Psychedelic Codes and Close Listening to South Korean Fiction, 1971 – 1989
positions asia critique February 1, 2025 Ethan Waddell 1 citation
Psychedelic rock by Shin Joong Hyun and youth-culture fiction by Ch’oe In-ho shared a pursuit of individual liberation by undermining established modes of feeling and consciousness in South Korea during the 1960s-70s. The article explains psychedelic aesthetics and their recodification by novelist Yi In-sŏng, then contextualizes the rise of psychedelic counterculture alongside a nascent middle class. Ch’oe transposed cosmopolitan musical sensibilities into stories of alienated urban youth and class-mobility daydreams. Analyzing two novellas through psychedelic codes of noise and upward movement reveals formal homologies between music and literature. The conclusion uses Kim Ch’ae-wŏn’s work to reflect on vernacularized psychedelic codes. Close listening to heterodox resonances across popular music and understudied fiction complicates conventional cultural histories of subversive art.