Performing Korean-ness on the Global Stage: Ho-Jin Yoon’s Musical The Last Empress

Ho-Jin Yoonʹs production The Last Empress (1995) was the first Korean-brand, Broadway-style musical to travel to Western venues. This article explores how the play was influenced by its producerʹs commitment to South Koreaʹs cultural development in light of the countryʹs intensive globalization during the mid-1990s. My analysis concludes that the productionʹs development and the musical itself comprise a set of interactionsbetween the global and the national; in turn, these interactions indicate a mode of alienation in which the concept ofʹglobalʹ becomes meaningless, a fetish, or an empty signifier used in the service of national glory. My analysis also shows how elements of The Last Empress magnify the national and how its esoteric, exclusivist idea of Korean-ness is visualized via gendered nationalism