Performances increase, audiences do not, and a 2008 dissertation

A Korean essay on traditional-dance audiences takes as its main text Go Jeong-suk’s 2008 doctoral dissertation in Korean studies at Sangmyung University. The opening problem is simple and sharp. The number of dance performances has been rising, yet the number of people who come to watch has been falling. In a performing-arts market that is otherwise growing, traditional dance, the dissertation argues, has been drifting away from its audience, in part because too little has been done to meet what spectators actually want and to keep them as long-term visitors.

The aim, as the essay restates it, is to identify the factors of satisfaction, involvement, and intention to return, and to look at the structural relationships among them. High quality in the dancers, the company, and the work itself is treated as what first has to catch a spectator’s interest if the form is to revive.

Four hundred and forty-three questionnaires, and a partial mediation

Five hundred questionnaires were distributed on site, after the purpose and the way of filling them in had been explained, and were collected immediately. Four hundred and eighty-nine came back; after double entries, blanks, and other untrustworthy answers were removed, four hundred and forty-three forms were used in the analysis. When men and women were compared, three of four satisfaction factors — product, price, and promotion — showed statistically significant differences; the place factor did not.

A structural model, as reported, found that satisfaction with the performance had a positive effect on intention to visit again, and that involvement with traditional dance also had a positive effect on that intention. Involvement, moreover, partly mediated the link between satisfaction and the wish to return. The essay keeps that “partly” in view: satisfaction still matters on its own, and involvement is not the whole path.

A second paper: twelve weeks, and two kinds of satisfaction

The same essay also summarizes a second study, clearly marked as such: Kim Su-a’s 2001 master’s thesis in dance education at Chung-Ang University, on how a traditional-dance program affects the life satisfaction of middle-aged women. Thirty housewives in a traditional-dance instructor course at a university continuing-education centre in Gangnam, Seoul, aged in their forties and fifties, formed an experimental group; thirty women in a general or dance-sports program formed a comparison group. The experimental group took part for twelve weeks, twice a week, two hours a day.

After the program, mean leisure satisfaction was 3.93 in the participating group and 3.32 in the comparison group; mean life satisfaction was 5.27 and 3.77. The essay reports both differences as significant, and notes a strong correlation, among participants, between leisure satisfaction and life satisfaction, with psychological, educational, and rest-related factors most closely tied to life satisfaction. The two papers are left side by side: one about audiences who might come back to a hall, one about women who danced themselves. A longer Korean version of this account is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A student essay presenting Go Jeong-suk’s 2008 Sangmyung dissertation on traditional-dance satisfaction, involvement, and revisit intention, and summarizing Kim Su-a’s 2001 twelve-week program study.

Last updated 15 November 2026