Park Ji-won is a writer for The Korea Times who has been covering a wide range of topics from Korea’s culture to its politics. An avid journalism enthusiast to the core, Ji-won brings a thoughtful and unique perspective to every topic she covers. On weekends, you'll often find her contemplating life’s purpose on a yoga mat — with a cup of quality tea in hand. A native Korean speaker by birth and fluent in English through her work, she went to college in Japan and is learning Chinese and French — hoping to add Polish, Russian and Thai to the mix.
Lee Ae-ju, master of religious folk dance Seungmu, dies at 73
Lee Ae-ju, a master of religious folk dance Seungmu and chairperson of the Gyeonggi Arts Center, performs at Seoul Plaza on June 9, 2007, during an event to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Lee Han-yeol, a student activist who died after being hit by a tear gas canister fired by riot police in July 1987. Lee Ae-ju, a master of religious folk dance Seungmu and who is famous for performing at pro-democracy protests, died of cancer, Monday. She was 73. Yonhap
By Park Ji-won
By Park Ji-won
Lee Ae-ju, a cultural icon of the pro-democracy movement in the 1970s and 1980s and master of religious folk dance Seungmu, died of cancer, Monday. She was 73.
Lee, chairperson of Gyeonggi Arts Center, was diagnosed with the disease last October and was hospitalized at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital.
Born in Oct. 17, 1947, she dedicated her life to preserving and developing Korean traditional dance. She started to learn Seungmu (a combination of the Korean words for “monk” and “dance”) which was performed by monks in the past) under Kim Bo-nam when she was a second grader. Since 1970, she was taught by Han Young-sook, the holder of the dance form as an intangible cultural property. Lee became the official holder of Seungmu in 1996, according to the Cultural Heritage Administration.
She had been serving as a dance professor at Seoul National University since 1982 after graduating from the university and became an honorary professor after her retirement in 2013.
Lee has been called a cultural icon of pro-democracy activism due to her performances at the funerals of two key figures of the period ― Park Jong-chul and Lee Han-yeol.
Park, then a student of Seoul National University, was tortured by police resulting in death, while Lee, then 21 at Yonsei University, was killed after being hit by a tear gas canister fired by riot police.
Her bare-footed performance in white hanbok on July 9, 1987, during the funeral for the fallen student protester Lee was dubbed “Dance to Console the Dead.”
Since then, she became known as the dancer who fought against military dictatorship.
As a scholar, she also worked hard to preserve and retrieve the original form of Korean dance which suffered distortions during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation.
She also traveled to Asian countries to find traces of the origins of the Korean dance form.
This file photo shows Lee Ae-ju, a master of religious folk dance Seungmu and chairperson of the Gyeonggi Arts Center, performs for the launching ceremony of the pro-democracy movement in June 1987. Yonhap
“The principal of Korean dance is the movement of life. The dance is at the peak of the connection between body and mind. For example, the movements when farming are a dance themselves,” she said in a January 2009 interview with Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times.
“The definition of dance not only includes the movements on stage. I can dance with language, sounds and texts. I am the evidence and resources of the dance. I cannot express unless my body digests, which means that I integrate with the life of the people.”
She participated in a dance-photography project from 1999 to 2012 where she and photographer Kim Young-soo traveled to symbolic sites of the nation where she danced while Kim photographed her.
Lee's funeral service is being held at Seoul National University Hospital in Hyehwa-dong, northeastern Seoul.