Josephine Baker and Choe Sung-Hui

In November 1935, the newly established Korean magazine Cho-Gwang began to publish a serialized parody novel, Modun Sim-Chong Jun (Modern Sim-Chong’s Story). At the beginning of this classic-based novel, a famous ‘western’ jazz singer, Josephine Baker, appears half-naked as a holy spirit, wearing a pilot’s helmet and holding feminine medicine for women in her hand. Interestingly, we can see her representation in the same magazine two months from the end of that novel. One Korean modernist novelist, Yi Hyo-Sok, wrote an essay, C Hang-gu oe Il-gu (Scenery of C Harbor)’ in August 1936 in which he described a night at the theater near ‘C’ harbor where Josephine Baker, dropping in the city by chance during her tour around Manchukuo, sang a nostalgic song. To date, no document has been found either in Korea or in Japan about Josephine Baker visiting East Asian countries at that time. This paper analyzes the translation between cultures by referring to a Korean dancer, Choe Sung-Hui, as a route to approach the background of cultural representations about Josephine Baker and investigates the signifying practices over colonial modernity in East Asia.