INTERVIEW Joseon court dancer crossed to Paris; Pansori singer brings her home
Shin Jin-won sings the role of Li-Tsin, a Joseon court dancer who sailed to Paris in the 1890s, during the premiere of "Li-Tsin: A Woman Without a Name" in Jeonju, Sept. 12. Courtesy of National Intangible Heritage Center
Shin Jin-won revives Lee Jin, Joseon court dancer known solely through French diplomat's memoir
Almost nothing survives of Lee Jin, the woman a French memoir records as "Li-Tsin." A court dancer in the final years of the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty, she is said to have sailed to Paris in the 1890s with her lover, a French diplomat, then returned to a country that no longer had a place for her.
The record rests almost entirely on a single source: "En Coree" a memoir published in 1904 by Hippolyte Frandin, France's second minister to Korea. Scholars have argued for years over how much truth there is in his account.
That patchy record is where pansori singer Shin Jin-won started, spinning a tale of a woman barely mentioned in archives.
"I suppose it comes down to imagination," Shin during a written interview with The Korea Times. "It started with imagination, and director Lee Wang-soo helped enormously in carrying it through. He expanded that world far beyond what I had imagined myself."
Shin, a transmission-certified holder of pansori — a traditional style of Korean narrative performance by a singer accompanied by a drum — performed "Li-Tsin: A Woman Without a Name" on Sept. 12 at the Small Theater of the National Intangible Heritage Center in Jeonju. Pansori is on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The piece paired her with Lee Hee-jae, a certified transmitter of "gagok," the classical lyric song form. Across seven scenes, the two voices brought Lee Jin's life to the stage. Lee Hee-jae's masculine voice used gagok to carry ideas of memory, interiority and the passage of time while Shin's emotionally-charged style portrayed the events of her life and the emotions they provoked.
Neither singer worked from an existing repertoire. Both composed new music for the piece, built on traditional grammar.
Pansori singer Shin Jin-won, right, and gagok singer Lee Hee-jae perform "Li-Tsin: A Woman Without a Name," at the National Intangible Heritage Center in Jeonju, Sept. 12. Courtesy of National Intangible Heritage Center
For Shin, the choice of subject was not incidental. She describes a continuing interest in women who have slipped out of recorded history.
"Lee Jin was a Joseon period court entertainer, and as someone practicing this art generations later, I think bringing forgotten figures back into view and looking at them again is one of the tasks given to me," she said. Several years ago she created an audio drama about the late master singer Ahn Hyang-yeon.
"I want to convey their lives fully," she said.
She frames the experimentation as an extension of her training rather than a break from it. "I've found it genuinely enjoyable to take the tradition I've studied since childhood as a foundation and expand outward into different material," she said. "Tradition always has to be the base — I keep that in mind — but within that I'm trying new things."
The timing carries its own weight. This year marks 140 years since Korea and France established diplomatic relations under the 1886 Treaty of Friendship and Commerce, an anniversary that has filled calendars in both countries with more than 100 cultural events.
The Jeonju performance was not among the official commemorations. Shin had hoped it would be staged elsewhere.
"In this meaningful 140th year, I really wanted to bring the performance to the Korean Cultural Center in France," she said. "Or anywhere in France, if not there. It's material I'd been thinking about for several years, and since I only got to carry it out now, the performance ended up being staged in Korea in this 140th year. I would love to perform it in France one day."
The wish echoes the life of its subject. Lee Jin's crossing left almost no trace on either side of the world — a woman remembered in one Frenchman's book and, more than a century later, in a voice trained in Jeonju.