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INTERVIEW
Eunyul Talchum: The Present and Future of the Diaspora of Intangible Cultural Heritage
Cha Bu-hoi · Cha Eun-sun
Introduction
Incheon is a major port city where the cultures and identities of diverse communities meet by air and sea. The stories of individuals who migrate to Incheon for various personal reasons accumulate in layers and become part of the city’s history. Incheon is thus a city of diasporas, and there you can find Eunyul Talchum.

 

Eunyul Talchum, or the Eunyul mask-dance drama, is a form of folk performance art that originated from Eunyul, Hwanghae Province in North Korea. The displaced people from Hwanghae Province, who moved to the South in the years around the Korean War, remembered and rebuilt their community in their new home in Incheon through the intangible cultural heritage that they used to enjoy. What is distinctive about Eunyul Talchum is that it has been passed down over generations by the displaced people from Hwanghae Province who moved to Incheon. Eunyul Talchum has been transmitted for three generations, starting from the late honorary master Yang So-un, who contributed to its reenactment, to the master Cha Bu-hoi and the certified practitioner Cha Eun-sun.

 

Q1. Tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Master Cha Bu-hoi

Hello. I am Cha Bu-hoi, a master of Eunyul Talchum, National Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 61, and a member of the Eunyul Talchum Preservation Association. I became a member of the Association in 1978 and was granted the title of master on July 17, 2014. Since then, I’ve been engaged in transmission activities for 43 years.

 

Certified practitioner Cha Eun-sun

Hello. I am Cha Eun-sun, a certified practitioner of Eunyul Talchum, National Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 61, and I’m also a member of the Eunyul Talchum Preservation Association. I first learned talchum as a child, when my friends and I hung out together at the training center as if it was our playground. I became a certified practitioner after passing the certification exam in 2010.

차부회 보유자(오른쪽)와 차은선 이수자(왼쪽). 한국은 무형문화재법을 근거로 국가무형문화재의 보유자 및 보유단체, 전승교육사, 이수자 등을 인정하고 전승 활동을 지원한다.

Q2. I’d like to know more about the process in which Eunyul Talchum was revived in Incheon and became an intangible cultural heritage of Incheon.

Some practitioners who fled from Hwanghae Province to Incheon, including Yang So-un, Jang Yong-su, Jang Gyo-heon, and Jeon Dae-ju, first got together and discussed about reviving Eunyul Talchum in 1962. They began the revival project in earnest in 1968 and finally staged the talchum in 1972. Eunyul Talchum was recognized as a valuable cultural heritage and designated as National Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 61 on February 23, 1978. At that time, it was customary to designate Seoul as the transmission base of North Korean folk art elements, but the Eunyul Talchum practitioners insisted that its main location was Incheon, where they were practicing the heritage along with other displaced people from Hwanghae Province. Soon after being promoted to a city under the direct control of the government in 1982, Incheon was designated as the location for the transmission of Eunyul Talchum. Since the opening of the Eunyul Talchum Training Center at Subong Park in Incheon on April 4, 1984, the Eunyul Talchum Preservation Association has carried out transmission activities around Incheon.

 

Q3. Master Cha, I would like to know what inspired you to follow in your mother’s footsteps.

I started talchum because that’s all I wanted to do. I first fell for it while I was studying for my second college entrance exam, when I saw the Palmokjung (eight Buddhist monks) characters dancing with their arms stretched up high in an Eunyul Talchum performance staged at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul, and joined a talchum club right after that. However, my mother discouraged me from practicing talchum as she had devoted her entire life to the art and knew too well about the hardships of life as a traditional artist. I continued to go to the talchum club behind my mother’s back, but I was eventually found out when she came to the club to help with a show. She asked me, “Why on earth do you want to practice talchum?” So, I asked her back why she practiced talchum for all her life, and she could not give me an answer. Instead, she just told me, “Just keep it as a hobby, not a career path.” However, I was determined to become an example of a young practitioner with a college degree who makes a living as a traditional artist, so I jumped into the world of talchum and it eventually became my career of over 40 years.

 

Eunyul Talchum
제1과장 사자춤
제2과장 상좌춤
제3과장 팔목중춤 - 먹중(黑僧)은 ‘속이 검은 중’이라는 뜻의 파계승으로 조선 후기 불교의 타락을 풍자하는 캐릭터다.
제4과장 양반춤
제5과장 노승춤
제6과장 미얄할미영감춤
 
 
자동재생
 

Q4. How about you, Ms. Cha? What made you choose to follow your father’s lead?

As my father had taken on important roles and responsibilities in the Association, the training center also became my playground as a child. So, there was no particular reason; it was just that Eunyul Talchum naturally became a part of my life. But I know how much my father values Eunyul Talchum, and I think that is why I also grew to cherish Eunyul Talchum and became its practitioner. Nevertheless, I didn’t think that traditional art was my only path in life. When I began considering my career options, I became interested in performing arts and chose performance production as my major. While studying performance production, I grew convinced that the use of traditional art, including talchum, would give me a great advantage in my work. Based on this belief, I continued my engagement with talchum and became a certified practitioner in 2010. Since then, I gained various titles such as certified practitioner, planner, director and art instructor.

 

Q5. Ms. Cha, has your mindset as an intangible cultural heritage successor ever changed through a certain experience?

While I was preparing for the certification exam, I gave serious thought to my roles and responsibilities as a successor. In the exam, there was a question about how I would transmit Eunyul Talchum. As I pondered the question, it occurred to me: talchum acquires authenticity by reflecting the lives of the people of the time, whereas its designation as cultural heritage would cement its meaning and impede its development. Therefore, I resolved to expand the scope of transmission activities to make sure that talchum can continue to be enjoyed as a culture that captures the lives of contemporary people.

 

Q6. Master Cha, tell us about your major transmission activities in Incheon.

One of the most representative activities might be the regular Eunyul Talchum class. In 1983, during my senior year in college, I first planned a regular class to ensure systematic member management and transmission training. I rented the exhibition room of the Public Information Center 1 in Tap-dong, Incheon, with the 80,000 won given to me by Mr. Jang Yong-su, and held the first class with 56 students. Its success served as a stepping stone for the regular class, which continues to this day as a leading program of the Eunyul Talchum Preservation Association. I think that the regular class helped the system of regular members and instructors to take root within our organization, laying the foundation for the Association to grow from a sort of social gathering to a formal organization.

 

Q7. I am curious about the changes or characteristics in transmission activities across different eras.

Master Cha

I’d like to talk about the changes in transmission education for children. In the early days of transmission education in the 1980s, children were excluded from the educational programs because of the common misconception that talchum was too difficult for children to learn. We began to try teaching children talchum in the 1990s, and they did an excellent job with their performances, far beyond our expectations. However, the infrastructure was so poor back then, to the extent that we had no stage costumes for children, so we had to shorten and adjust adult costumes using pins. We began to facilitate children’s education in 1997 with the establishment of “Talsarang” (meaning “love for masks”), a children’s class for Eunyul Talchum. This proved the importance of children in the transmission of intangible cultural heritage. I feel truly rewarded to see the Association making vigorous advances thanks to the youth from Talsarang, who are still actively participating in the organization.

'탈사랑' 공연 모습

Practitioner Cha

In the 2010s, talchum education shifted from education for transmission towards creative education using talchum. As education for transmission is solely aimed at passing on the tradition, it focuses on teaching the tradition in its original form based on the classified difficulty levels for each age group. On the other hand, creative education uses educational programs through which students create talchum plays with their own stories. Although basic skills of talchum, including rhythms and dance moves, should still be taught for the production of talchum plays, creative education is essentially about self-expression through talchum. Creative education helps students to understand talchum as a culture that can be enjoyed in their everyday lives rather than as a cultural heritage that is separate from real life.

꿈다락 토요문화학교 창작교육 모습

Q8. Among Eunyul Talchum transmission schools, your ties with Yangsa Elementary School in Ganghwa Island seems particularly interesting.

It has been about 20 years since I formed a connection with Yangsa Elementary School. One day, I was asked to give lectures on Eunyul Talchum from a teacher at the school, but I wasn’t offered a lecture fee. Thinking that students should not be discouraged from learning because of money issues, I nonetheless traveled the long distance to Ganghwa Island to teach there. It was only after the school was designated as a transmission school that I began to receive an instructor’s fee from the city budget. Along with the transmission education, I am also currently helping out with the activities of “Eolssu,” a talchum club comprised of graduates and students of Yangsa Elementary School. I was so happy and thankful to see young people voluntarily get together outside school and practice talchum purely out of their love for the art that I’m more than happy to keep teaching them.

  • 양사초등학교 프로그램

  • 양사초등학교 학생의 피리연주

  • '얼쑤'동아리의 연습 모습. '2021 대한민국 청소년 탈춤축제 한마당'에서 금상을 수상하였다.

 

Q9. Ms. Cha, tell us more about your activities and representative works as a planner.

I’m currently planning and directing performances as the head of the performance group “Wiro.” As for my representative work, I’d like to introduce the original play Micheon (Lowly), which demonstrates the connection between talchum and modern life through talchum characters. Micheon is a play that wittily exposes the injustices encountered by an office worker in his 30s who drifts through the new social hierarchy of the haves and have nots despite the abolition of the formal caste system, through the talchum character of Malddugi (servant). Talchum often features engaging characters that reflect the zeitgeist of the era, such as Malddugi, Yangban (nobility), Noseung (old monk), Saesaeksi (new bride), Miyal halmi (old grandmother), and Yeonggam (old man). I wanted to use talchum characters to create points of empathy among contemporary audiences towards injustices in modern society, while retaining the wittiness of the original genre of talchum.

 

Q10. I was deeply impressed with your performance ‘Piri Takes to the Talchum Stage!’ at the Certified Practitioners’ Concert held by the National Intangible Heritage Center.

I planned the performance with the aim to demonstrate the unique thrills created by talchum instrumentalists as they take center stage. I’ve watched many performances that sought to utilize the compositional elements of talchum, but I felt that it was a shame that not many performances place the spotlight on music. As I staged performances, I began to realize that music has a deeper impact than I had thought before. On the other hand, I also reaffirmed the fact that music alone cannot complete a talchum performance. I eventually reached the conclusion that the meaning of talchum is completed not by any one part of the performance, but rather when the performers and instrumentalists come together to achieve harmony. It was unfortunate that I encountered some limitations in terms of transferring the concept of a talchum performance to the modern stage, but I also feel that all performances are made more enjoyable when they leave us wanting more.

 

Q11. I’m curious about whether you find deeper meaning in your identity as an intangible cultural heritage successor or a performance planner.

I’m focusing more on my identity and mindset as a performance planner. If I had previously focused on the modern utilization of tradition as a planner, I’ve recently been focusing on discovering the historical and cultural resources of the Incheon area. It was a natural transition since Incheon is home to both Wiro, the performance group in which I work as a performance planner, as well as the Eunyul Talchum Preservation Association, in which I’m active as a successor. I’m currently concentrating on ways to infuse keywords and issues related to the Incheon area in my work as a planner.

 

Q12. I heard that you’re currently writing a paper on the topic of Eunyul Talchum at the Graduate School of Culture of Incheon National University.

I’m researching the meaning and role of Eulyul Talchum, which was originally a folk culture property of Hwanghae Province, as seen by citizens of Incheon, a city of diasporas. Since I became a certified practitioner in 2010, I’ve spent over 10 years teaching Eulyul Talchum to students at elementary, middle and high schools in Incheon. Students of Incheon are taught Eulyul Talchum because Incheon has become the transmission base of Eulyul Talchum today, but I began to wonder why that is, since Eunyul Talchum wasn’t originally a part of Incheon’s folk arts. This simple yet fundamental question took root in my heart and became the basis for my research.

 

Q13. Do you have any expectations or concerns for the transmission of intangible cultural heritage in the future?

Master Cha

I hope that relevant policies and systems are reinforced in order to ensure that our traditional culture is able to continue being transmitted, grow further, and develop the capacity to survive independently. In particular, I hope that future policies will be made to carry practical effect through various conversations with young practitioners. Also, I hope that, in the context of the upcoming inscription of talchum on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a dedicated talchum theater will be established as a venue for the public to fully experience the joy of talchum and for young practitioners to freely practice their art.

 

Practitioner Cha

In order for culture, particularly intangible cultural heritage, to retain its meaning, or simply survive to be more precise, it must be enjoyed and shared by people. Being fixated on preserving the original form of intangible cultural heritage can only allow it to grow apart from the public and stagnate. I don’t believe that the phenomenon of relying exclusively on the subsidies and support funds granted each year in the absence of public enjoyment truly constitutes the transmission and protection of intangible cultural heritage in the authentic sense. I feel that youth practitioners must be even more passionate towards identifying ways to convey intangible cultural heritage to the public.

 

Q14. Lastly, tell us your message for the next generation.

Eunyul Talchum was originally a folk tradition of Hwanghae Province, but it was later brought to South Korea by displaced people, and it is now being transmitted in varying forms across North and South Korea. In talchum, no one can claim that their dance is the true original form. Unity and consideration are crucial values in talchum. I hope that the two communities will one day have the opportunity to respect each other’s differences and seek to understand one another, following the principles of unity and consideration. To this end, I would like young practitioners to engage in their work with a sense of professional identity as talchum practitioners.

Contributed by Choi Jin-a, an assistant programme specialist of  ICHCAP

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