Session 144: Korean Cinema: Texts and Contexts, from Post-Liberation to the Post-IMF Eras

Organizer and Chair: Hye Seung Chung, University of Michigan

Discussant: Sangjoon Lee, University of California, Los Angeles

Keywords: cinema, media policy, transnationalism, cross-cultural adaptation.

This panel explores various aspects of Korean cinema from the post-liberation period to the contemporary era, looking particularly at industrial policies, political determinants and cross-cultural influences, not to mention its often strained yet assimilative relationship with Hollywood. As a springboard for the entire panel, Brian Yecies’ paper demonstrates that the development of the Screen Quota System—a controversial protectionist policy for domestic films—reflected not only shifting international and political relations but also the Korean film industry’s precarious relationship with Hollywood. The rivalry of the two industries and the hegemonic conditioning of Korean audiences’ tastes ironically led to the assimilation and imitation of Western aesthetics and themes in many Golden Age productions. David Scott Diffrient’s case study of Over That Hill—Shin Films’ 1968 remake of a 1931 Twentieth Century-Fox melodrama—provides a compelling example of this. He examines the complex postcolonial dimensions of cross-cultural adaptation involving not only the Depression-era American film and the South Korean remake but also postwar Japanese melodramas equally influenced by Hollywood. Ae-Gyung Shim’s study makes a unique contribution by bridging two distinct cinematic decades (the Golden Age of the 1960s and the so-called "Dark Age" of the 1970s) through a common denominator—Park Chung Hee’s 18-year rule. Finally, Hye Seung Chung’s presentation on Untold Scandal, a contemporary film based on a classic Western novel, links together and elaborates many of the cross-cultural concerns raised in this panel.

Fatal Attraction: Hollywood’s Reactions to the Korean Screen Quota System

Brian Yecies, University of Wollongong

This study traces the development of film policies in Korea and offers a deeper understanding of the industrial and cultural pressures Hollywood has historically placed on the Korean film industry. Since the 1920s, Universal, Paramount, United Artists, MGM and RKO—all controlling members of the Motion Picture Distributors Association of America—had agents in Seoul. Korea was an important territory for Hollywood during the Japanese colonial period as studios used film to "Americanize" Korean audiences. In the late 1930s, the colonial administration’s stricter film policies enforced a higher exhibition quota of "domestic" Korean and Japanese films. Screen quotas ceased under the U. S. military government in the post-liberation era. Under the guidance of the Motion Picture Association of America, trade agreements as well as censorship and copyright regulations attempted to ease the exhibition of American films. However, since the 1960s South Korea has fortified its domestic film market with protectionist screen quota policies. Yet, Hollywood interests have continued to apply intense pressure to reduce South Korea’s current screen quota system. I hope to offer a richer understanding of Hollywood’s reactions to the screen quota system and the long-term impact Hollywood has had on the exhibition and distribution market in Korea.

Transnational Adaptations and Cross-Cultural Remakes in South Korea’s Golden Age Cinema

David S. Diffrient, University of California, Los Angeles

This presentation explores the ways in which filmmakers of South Korea’s cinematic Golden Age tapped into a vast repository of images and themes borrowed from other national contexts, from Depression-era America to postwar Japan. To illustrate Korean filmmakers’ unusual penchant for narrative assimilation and cross-cultural adaptation, I highlight a representative melodrama of that era. Produced by Sin Sang-ok and directed by Kang Ch’an-u, Over That Hill (Chŏ ŏndŏk nŏmŏsŏ; 1968) is a remake of the Twentieth Century-Fox film Over the Hill (1931). Besides looking West for its narrative and thematic material, Over That Hill looks East, in particular to the cinema of postwar Japan. In fact, there are numerous similarities between Over That Hill and Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), above all their shared focus on the love/hate relationship between rural parents and city children—a generational as well as geographic schism that casts in relief an issue central to the study of remakes and adaptations: fidelity to an ancestral or antecedent text. Given this diegetic as well as extradiegetic focus on loyalty (to one’s literal or figurative "parents"), it seems appropriate to ask if the structural isomorphism between Korean films and their American and Japanese predecessors simply revives the specter of cultural imperialism. Or, as the culmination of several cross-cultural "makeovers" and adaptations, do films like Over That Hill mark a break from the past by using Euro-American and Japanese signifiers as mere pretexts for distinctively Korean texts envisioning the nation’s socio-economic future?

From Golden Age to Dark Age: The Transition of Korean Cinema under Park Chung Hee, 1961–1979

Ae-Gyung Shim, University of New South Wales

Since the late 1990s, South Korean cinema has experienced unprecedented international acclaim and a lion’s share of its domestic exhibition market. A new wave of Korean filmmakers, emerging in the 1980s, as well as a host of more recent, talented directors, have contributed to this rising industry. However, there is a significant gap in the scholarship about the richness of Korean cinema before the 1980s and a tendency to overlook the film industry’s activities in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the continuum of its contemporary achievements. This study traces the growth of the film industry in the 1960s and analyzes its downturn in the 1970s and its complex relationship with the Park Chung Hee dictatorial regime. In this way we can gain a better understanding of the legacy and contribution Park’s administration left behind and the changes it inspired in an industry that was trying to survive. The propagation of a series of motion picture laws was a key catalyst in these changes. The film community reacted to Park’s film policies in both agreeable and repulsive ways, making Korea’s cinema history more dynamic and paradoxical than previously believed. This study intends to provide new connections and insights between Korean cinema during the Park Chung Hee era and its current success.

Taming a Dangerous Woman: Gender Politics and the Cross-Cultural Transformations of Untold Scandal

Hye Seung Chung, University of Michigan

As one of the top grossing films of 2003, E-J. Yong’s Untold Scandal is an anomaly in contemporary South Korean cinema, a cross-cultural adaptation based on a famous Western classic—Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses—which had already been adapted for the big screen several times by talented European filmmakers (including Roger Vadim, Stephen Frears, and Milos Forman). Despite its commercial disadvantage as a period piece, the film garnered critical kudos and attained widespread popularity. This success is particularly curious considering that a handful of earlier, Golden Age productions adapted from Western novels (such as Hugo’s Les Miserables and Maupassant’s Une Vie) quickly slipped into obscurity following moderate to poor performances at the box office. I argue that this film’s appeal lies in the fact that it addresses contemporaneous attitudes toward sexual mores and (anti)melodramatic sensibilities despite its Choson-era setting. Untold Scandal is a revisionist melodrama brimming with irony and cynicism, one which mocks sinp’a-style sentimentalism and Confucian values. For all its surface cynicism, though, the film evinces a collective sense of nostalgia in the final scene, a radical revision of the original story in which callous Lady Cho (played by Yi Mi-suk) cherishes the wild bellflowers given to her by the now-dead male protagonist. This softening of the unremorseful French heroine, as well as the evocation of the actress’ less sophisticated screen image of the 1980s, are indicative of the cross-cultural maneuvers necessary to recast gender politics specific to post-IMF South Korea.