Speaker: Jina Kim, Associate Professor of Korean Literature & Culture, University of Oregon

Description: This presentation examines how a 1950s South Korean radio docudrama contributed to post-war reconstruction of national identity, shaped cultural narratives, and participated in collective healing. In South Korea, radio programs played a key role in addressing the emotional and social wounds caused by loss, displacement, and family separation in the postwar period. The docudrama media format came to capture this shared historical experience as well as everyday concerns of love, work, marriage, etc. One of the most popular radio programs during this time was Insaeng yŏngmach’a (The stagecoach of life), which was broadcasted from 1954 – 1958 on Seoul’s HLKA Station. This program was created based on listeners’ letters that were sent to the station with which professional writers then reconstructed the story into a radio drama while simultaneously providing advice to the letter writer for the dilemma that they were facing. In this presentation, I will explore how The Stagecoach of Life aestheticized real-life stories into dramatic form for the radio thereby serving as a model for the golden age of radio melodramas and docudramas in the 1950s and throughout the 1960s. By centering women’s letters and the responses crafted by elite women writers, this project traces how intimate, everyday dilemmas became mediated narratives of gendered experience. These exchanges provide insight into how modern womanhood was imagined, disciplined, and occasionally re imagined during South Korea’s post war transition. The docudrama format exposes the push and pull between evolving notions of female agency and the persistent cultural scripts of filial duty and moral propriety.

About East Asia Program

As Cornell’s hub for research, teaching, and engagement with East Asia, the East Asia Program (EAP) serves as a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemporary East Asia. The program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty and numerous affiliated faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from eight of Cornell’s 12 schools and colleges.

Join the Migrations Program for a tour of a special exhibition at the Johnson Museum of Art. We will explore "Naples: Course of Empire" featuring work by contemporary artist Alexis Rockman and discuss how humanity and climate change affect migration and movement over the centuries. The group will meet in the Appel lobby at 3 p.m.

Registration is required as we have a limited number of spots available. Please register in advance on CampusGroups.

Are you curious about how mental health, culture, and global health connect to real-world policy challenges? Do you want to learn through hands-on field research and community engagement in one of the most beautiful and biodiverse regions of South India? The Cornell-Keystone NFLP Summer Program in India offers an interdisciplinary experience in global health and policy, where students explore how culture, environment, and community shape wellbeing in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve.

Are you curious about how mental health, culture, and global health connect to real-world policy challenges? Do you want to learn through hands-on field research and community engagement in one of the most beautiful and biodiverse regions of South India? The Cornell-Keystone NFLP Summer Program in India offers an interdisciplinary experience in global health and policy, where students explore how culture, environment, and community shape wellbeing in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve.