Hawaii Tribune-Herald Island Beat Thursday, February 16, 2017 11 SPIRIT From page 2 “Ours is a contemporary piece with dance, puppetry and live music,” explains Kim. “We are also using elements from Korean Shamanistic rituals. It’s a heavy story, but this is not a literal presentation of it. It’s a symbolic representation of this tragic accident that is still a big issue.” Kim says she is looking forward to this event because there are a lot of elements coming together in one evening of performance. “I think as a Korean American artist, we don’t have a lot of opportunity to experience traditional Korean performing arts of things inspired by Korean-American themes.” This event has been years in the making. “Two years ago we applied for a grant to offer Korean language at the university,” says Seri Luangphinith, Ph.D., grant principal investigator, professor of English and lead humanities scholar at UH-Hilo. “Because I was learning the language and started understanding the history of Korean immigrants on the Big Island, I thought we needed to let the community know these people carry some really interesting stories. “For us, this performance is about how Korean culture are a part of this community — to showcase what’s happening here.” Language, dance and art are an important part of the story of Korean immigrants, she says, because when they fled their own war-torn country, sometimes those were the only things they could take with them. “Their languages, their dances, the songs … sometimes were the only things that kept people going,” Luangphinith says. “A lot of people brought those traumas with them when they immigrated. To me, it was important to give voice to those stories.” So, in addition to the evening of performances, Luangphinith organized an exhibit at EHCC, partially funded by the Hawaii Council for the Humanities, that also showcases Korean and Korean American culture, art and history through various mediums. On display through the end of February, a portion of the exhibition includes several oral histories about Korean immigrants and Korean Americans. Narratives, like the one about Keum S. Lauder, talk about the horrors she witnessed during the Japanese occupation of Korea and how the country fell into chaos. Another account details the story of Myung Soon Lee, a woman whose father was a silk merchant. During the evacuation of the city of Pyongyang in North Korea, she lost not only her grandmother and sister, but also her parents, older brother and older sister, who had fled the city earlier and were never heard from again. “These are stories that haven’t been told,” Luangphinith says. “I’ve interviewed a dozen Korean immigrants here on the Big Island and most of them came from north of the 38th parallel. When you understand what history has done, you understand that those scars stay with people a very, very long time.” The oral histories are interspersed with the work of two artists as well. The first is Byong Yong Lee, former president of the Korean Association on the Big Island and a ginger farmer. Lee’s modern art incorporated Korean paper traditionally used for calligraphy. “A lot of his work was an exploration of what it means to mix modernistic American tendencies and mixed media using the Korean paper as a base to do more contemporary art,” Luangphinith explains. The second artist is Haekyung Seo, a lecturer at the Lotte World Culture Center in Seoul and the director of the Korean Fine Arts Association. She specializes in traditional calligraphy and landscape painting, and often puts the two together in her art. It is believed that Seo is also the first artist to do paintings specific to the history of Koreans on the Big Island. Luangphinith says the exhibit and “Arirang” are an opportunity to learn how Koreans and Korean-Americans played an important role in the history of the community. “You start digging and you see that they’ve been this quiet presence that no one has really recognized here,” she says. “I hope that the performance, exhibition and book can accomplish this — to show that they aren’t just the people you see running the restaurant. They have been a vital and active part of this community for a long time.” EHCC gallery hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. All of the oral histories and artwork will also be part of a book that will be published later this year, a project also made possible by the Korea Foundation grant. Luangphinith says she came across a lot of information on Korean immigrants on Oahu, but there wasn’t yet a comprehensive book focusing on Koreans on the Big Island. “I’m hoping it will bring everything together,” she says. Support for this event also comes from the UH-Hilo Chancellor’s Diversity Committee and the Office of Student Equity, Excellence & Diversity at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Following the “Arirang” program will be a question and answer session on the importance of art and its link to Korean immigration. For more information, call Luangphinith at 932-7216. Courtesy photo Halla Huhm Dance Studio performs the mudang ch’um (fortune teller’s dance) in Honolulu.
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