Chair: Timothy R. Tangherlini, University of California, Los Angeles

Discussant: Kyung Hyun Kim, University of California-Irvine

As Kyung Hyun Kim argues in The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, between 1980 and 2001 South Korean cinema witnessed significant developments in thematic content. The nation's transformation from an autocratic, relatively insular regime to a cosmopolitan, democratic society aroused anxieties about individual and collective identities that expressed themselves in film via an emphasis on the trope of masculinity. The work of Kim, who serves as panel discussant, provides a useful starting point for further exploration of contemporary Korean cinema's diverse output and its handling of gender. Among the questions this panel will examine are the following: given Korea's masculinist cinematic tradition, what is the place of women within it? Does the medium of film merely reinscribe inherited gender and sexual hierarchies in Korean society or can it challenge them? As Korean society continues to change with rapid speed, and Korean film grows in popularity globally, is the articulation of gender roles within it evolving? The panelists will address these issues in a series of case studies. First, Changzoo Song considers the representation of Korean diaspora women in recent films. Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park then treats Bungee Jumping of Their Own and its gendered and gender-bending reincarnations. Stephen Epstein analyzes three popular films (My Wife is a Gangster, My Sassy Girl and Saving My Hubby) that hinge upon a masculinization of their female protagonists. Finally, Hyangjin Lee will discuss the representation of masculinity in Korean films and dramas and their popular reception by Japanese spectators.

Changzoo Song, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Recently Korean diasporic women have gained attention in Korean films, particularly in the form of their romantic relationship with South Korean males. Innocent Steps (Daenseoeui sunjeong directed by Bak Yeong-hun, 2005) deals with a love story of an ethnic Korean girl from China, Jang Chae-rin, who comes to Korea to be a ballroom dancer. My Journey to Find a Wife (Naeui gyeorhon wonjeonggi, directed by Hwang Byeong-guk, 2005) depicts two South Korean men going to Uzbekistan to find ethnic Korean wives with the help of Kim Lara, an Uzbek Korean woman. Both films depict ethnic Korean diasporic females as possessing the ideal traditional feminine values of purity, honesty, and strength that are highly desired in contemporary South Korea by its men. Far from being materialistic or opportunistic, these female protagonists eagerly help South Korean men, regardless of the fact that the men in these films are treated as "losers" within South Korea's competitive--even ruthless--society. In this paper I will argue that these films imply the nostalgia of South Korean males for women with traditional values, who, nevertheless, as these films also suggest, are lamentably rare in South Korea today. I will also contrast these representations with the image of American-/European Korean women elsewhere in film and public discourse.

Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park, University of Notre Dame

The discourse on sexuality is usually structured on a Judeo-Christian-Muslim foundation where time is linear as is existence. When it comes to romantic love, one is obligated, in this singular vision of existence, to get it "right" within one's lifetime. Yet this is not the only religious basis for conceptualizing human existence. Hinduism and Buddhism view life as cyclical and with each new reincarnation, the possibility of additional chances at getting a compromised romantic love affair "right" can repeat itself many fold. Still, these tales retain a strong heterosexual bias. Kim Dae Sung's film Bungee Jumping on their Own (2001) challenges this heterosexual bias by playing with the possibility of having one of the romantic pair reincarnated within a re-gendered body. Thus, what began as inherently heterosexual abruptly begins anew, but this time as inherently homosexual, while each lover continues to assert his heterosexual identity. If true romance requires a spiritual dimension such that mere lovers become attached "soul mates" destined to be together repeatedly, then does the gendered body become a liability to an otherwise spiritually welcoming event? Within a Korean context, does Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism negate this possibility? How do Luke Kim's indigenous Korean core concepts of jeong (strong feeling of kinship/interpersonal trust), han (suppressed sorrow/anger), and nunchi, (the ability to evaluate people/social situations through implicit cues) turn this into a Korean-specific concern?

Stephen J. Epstein, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

In 2001-2002, three popular Korean films appeared that shared--coincidentally perhaps--plotlines that hinged on a superficial reversal of traditional gender roles. In Hyeon Nam-seop's Saving My Hubby (Gutseeora geumsuna), a former pro volleyball star must rescue her spouse from the clutches of a seedy nightclub owner. My Sassy Girl (Yeopgijeogin geunyeo), directed by Kwak Jae-yong, offers an unconventional love story between a humorously bullying young woman and her put upon paramour. Perhaps most obviously, Jo Jin-kyu's My Wife is a Gangster (Jopok manura) depicts the hypermasculine female deputy leader of a gang, who in order to please her dying sister, finds herself wedded to a gently oafish civil servant. Nonetheless, while these films initially appear to challenge stereotyped gender hierarchies, in that the female protagonists come across as far stronger than their male counterparts, the emphasis on comedy in each text ultimately fosters a reading in which a far more conservative viewpoint is upheld. In this paper I will examine the three films closely, highlighting thematic similarities between them. By teasing out the strategies of their narratives and metanarratives, I hope to elucidate their significance within ongoing debates about the nature of masculinity and femininity in contemporary South Korea.

Hyangjin Lee, The University of Sheffield, UK

Since the late 1990s, a variety of Korean popular films and TV dramas, such as JSA, Taegeukgi and Winter Sonata have enjoyed great success in Japan. The growing Japanese interest in Korean popular culture highlights Asian audiences' increasing preference of cultural familiarity and historical intimacy, which cannot be penetrated by products from the West. On the other hand, the locality presented by the cultural products imported from its neighboring countries still suggests a Japanese fantasy of the foreignness and exoticism of its neighbors. In this paper, I will discuss how a variety of Korean works represent masculinity and examine the reception of these portrayals among female fans in Japan. In particular, I will consider how the nostalgic sentimentalism and romance created by Korean TV dramas and films engages with Japanese self-reflective ideas on their collective identity which have been formed by Asian cultural tradition but, at the same time, have undergone transitional experiences.