Show Show Show: Kim Choo-ja, “Sunday Seoul,” and Emergency Measures

By Lee Seong-uk

300 pp. 18,000 won.

Thinking Tree Publishing.

“Show Show Show” records the musings of the all-around cultural critic and eminent 70s kid, Lee Seong-uk, who passed away in 2002 at just forty-two years of age. The book is a collection of memories about things that have long been relegated to the cultural past, but it poignantly reflects our lives during the 1970s, when “tears and sighs were chewed and swallowed in silence.” Lee’s reminiscences are so remarkably detailed that you find yourself wondering when he had time to write them all down. And they soothe and gladden the heart like tunes from an old record.

Lee categorizes various icons of 70s pop culture into film, pop song, sexuality, sports, and dance, then lays them out in a rich tapestry of memories and experiences. Chapter 1, which talks about films, is entitled “Going to the Movies at Bukseong Theater, by Seomyeon Intersection.” It introduces some of the most popular movies released during the 70s along with their original posters, blazoned with such stars as Park No-sik, Jang Dong-hui, Sean Connery, Charles Bronson, and Bruce Lee. You can’t help bursting into laughter over the passages that recall the graffiti on the toilet walls at the fabled movie theater.

Chapter 2, “How Kim Choo-ja Became the Cradle of My Heart,” looks back on the pop songs that animated the 70s. “Her bell-bottoms, so snug around her ample behind and thighs, so unexpectedly loose around the ankles—her nasal voice, with her over-exaggerated enunciation of S’s and J’s—! Kim Choo-ja was the embodiment of sexiness even to my young mind,” Lee writes.

His musings move from Kim Choo-ja to Shin Joong-hyun, the Onions, and the University Song Festival. When they turn to the “Love the Korean Language” movement (which caused many a Korean pop group, including the “Key Boys,” to be identified by awkward literal translations of their original English names), censorship of lyrics, the practice of banning “provocative” or “problematic” songs, and the marijuana crack-down, his voice takes on a bittersweet tone.

Chapter 3 is a 70s sports retrospective. The rubber ball game “Jjamppong”; expatriate sportscaster Lee Gwang-jae’s high-pitched voice as he excitedly announced, “Greetings to my fellow Koreans in the homeland! This is Seoul Stadium!”; the splendor of the 1970 Mexico World Cup; the 70s boxing fever, represented by Hong Soo-hwan, Yu Je-du, and Ali; the high school baseball league, made memorable by the legendary Kyeongbuk High School baseball team, home to manager Seo Yeong-mu and pitcher Hwang Gyu-bong—the memories are almost endless.

The highlight of this collection is Chapter 4, entitled, “I Fall Prey to the Erotic Exuberance of ‘Sunday Seoul’.” Overlapping with aspects of today’s rampantly sexualized pop culture, anecdotes about the “Secrets of Sex” section, sealed shut and ensconced in the middle of “Woman” magazine; the newspaper “Sunday Seoul,” rich with full-color photos of women’s breasts and sticky-hot articles; and the radio show hosted by OBGYN specialist Han Guk-nam (in Korean, the name means “Korean man”), problem-solver extraordinaire for all of Korea’s sexual plights, amuse and entertain the happily scandalized reader.

The final chapter, “Memories of Dancing at Daeyeon-gak, Nampo-dong,” recounts the experiences of letting oneself go at various friends’ houses to the accompaniment of a portable turntable, imitating John Travolta’s disco moves as a high schooler at Daeyeon-gak in Nampo-dong, getting into discotheques by claiming to “have a friend inside” and shuttling back and forth between dance floor and restroom in order to relieve the tensions built up during slow dances. These are valuable glimpses into a truly historic(!) transition when play culture and pop culture began to merge.

The thought that popped into my head as I closed the book was something quite unrelated: how men keep talking “on and on” whenever the topic of conversation turns to their military service. It was only recently that I recognized this phenomenon to be a kind of mantra for venting one’s most dramatic or traumatic memories, like one does in hypnotic therapy.

Nowadays, the things we were not allowed to say back then are continually relived in films, songs, and documentaries. This wonderful book, which revives those oppressed and oppressive days through the pen of an exceptional critic, may be part of a sort of group therapy as well, through which we might finally calm the madness of a period of extraordinary speed and growth, to find inner peace.

I wonder when we will be able to “shake hands with what has vanished,” like the singer who sang, “Now, I can leave the things I miss just the way I miss them”…

Mun-Myung Huh angelhuh@donga.com