Psychedelic Codes and Close Listening to South Korean Fiction, 1971 – 1989

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract This article draws upon the vernacularized psychedelic rock of Shin Joong Hyun (Sin Chung-hyŏn, b. 1938) and youth culture fiction of Ch’oe In-ho (1945–2013) in order to formulate a method for close listening to literary articulations of a shared artistic pursuit of individual liberation through the undermining of established modes of feeling and consciousness. The article overviews psychedelic aesthetics and coding and explicates their recodification by novelist Yi In-sŏng (b. 1953). It then contextualizes the coeval advent of psychedelic counterculture and youth culture in South Korea vis-à-vis the emergence of a nascent middle class. Next the article illustrates how Ch’oe transposed cosmopolitan musical sensibilities onto stories of alienated urban youth and daydreams of class mobility. It then moves from textual reference to formal homology, interpreting the global countercultural call for self-liberation in two novellas by Ch’oe through psychedelic musical codes of noise and upward movement, respectively. Finally, the conclusion draws upon the work of Kim Ch’ae-wŏn (b. 1946) to reflect upon the legacy of vernacularized psychedelic codes in Korean literature. The article argues that close listening to heterodox and hallucinatory resonances across popular music and understudied works of fiction by well-known authors complicates conventional understandings and cultural histories of subversive art.