Murder in the Royal Palace: A Four-Act Play by Younghill Kang

Abstract

This article explores how Younghill Kang (1903-1972), one of the most important Asian American writers, wrote Murder in the Royal Palace, an unpublished four-act play. It reveals Kang’s writing process, transitioning from novel to play. This article regards Kang as one of the first novelists turned playwrights in Korean American literature in particular and Asian American literature in general. It also discusses the play as a political satire of the political scene in Korea in the 1960s. In addition, it examines how the earlier version of this play was performed in the United States in 1964 and how the final version was later translated into Korean and put onstage in Seoul in 1974.