What is the Problem in Our Society? Jaha Koo on Cuckoo
Originally from South Korea, Jaha Koo is a theater maker, music composer, and videographer whose work is known for its oscillation between multimedia and performance.
The day after the South Korean president declared martial law, Koo sat down with Philip Bither, the Walker’s curator of performance, to discuss how art, performance, and hacking rice cookers can address the inescapable past that casts shadows across our lives today.
Philip Bither
With President Yoon declaring martial law in South Korea less than 24 hours ago, I was curious about your thoughts as you saw it unfolding and your reflections today.
Jaha Koo
First of all, I was really shocked, and so was my family, because we left South Korea a long time ago—in 2011, thirteen years ago. And it was more than 10 years that we have been living in Europe. Our background is in Korean culture, but sometimes I feel I’m losing my connection to my home country because the time gap is getting bigger and bigger. It is sad, but somehow that motivates a stronger connection for me as well. This is quite a paradoxical situation.
When I visit Korea sometimes this is a lot of irony. [South Koreans] believe South Korean society is changed, developed, and in a different chapter, but my personal impression is that things are not so different compared to when I was living in Korea.
I premiered Cuckoo seven years ago, which is quite a long time ago already. But yesterday I realized that I still have to perform Cuckoo, and the work is still relevant, and I still feel a responsibility to share the story [of] the problem in our society. Those emotions were combined into a quite heavy night last night. We couldn’t sleep well.
PB
I thought immediately of some of the scenes that are in the early part of Cuckoo, around the social upheaval, protests of violence related to the economic imperialism, and the free-market philosophies that were forced upon Korea. While watching the news, did you also think about the many ways it feels like Cuckoo is as relevant as ever?
JK
Honestly, I’m not a professional historian, but I’m nerd who is really interested in research and learning about history. When I look back at Korean history, it’s quite broad. There has been no peaceful time without war. Every time there were invasions or colonization, the hierarchical structure and Korean Confucianism always oppressed normal people. That is why we have never seen a stable, ordinary life in its history. But the last 70 years after the Korean War was one of the longest periods without war. There was military dictatorship, but somehow there was no invasion or colonization.
The issues were coming from the inside instead of outside: dictators and economic problems. This situation included terrible things, like massacres, but somehow also has a quite privileged status when we look back our history. South Korean society has developed in a very short period, when it comes to materialism, capitalism, and technology. But somehow the mentality is still outdated. In the mind, we are still living in the dynastic era, or dictatorship era. This is why there is a big problem between different generations. Today, the biggest problem is a gender issue because Korean Confucianism is combined with the Korean dictatorship period and also Japanese colonialism and imperialism. Mental evolution is really important, but it’s not happening.
PB
Did seeing the very quick pushback to martial law being imposed by President Yoon make you in some ways proud of the people of South Korea?
JK
Honestly, I felt shame.
PB
That it happened at all?
JK
Yeah, because of how we established this strong democracy within a short period, in the last 40 years. We were able to proudly participate in elections for 30 years, and yesterday this sense of pride was broken down because of this shameful event.
PB
In certain political circles worldwide, certainly in the U.S., South Korea’s rapid economic growth is held up as an example of how deregulation and market-driven economic policies can lead to prosperity. Did you create Cuckoo in part as a corrective of this inaccurate global image of South Korea?
JK
Yes, I think so, because the story of Cuckoo starts in 1997. That year is very important in East Asia because there was an economic crisis that changed everything about its lifestyle, social structure, and the economic landscape. [Editor’s note: South Korea, facing a foreign exchange crisis, signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Monetary Fund [IMF] on December 3, 1997.]
I was a middle school student at the time, and every day there was a new rumor such as “someone’s father committed suicide,” “someone’s father was fired,” or “someone disappeared because of a bankruptcy and they left Korea.” Those rumors were a part of our everyday life, but because I was still young, I couldn’t feel this crisis. I didn’t understand what kind of impact it was going to have on our life and future. After 2000, my generation became university students and started to realize this economic imperialism is a really serious problem. The welfare system was broken down, and our lifestyle cannot be like it was before. This neoliberalism economic approach started to eat at Korean economy and Korean society. Since then, one of Korea’s biggest problems was its suicide rate. That wasn’t affecting only the older generation, but every generation, teenagers as well as people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Every generation has different reasons.
The education structure is also changing. Education began to only focus on how we can earn money better. This hyper-capitalism made competition unhealthy. We all feel like we are enemies to each other in the sense that teenagers are forced to study to get into better universities and schools. They wake up at 6 or 7 a.m. and study until midnight. Then, when you get into your 20s you struggle to find a job. If you do happen to get one, you can be fired easily.
People in their 50s and 60s don’t have the money to take care of their heirs. It is really a nonstop tragedy across all ages.
PB
South Korea has embraced the use of social media and technologies, which can be isolating. Has that also led to the mental health issues, and was it a factor in your choice to hack the technology of the rice cookers in Cuckoo?
JK
Exactly, those two things are related each other. South Korea is based on Korean Confucianism combined with capital neoliberalism and capitalism.
For example, in the Joseon dynasty era 100 years ago, noble people’s authority in the society wasn’t based on money. However, today authority and power in society are based on how much money you have, your financial ability and economic power. Now, rich people can rule the society. This is an unfair and unequal system that comes from neoliberalism but became stronger because of Korean Confucianism.
Korean Confucianism teaches people that the group and society are very important, but somehow within this there is a brutal pressure and hierarchy system. This leads to people isolating themselves because they don’t want to be involved in the society like that. Many of them turn to social media and internet culture to make their own persona and live a different lifestyle. This lets them escape the reality of real society. With Cuckoo, I wanted to talk about marginalized people from society who don’t have support, don’t have any opportunities, and nobody is taking care of them.
Geographically, Korea is a peninsula, but politically it is an island. In this small island, marginalized people have had to continually fight for themselves. Even though they are shouting, everything is muted.
PB
For Cuckoo you hacked a very popular type of rice cooker that many people have in their homes so they could speak and become characters. How did that idea come about?
JK
In a way my whole history as an artist led me to that choice. In high school, being in a band is how I fell in love with the experience of performing live. It is where I felt the most joy.
That led me to create live music and video. But at the time nobody agreed my work was theater because it was viewed as a human art—one made only by actors and not technology. Being forced to use the tradition of scripts and theater directing didn’t appeal to me because there wasn’t any innovation in that.
Instead, after graduating high school, I started producing film and theater. But I wasn’t happy at all because I realized my interest was in the creativity, not in the commercial aspect or money. That helped me form the decision to study again in university, but this time to focus on theater studies.
However, I found the program to be very conservative in its definitions of approaches to theater. There were a lot of restrictions to what my artist practice could be. Within the school, I couldn’t find collaborators. I was alone in the university and couldn’t make my own theater because they never produced solo work. But solo work was what I wanted to make. I was interested in what non-human performers could be on the stage. How can I have invisible partners on stage to perform with, such as video, music, or installation work?
PB
Were there people who you saw your work and thought, Oh, this is very inspiring or influential, in your early years?
JK
When I was younger, Nam June Paik was a really big influence. He is also of the Korean diaspora and grew up in South Korea. When I look at his artwork, I saw that work can be many things at once.
His artistic practice gave me a lot of confidence and inspiration. Although he is visual artist, Nam June Paik always says, “I’m not a visual artist, I’m musician.”
PB
What prompted you to move to Europe, and what impact did that have on your practice?
JK
The struggle I was speaking of earlier, as well as the pressures from the older generation and conservative society. For instance, yesterday President Yoon made martial law because he doesn’t want to listen; he wants to just say something. I think this is a typical example of what I felt from the older generation when I was still living in South Korea. There was no opportunity to show my work in artistic fields. At the same time, I was sick of trying to convince them that this kind of practice can be also theatrical performance. I didn’t have any hope anymore, and that is why I decided to leave Korea.
PB
Have you been surprised about how well your work has connected with global audiences? Was it a surprise for you to see that there was such an openness to your style of performance?
JK
Depending on the country and on the background of their own society, Cuckoo is interpreted in a different way. Cuckoo is about to have its 150th show in New York in January. I performed it in Asia, Europe, South America, Canada, and in United States. When I perform somewhere that people have experienced an economic crisis, then they share their anger. When that happens, my story is not important anymore because their story is more important.
When I’m talking about South Korean stories and my own personal stories, it’s not actually for me. It’s not for Korea. Depending on the political landscape or economic landscape, this story can transform in a different way based on local stories. When I performed in São Paolo last March, the story became about colonialism and inequality based on racism. Many things connected each other, even though we have a different historic background.
PB
How do you approach bringing music and video into your work? Do you always weave them together?
JK
The theme and concept are always the most important things for me. Once those are decided, I can begin thinking about the style of music and the quality of sound. I have to think about aesthetic decisions that transform my concept and theme in my own artistic way.
My first step is the research that leads to creating the work’s concept and theme. From there, I start to make video and text. It is more like an equal relationship among different elements of music, video, cinematography, and so forth.
When I feel ready, I bring everything onto a stage or big space, where I start to fit the puzzle pieces together.
PB
Theater, even experimental theater or devised theater, is often approached in a collaborative creative model. Do you use any collaborators as dramaturges, designers, and directors, or do you do all of it yourself?
JK
For Cuckoo I did it myself mostly, of course, even though I did work with a hacker and dramaturge.
PB
You perform in all the works in your Hamartia Trilogy, which Cuckoo is a part of. Do you ever imagine someday you’d like to have your work performed by others?
JK
I didn’t study about performance or acting, but with this body of work I thought: This is my story. I have to perform it so nobody can replace my role on the stage. That is why I decided to perform on the stage and, more than 10 years later, I’m performing on the stage.
However, with my next work, I want to stay off the stage.
PB
The term hamartia derives from ancient Greek and means to “miss the mark” or “to err” and is most associated with Greek tragedies. What led you to title this trilogy after this term?
JK
Around 2014, the concept of the three pieces that make up the Hamartia Trilogy all came at once. That is why I decided to make a trilogy. I was thinking already about the history of Korean theater, since a big part of my artistic practice centers on Korean theater. In Korea we believed our own theater is based on European theater and American theater.
Since Western theater is so influenced by Aristotle, I learned about hamartia in theater studies.
In a bit of a sarcastic way, I wanted to reference our roots: How the tragic situation we find ourselves in, with the limited opportunities we have to make our lives our own, was created a long time ago. This tragic route was created a long, long time ago by decisions made in the past. I thought about how hamartia is a very similar concept.
However, in Greek tragedy, only great people can make these kinds of tragic choices, such as in the example of Oedipus. But in our contemporary world, everyone is the same, equal, so we share the same tragedy because we share the same historical background. In South Korea, we share a history of economic imperialism. Cuckoo is about the IMF situation, economic crisis of 1997, and the tragic influence we all share now.
PB
With your work exploring these concepts of tragedy, do you still find hope? If so, where?
JK
Education and elections. Honestly, I don’t know what hope for the future can look like, but I think education is most important.
PB
Not art?
JK
Because of the wrong way the education system is handled in South Korean society, art is not important anymore. They don’t know about why we have to see art, why we have to make art. Over the last 20 years, since the IMF situation in 1997, they never teach the role of art in our society. That’s why education is most important thing. We all need to be educated to understand what has formed and continues to form the societies we live within.▪︎
Experience Cuckoo for yourself at the Walker Art Center with performances on Feb 6–8, 2025. Learn more about the work and get tickets here.