A study of Shin Young-don’s “Talchumnori in Our Country” (1957), the first book on Mask Drama published in North Korea

This paper examines Shin Young-don’s “Talchumnori in Our Country” (1957), the first book on Mask Drama published in North Korea. Until now, studies on North Korea have centered on Kim Il-chul’s “A study on Korea Folk Talnori” (1958), with no mention of Shin Young-don. Like Kim Il-chul, Shin Young-don joined the Academy of Sciences in 1955. Shin Young-don published a book for the masses a year before Kim Il-chul. In North Korea, full-scale research on Talnori(Mask Drama) had already been conducted in 1957. The same year Shin Young-don’s book was published, Goh Jeong-ok published two papers on Mask Drama. The following year, Kim Il-chul also published a monograph. As the three of them started their research on Mask Drama while working at the Academy of Sciences, it is necessary to study them comparatively. This paper critically examines Shin Young-don’s book in comparison to contemporary studies and examines the debates and development of Mask Drama in North Korea before and after 1960. Both Goh Jeong-ok and Shin Young-don criticized the Hwanghae-do lion dance for being distorted by Collaborative scholars during the colonial period. Goh Jeong-ok believed that the punishment for the offending monks should be carried out by the people’s artistic resistance, not by the lions. Shin Young-don and Kim Il-chul paid attention to the content of Mask Drama, and were less interested in its Rewriting. However, Goh Jeong-ok was interested in the need for collective people’s creation.