| South Korean Cinema Between the Wars maps the production, distribution, and exhibition of motion pictures as an instrument of information and propaganda to indoctrinate and contain the Korean population from resistance against the rightist military and civilian governments, from the years of U.S. military occupation (1945-48), the bifurcated nation and the escalation of conflict into the Korean War (1949-53), and to the postwar reconstruction of the First Republic of Korea under the authoritarian leadership of Syngman Rhee and anti-Communist fervor (1954-60).;In the aftermath of liberation from Japan, the southern zone below the 38th parallel was ruled by the American Military Government that mobilized and controlled all local media and paved the way for the U.S. motion picture industry to dominate the Korean film market. The information and propaganda apparatus of the U.S. military and the United States Information Service (USIS) continued these early efforts to address the escalation of Cold War, even after the founding of South Korea's First Republic (ROK), including the hiring and training Korean personnel to assist in the transmission of pro-American values via motion pictures. Once the Rhee regime took over control of all local media, it established a public information department that also relied on motion pictures to combat Communism and suppress opposition during and after the Civil War. By examining these high-level discussions, this study traces the development of film policies and their impact on the local film industry, beginning with Korea's colonial period and concludes with the height of the Cold War. As such, it also identifies the complex and dynamic relationship between Korea and Japan, the U.S. and the ROK, and the ROK and North Korea, as discovered in official documents and theatrical and non-theatrical motion pictures produced and distributed in Korea.;In addition to examining the relationship between government and military institutions, and the transnational propaganda apparatus, the study investigates popular responses to these relationships by focusing on Hollywood and South Korean feature films. This approach throws into relief the domestic film industry's dialogic relationship with Hollywood and American culture, along with other cultural, economic, and political forces, including the legacy of Japan's imperial rule and the rise of anti-Communism until Rhee's resignation following the April 19, 1960 student revolution. Throughout these major upheavals and wars, South Korean filmmakers continued to work unabated and succeeded in resuscitating their film industry that set the stage for South Korean cinema's golden age of the 1960s. The revitalization of the film industry in the late 1950s is all the more impressive considering it was in a shambles in 1945, and again in 1953, the while having to compete with the massive influx of Hollywood imports that dominated the local market. |
