passage to the next world. Accordingly, the evanescence and one-timeness of life are the principle subjects of the S6dosori song pair. In the first song, dying spirits reflect on life, bidding farewell to unfulfilled dreams, and meditating on life's transience: The sun sets, but rises again the next morningOur life comes just once, and I don't know why it doesn't do the same.'2 -"Sany6mbul" (Buddhist Chant on the Mountain), sung by Yi Chinyo. To the moderate 12/8 rhythm of 66-72 beats per minute, the singers, now standing, improvise slow dance and gestures, while offering reflective verses in turn and sing stylized, heterophonic melismas on the Buddha's name (Amit'abul) in the refrain. Suddenly, with only a heartbeat's pause, they launch into a quick 12/8 rhythmic pattern of 140 bpm, a speed that is magnified by an increase in melodic density. The reflective mood is replaced by stories of "going up the mountain,"24 of dying and transformation, as they still call the Buddha's name in the refrain: ... Going, going, I'm going, leaving you behind. E, he, e he Amit'abul. Because I worship the S6kkay6rae Buddha25 Please don't cast me into hell Onto the mountain of knives.26 -"Chajin Yombul" (Fast Buddhist Chant), performed by members of the S6dosori Preservation Society.

Part Three: Songs of Celebration

Thus the performance passes beyond the final borderpost, through the veil between suffering and redemption; and now the third, celebratory section begins. The singers perform a series of lively and humorous responsorial folk songs and standing dance ballads, with an ever-increasing tempo that slows towards the end. They dance with greater and greater freedom; they gesture playfully, and in the final pieces of the concert each singer dances while playing a drum (see Figure 3)-a sogo (hand drum), changgo (hourglass drum), or puk (barrel drum, not pictured). They draw closer to the tremolo-vibrato laughter of the near northwest, replacing the icons of cry-

82

Ethnomusicology,

Winter 2003

Figure 3. Members of the S6dosori Preservation Society perform Sant'ary6ng (standing dance ballads).

ing with icons of laughter, which, however, retain traces of prior sorrows. Figuring union, the concert moves from the isolation of solo singing to the a faceless colleccollectivity of responsorial singing and heterophony-not tive but a dynamic constellation of musical personalities, a state of participatory discrepancy (Keil 1995) like those that ethnomusicologists have long noted in Korean group instrumental and vocal forms (Lomax [19621 1971:245). The many different performative levels and musical parameters involved in the transformative action of teleological judgment are outlined in Table 1: a thematic shift from sorrow to celebration, and from alienation to togetherness (row 3 of Table 1); a physical liberation of the body through a regional modal shift (row 4) that converts implosion to explosion (row 5), sobbing to laughter (row 6) and physical restraint to improvised dance and gesture (row 7); a change from solo to group singing; an accumulation of strength through a dialectic of restraint and sudden emotional outburst; and patterns of increasing tempo (row 8). Tempo is especially multi-layered: looking at row 8 of Table 1, tempo increase at three levels-in the gradual tempo increase of particular songs, in the pairing of slow and fast songs (represented with letters a-e in row 9), and in the general pattern of tempo increase throughout, which returns to moderate tempo at the end. Each of the small accelerations in particular songs

Table 1. The layered practice of teleological judgment in a performance of S6dosori on the DMZ
1.Name Sushimga Kinari Chajin Sany6mbul Yokkiim Ari Sushimga Extended Song Long Fast Mountain Chant of Sorrow Ari Ari II. Transcendence: Death, Farewell Hwanghae Province Explosion Laughter Standing, gestures 66-72 C Chajin Yombul Fast Chant Nanbongga Song of Decadence III. Celebration: Love/Sex/Death

2.Translation Song of Sorrow 3. Thematic Section 4. Region of Origin 5. Regional Aesthetics 6. Vibrato 7. Movement 8. Tempo (bpm) 9. Song group I. Suffering: Loss, Reflection Pyongan Province Implosion Sobbing Seated 50-60 A

Ascension

76

61 B

136140

140

78 D

84

Ethnomusicology,

Winter 2003

and between folk song pairs participate in the larger transformation in two ways: they compound one another over the course of the hour, building the momentum necessary for dramatic change; and they encode and suggest the covert strength that eventually enables the long-range transformation. Among all of these parameters of transformation, perhaps the most suggestive element of the final section is the shifted subject matter of the songs. Singers no longer dwell in reflection; instead they trade humorous stories of sex and death. This is epitomized by the "Nanbongga" (Songs of Decadence) song series: The moon is bright, the stars are bright. The moon's light streams through the silken window. A maiden and a bachelor meet alone. Will they die or live, live or die? No one knows-they play rough games. Ehe 6ya 6ya d6ya, oh, my love ...27 The maiden in the front house will marry, but the young bachelor in the house behind will swing by his neck. A person's death is not so regrettable, but ten feet28of rope will be wasted. Ehe 6ya 6ya d6ya, oh, my love .. 29 -"Sasol Nanbongga" (NarrativeSong of Decadence), sung by members of the Sodosori Preservation Society. The effect of this comic explicitness about sex and death is manifold. As anthropologist Bruce Kapferer notes for Sinhalese sorcery (1986), comedy on the DMZ unifies people as they target common objects of ridiculedead fools, cripples, oversexed or unrequited lovers, impotents, etc. This ridicule is an expression of a common set of beliefs, and it thus represents the end of earlier alienation. But there is no absolute line drawn between the objects of ridicule and the laughing crowd; rather the crowd laughs precisely because it knows those particular pains. As Yi Chiny6 told me, "in these songs we make fun of our troubles." On the DMZ, this humor temporarily neutralizes the alienating structures of division, making fun of the very separation and death that caused such sadness earlier, and affirming ideas about life and togetherness. The pieces transform familial and national division from status quo to disease;3' and laughter acts out the expulsion of this sickness. Furthermore, the final section is a kind of liminal state, the culmination of a ritualized social drama like those described by Max Gluckman (1954) and Victor Turner (1969). The singers demonstrate the fragility of South Korean political economic and emotional reality by defying its conventions of speech and behavior, especially its gendered codes of sexual propriety. Like the ritual parody of kings that Gluckman describes in African corona-

Pilzer. S6dosori on the Demilitarized

Zone

85

tion rites, the parody of alienation on the DMZ represents a temporary liberation through inversion of moral rules. This indicates a temporary fluidity of social structure, in which the singers are able to create an atmosphere of the possibility of union, an ambiance that will remain once the concert has ended. to Concepts of Nature

l.inking

Purpose

However much this final section performs a kind of liberation, the panoof sex, death, and song towards the end of the concert does not mirror ply an ideal state, but enacts a frantic and sudden reunion. Nonetheless, this stylized crisis moment, like many others, reveals in-process cultural ideas about natures, human and otherwise; and it reveals these natures to be primordial conditions for the possibility of union. It is here that the purpose of union is justified, as its narrative and the musical form it has subsumed are linked to a sensuous snapshot of morality (Guyer 1993). In this next section I attempt to describe some of these complex foundational concepts, and the way that the singers revisit and revise them in the concert's final section. In syncretic Buddhist-influenced Korean cosmologies, and throughout the traditional East Asian cultural sphere, immanent perfection includes death at the ground of being (Buswell 1989:228-29). In the alienation of the first section of the performance, there is very little mention of death: life is unbearable but interminable. In the latter portion of the concert, in the juxtaposition of death and celebration, the singers "return" to a culturally naturalized idea of interdependent life and death (Buswell 1991:138-39). Even after the comedic and sexual deaths are over, the concert slows down and ends in the mountain ballads' bountiful natural landscape, suggesting the coexistence of life and death in nature, and affirming a material selfhood31 in the constant presence of decay. Contemporary South Korean views of death, like the view of human nature, assimilate Buddhist and Shamanist beliefs with increasingly predominant Christian ones (Yi Inbok 1979). Both Korean Shamanism and syncretic Christianities, to which most of the DMZ singers attest devotion, emphasize the afterlife over reincarnation. In the opaque and contradictory interior of musical expression, the persistence of death at the end of the concert emphasizes life's one-timeness. But unlike the first songs, the end of the concert does not stress the evanescence of life in resignation and ambivalence, but rather in celebration of its preciousness. Singer Yu Chisuk stressed the preciousness of fleeting life as a theme in the entire repertoire, and we find it here in these final, frantic songs of life and death. But by the end of the concert, the earlier war over whether evanescent life is empty or precious has been decided in favor of the latter; and furthermore, the preciousness

86

Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

of sorrowful life in the first section of the concert has become a preciousness of life in general. The notion of life's one-timeness fosters a kind of frenetic love of life, and of others, in the shadow of death. As many singers told me, the final section of the concert foregrounds and passionate love. This sentiment both fuchong and sarang-affection els the final purpose of union with desire and is its own ethical principle. Love is perhaps the ultimate anti-estrangement, and as a cultural value and a theme in song it skyrockets in times of stable alienation. But as a concept of how things should be, this passionate love is not an idealized concept, but a messy, sensuous struggle-a kind of madness.32 The songs' characters risk death from exhaustion, frustration, or suicide. As one singer explained, abashedly explaining the predominance of sex and death in the later songs, "Lifeshould not be too orderly-there are times when it should be free." This freedom is dangerous because it lays bare the fatal possibilities of the range of human capabilities (Nussbaum 1995), which are repressed in the atmosphere of division. This celebration of the diversity of human capabilities in the state of union resembles political philosopher Ch'oe Minhong's definition of t'ongil (unification) as a variegated whole (1984), departing from dominant South Korean reunification discourses' emphasis on order and homogeneity (see Grinker 1998). However, this representation and enactment of unrestrained human capabilities appears to clash with the neo-Confucian emphasis on female propriety in sex relations that Jager notes in the romantic discourse of dissident reunification politics (1996). Some singers, through frequent invocations of the courtesan past of their art form and the social marginality of its practitioners, gave me reason to believe that they embrace this cultural notion of human nature more unconditionally than does society at large. But most of my teachers expressed to me a belief that human nature inevitably requires domestication. This is why it is important to remember that this section of the concert represents not an ideal social (dis)order but a fecund ground of natural possibilities. In the manner of a social drama, this display of human beings' chaotic and lascivious nature does as much to ratify neo-Confucian prescriptions as to undermine them, revealing qualities of human nature that must be disciplined. In the end, the concert disciplines the passionate and amorous nature (as well as the range of human capabilities, the copresence of life and death, and so on) by placing them within the narrative of union, as elemental conditions for the possibility of unification, part of the essential glue that will hold a reunited society together. The presentation of these elements as conditions for possibility resonates with the singers' claim that what they do is not political, although it has something to do with politics or "it could be taken that way, but that would be wrong." They told me that the songs are about the relationships between

Pilzer: Sodosori on the Demilitarized Zone

87

people, and about love-both in the abstract, and for real places and real people, living and dead, across the border or close by. Of course the concept of love is political from the perspective of history-the idea of love in South Korea has been deeply impacted by the twentieth-century transplantation of Euro-American concepts of romantic love to Korea. But when these women say that what they do is not political, they make use of music, and especially the love song, in its relatively autonomy, as a vessel to bear their ethical vision, their understanding of the immanent "groundfrom which we begin" that precedes and preconditions the political. The singers retrieve their songs from their political enframement by returningto this ground, and they act out the reinstallation of its concepts into the foundations of social and international relations. In doing so, they suggest the possibility of ethical alternative futures. Beginning Again

As the singers revisit and revise these foundations they demonstrate how the final purpose of union is necessarily both an end and a beginning: the moment of reunion is, among other things, a freedom for people to find new directions, to pursue other ends, to start over (the sense of the one-timeness of life does not contradict but rather adds urgency to this new beginning, which does not enact a reincarnation but inaugurates a new era of possibility). The provocative songs are followed by a coda of san t'ary6ng, mountain ballads thick with naturalimagery, with children traipsing through natural scenes. Tempo decreases slightly, suggesting the end; but the presence of children and the abundance of naturalimagery suggest a new beginning, and the concert fades out into a rejuvenating day. This tranquilrenewal thus completes the circle of teleological judgment, beginning again with people's experimental efforts to discover new purposes and new possibilities. Conclusion Bruce Kapferer has described the practice of world-ordering in Sinhalese sorcery as a regenerative practice that "reinstillswithin the patient the potency of the first world-creating act, whereby the patient is reempowered with consciousness and once more becomes capable of socially constitutive action"(1997:104). In the confrontation between traditionalforms, politicaleconomic realities, and human aspirations that lies at the core of the musical practice of teleological judgment on the DMZ, singers make a series of measured musical breakthroughs-dynamic, ornamental, modal, thematic, rhythmic and so on. Through the breaches that teleological judgment forces open, the singers contact, revive and revise ideal conditions for possibility-

88

Ethnomusicology,

Winter 2003

natures, myths, Kapferer's "original world-creating act" -a priori conditions of being and becoming. In this way the atmosphere of possibility that accompanies myth is transmitted to the present, reinvigorating hope by suggesting the possibility of social-structural change. Although in the aftermath of the concert the political and emotional realities of division seep back in, they are accompanied by a sense of possibility, the lingering atmosphere of an insurgent dream. The South Korean economic crisis that followed the 1997 East Asian financial collapse crisis forced the singers to scale back and then halt the DMZ concerts. But they had crafted sustenance in waiting into an art form of revelation. So when, in the spring of 2000, a progressive South Korean president and a conciliatory North Korean leader began talks aimed at reopening the railroad that spans the "Bridge of Freedom," and when the drudging pace of North-South family reunions began to quicken in the new millennium, no one was happier than the S6dosori singers; but few people were less surprised, or less cautious in their rejoicing.

Acknowledgments
This essay documents one of the last DMZ performances of the late, great Sodosori singer and nationally-designated "Human Cultural Treasure" O Pongny6 (1913-2001), and it is dedicated to her. I owe special thanks to my teacher Kim Kwangsuk, who spent innumerable hours teaching me the history and practice of S6dosori, and to singers Yu Chisuk and Yi Chiny6 and Professor Yi Pohyong for their kindness in sharing their intimate knowledge of S6dosori with me. I would like to thank Philip Bohlman, Martin Stokes, Byong Won Lee, Jeffers Engelhardt, Viren Murthy, Peter Manuel, Keith Howard, Ho-jun Chang, Nathan Hesselink, Berthold Hoeckner, David Kim, Carol Mueller, Song Bang Song, Saul Thomas, and one anonymous reviewer at Ethnomusicology for their comments on previous drafts of this paper. I thank Joonki Min for his assistance in the field, and Mi-Hwa Min and Ho-jun Chang for help with translations. I gratefully acknowledge the Korea Foundation and the University of Hawai'i Center for Korean Studies for the scholarship that supported my fieldwork in South Korea from July to December of 1997. Notes
1. This article translates the term Zweck alternately as "end"and "purpose,"but it should be noted that "purpose,"where used, connotes the finality implied by the expression "end." For an explanation, see the section "TheFinal Borderpost." 2. Citations from the Critique ofJudgment are given by section number and paragraph. 3. My invocation of Kant is less controversial than it seems, in part because it does not

Pilzer: S6dosori on the Demilitarized

Zone

89

concern Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment, which has been incisively critiqued in the contemporary humanities and social sciences of the arts (see Smith 1983; Higgins 1991). Nor does the article depend on Kantianuniversalism:while, as a matter of basic conceptual processes of aspiring, teleological judgment is found in many places, it is radically contingent, dependent upon the presence and types of alienation in a society, the resources availablefor its overcoming, and the coercive and hegemonic forces arrayedagainst it. 4. "Relativeautonomy" here means that music is social but relatively discrete from other modes of social behavior. See, e.g., Peter Wicke (1992), who notes that the political expediency of East German rock depended on its relative autonomy; and Gila Flam, who describes music as "anautonomous entity...an expression of freedom" for the doomed Jews of the Lodz ghetto (1992:2). 5. See Kant [1790] 1987 on purposiveness (Zweckmdssigkeit). Put simply, in contrast to "purposefulness," it means that things have potential energies that are not of themselves tied to particular ends. For instance, a person or a singer can cry to express sadness or joy, or to provoke sympathy. 6. This term is the title of Philip Bohlman's 1996 article on music in European religious pilgrimages. 7. MarinaRoseman notes that in Temiar ritual, a medium's song is often described as a "path"which guides a patient from illness to health (1991; see also Ladermanand Roseman 1996). Following Mircea Eliade's reading of different shamanic journeys (1964), Lawrence Sullivan describes the use of music in South American shaman religions to access a primordial time of possibility, a time of freedom from the fixedness of forms (1984). MarkSumner Harvey writes of ritualized jazz "ceremonies of freedom," in which musicians invoke symbols and archetypal actions to mentally prepare participants to act towards political freedom in concrete ways (1999). CharlesKeil describes how polka and jazz musicians groove, intuiting textural and processual discrepancies in music, towards a primaryrealityof which we all once partook(1995). 8. Regula Qureshi (1994:510-11) describes how in North Indian qawwali, music-making is a final materialoutpost on a pilgrimage that facilitatesto the final purpose of union with Goda place of suspended time where the participant hovers between alienation and reunion with the divine. 9. Korean minjung (people's) theology, which was born in the 1960s and blossomed in the pro-democracy/pro-laborminjung movement of the 1970s and '80s, proclaims a "gospel of suffering"that suggests the unity of political and spiritual action and salvation. At the opposite extreme, more conservative and messianic sects of Korean Christianityembrace a doctrine of salvation by grace, assuming human inability to alter God's will and a strict separation of politics and spirituality (Clark 1995:94). Contemporary Korean Christianityas a whole is well described as a war between immanent and transcendent notions of salvation. 10. A process of refinement can be heard in other regional styles of singing, especially those of the southwest and the central region, which have likewise been codified and canonized as national culture in the post-KoreanWarperiod. While this transformationhas perhaps not been as intense as in the case of Sodosori, it has nonetheless involved the intentional polarization of styles and the adoption of elite ornaments and tempi, which has generally meant a general slowdown. 11. For an account of the impact of the CulturalTreasures System on traditional music, see Howard 1996. 12. Some of the songs have been incorporated into North Korean revolutionary musical culture, where they were well-tempered, stripped of most microtonal shading, and accompanied by orchestras combining Western instruments and modified traditional instruments. But singers who attempted to preserve earlier sounds and performance practices, while rarely actively discouraged, have not been consistently supported. 13. The dormant train actually sits on its tracks just south of the "Bridgeof Freedom,"and the connection between telos and the train is highlighted by a plaque: "Thistrain that used to cross the Imjin Bridge, shuttling between Pusan and Shineuijoo, Mokpo and Nanjin, traversing

90

Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

the entire peninsula, now stands here besides the Imjin Kang (River), its wheels stationary. Its whistle is a cry from the heart of the people, exclaiming aloud their aspiration of once again seeing the nation united...To help in consoling anguish, this monument has been established at the site where the Korean people's dreams hover most pervasively." 14. The reference to the beloved's flowered face (hwayong) marks the lover as female; but O Pongnyo and others claimed that because the song is sung predominantly by women, and has been for so long, that the beloved can be imagined as either male or female. 15. Yaksa monghon uro haengyuj6k imy6n, Munj6n s6ngnoga pansongsa roguna. Saenggak sasaro...nimuii hwayongi kfriwo, Na 6i halkkayo. are [Translations mine, from field tapes made in 1997 and from Han Kisop'scollection of S6dosori lyrics (1996)]. 16. Similarly,Peter Manuel notes "the common use of the image of the unattainable beloved in moder Urdu poetry, especially that of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, to stand for the homeland, social justice," and more (p.c.). 17. See note 14. 18. Sixty li, literally about 14.4 miles. The phrase "sixty li" most likely refers to a distance less than could be walked in a day. 19. Im sanun kot kwa na sanan koshi nambukkan yukshim li morji anhkedo ittk6nmanin 6i kadaji kuriwo sana... Ch'unsunun mansat'aek hani muri kip'oso mot oshina... Haunun tagibong hani bong'i nop'aso mot ondan malga? 20. Nim ui sonun naega chapko, na ui sonun nimi chaba, Nimi ulmy6nun naega ulgo, nadona ulmyon nimdo unda. Nima, Nima, uljimara, nomuna urodo ch6ng tt6r6jinda. 21. The shaman enacts the spirit's passage by rending a long white cloth, which represents the path between one world and the next, into two pieces. She rushes repeatedly into a tear in the cloth until she tears it clean through while singing the Buddha's name. 22. A transcendent Buddha idealized from the historical Buddha, Sakyamuni. 23. S6san nakcho-e tt6r6jinun haenun naeil ach'im imy6n tashi totg6nmanun, Uri insaengun hanb6n kattdago hamy6nun tashi on churul morununa. 24. Keith Howard notes that there are two related senses in which mountains are involved with death. "First,graves are on mountains (or, at least, on hillsides, set within a space defined as auspicious by geomancy), hence funeral songs talk about processing to the gravesite. Second, souls must pass across the mountains to the other world" (p.c.). In both cases the deceased encounters nature, but does not "transcend"it in the normal Western sense. 25. The Buddha SakyamuniTathagata,the Incarnation of Truth. 26. Kanda, kanda, nanun kanda, n6ril tugoso, nanun kanda. Amit'abul... Sokkayoraega w6nbul inde, k'alsanjiogul sanapsosa. 27. Taldo pakkso, pyoldo palga. w6lmyong sach'ange ch6dari palga. Ch'6ny6 ch'onggaki tanduri manna. Saldo chuguldo, chuguldo saldo, amudo moruge, mangnora nanuna. Ehe 6ya 6ya d6ya, nae sarang a... 28. Three pal, a unit of length equal to the span of both arms. 29.Apchip ch'enega shijibul kanunde, tuitjibui ch'onggaki mongmaer6 kanda. Sarami chungnung6n akkapchi anuna, saekki sebari tto nanbong nanuna. Ehe 6ya 6ya d6ya, nae sarang a... 30. Jager (1996:4) notes a comparable tendency in contemporary dissident reunification politics, in which division is a disease caused by American imperialism. I have yet to confirm if

Pilzer: Sodosori on the Demilitarized

Zone

91

the comic deaths of the final section hint in any way at an anti-colonial exorcism of U.S. and foreign power. 31. A selfhood that Marx called the "subjectivity of objective essential powers" ([1844] 1978:115). 32. As such, it recalls Plato's little-known argument in the Phaedrus that love is an ethical mania (1998; see Nussbaum 1986).

References
Adorno, Theodor W. [1960] 1992. Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bohlman, Philip V. 1996. "TheFinal Borderpost."Journal of Musicology 14(4):427-52. Buswell, Jr., Robert E. 1989. The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamadhi-Sutra, a BuddhistApocryphon. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press. --. 1991. Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul's Korean Way of Zen. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. Ch'oe Minhong. 1984. Han ch'olhak (Philosophy of Han). Seoul: Songmunsa. in Clark,Donald N. 1995. "Growthand Limitationsof MinjungChristianity South Korea."In South Korea's Minjung Movement, edited by Kenneth M. Wells, 87-103. Honolulu, HI:University of Hawai'i Press. Eliade, Mircea. 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy. New York:Bollingen Foundation. Flam, Gila. 1992. Singing for Survival: Songs of the ?odz Ghetto, 1940-45. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Gluckman, Max. 1954. Rituals of Rebellion in South-east Africa. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Grinker,Roy Richard. 1998. Korea and its Futures. Unification and the Unfinished War.New York: St. Martin'sPress. Guyer, Paul. 1993. Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Han Kisop. 1996. Chont'ong Sodosori Chonjip (Collection of TraditionalSongs of the Western Provinces). Seoul: by the author. Time and Our Time: A View from the Outside In." In This Is Harvey, MarkSumner. 1999. "Jazz How We Flow: Rhythm in Black Cultures, edited by Angela M. S. Nelson, 15-31. Columbia, SC:University of South CarolinaPress. Higgins, Kathleen. 1991. The Music of Our Lives. Philadelphia, PA:Temple University Press. Howard, Keith. 1989. "Namdo tul norae: Ritual and the Korean Intangible CulturalAsset System."Journal of Ritual Studies 3(2):203-16. - . 1996. "Preservationand Presentation of Korean Intangible CulturalAssets." In Methodologies for the Preservation of Intangible Heritage, edited by anon., 85-114. Seoul: Korean National Commission for UNESCOand Office of CulturalProperties. Jager,SheilaMiyoshi. 1996. "Women,Resistance, and the Divided Nation:The RomanticRhetoric of Korean Reunification." TheJournal of Asian Studies 55(1):3-21. Kant, Immanuel. [1790] 1987. Critique of Judgment. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. Kapferer, Bruce. 1986. "Performanceand the Structuringof Meaning and Experience." In The Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor W. Turnerand EdwardM. Bruner, 188-203. Urbana:University of Illinois Press. . 1997. The Feast of the Sorcerer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Keil, Charles. 1995. "TheTheory of ParticipatoryDiscrepancies: A ProgressReport."Ethnomusicology 39(1):1-19.

92

Ethnomusicology,

Winter 2003

Kim Tae-kon. 1998. Korean Shamanism-Muism. Seoul:Jinmoondang Publishing Company. Laderman,Carol, and MarinaRoseman. 1996. The Performance of Healing. New York: Routledge. Lee, Byong Won. 1979. "Evolutionof the Role and Status of Korean Professional Female Entertainers." World of Music 21(2):75-81. Lomax, Alan. [1962] 1971. "Song Structure and Social Structure."In Readings in Ethnomusicology, edited by David P. McAllester, 227-52. New York:Johnson Reprint Corporation. Marx, Karl. [1844] 1978. "Contributionto the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction." In TheMarx-EngelsReader, edited by RobertC. Tucker, 53-65. New York:W.W. Norton and Company. Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press. ,, ed. 1995. Women, Culture, and Development. A Study of Human Capabilities. Oxford: Clarendon Press. WarChange in Sodosori, a Northwest KoreanVocal Genre Pilzer,Joshua D. 1999. "Post-Korean in Contemporary South Korea."M.A.Thesis, University of Hawai'i. Plato. 1998. Phaedrus. Ithaca: Corell University Press. Qureshi, Regula. 1994. "ExploringTime Cross-Culturally: Ideology and Performance of Time in the Sufi Qawwali. "Journal of Musicology 12(4):491-528. Roseman, Marina.1991. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. Sahlins, Marshall.1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, BarbaraHerrnstein. 1983. "Contingencies of Value."Critical Inquiry 10(1): 1-35. Sullivan, Lawrence E. 1984. "SacredMusic and Sacred Time." World of Music 26(3):33-51. Tolbert, Elizabeth. 1990. "Women Cry with Words: Symbolization of Affect in the KarelianLament." Yearbook for Traditional Music 22:80-105. Turner, Victor W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Wicke, Peter. 1992. "'TheTimes they are A-changin':Rock Music and Political Change in East Germany." In Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, edited by Reebee Garofalo, 81-92. Boston: South End Press. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yi Ch'angbae. 1976. Hanguk kach'ang daegye (General Introduction to Korean Traditional Song). Seoul: Hongin Munwhasa. Yi Inbok. 1979. Hanguk munhak-e nat'anan chugum uisik ui saj6ky6n'gu (Historical Study of the Consciousness of Death in Korean Literature).Seoul: Yorhwadang. Yi Phoy6ng. 1992. S6do minyo wa Kyonggi minyo ii sonyul kujo y6n'gu (A Study of the Melodic Structure of Western Provincial Folk Songs and Ky6nggi Province Folk Songs). Seoul: MunwhajaeYon'guso.