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The origins of North Korean cinema: Art and propaganda in the democratic people's Republic
O presente artigo explora como a experiência do 22º Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantástico de Bucheon (BIFAN) de 2018, onde ocorreu a primeira exibição pública de um filme norte-coreano na Coreia do Sul, modificou a dinâmica das trocas entre os dois países no campo cinematográfico. Foram exibidos três longas e seis curtas-metragens produzidos na Coreia do Norte em uma mostra temática. Faz-se um retrospecto histórico, desde a separação da península coreana em 1945 até as primeiras trocas comerciais e de pessoas entre os dois países na década de 1970. Comenta-se a evolução das trocas culturais entre os dois países até o festival e, a partir de artigos de jornais e revistas especializadas do campo cinematográfico, objetivando contextualizar todo o evento e o seu impacto cultural. Discute-se as implicações dessa mostra de cinema no histórico das exibições em solo sul-coreano, bem como o processo pelo qual estas passaram para serem autorizadas pelas autoridades da Coreia do Sul. Algumas outras iniciativas, especificamente as levadas a cabo pelo Korean Film Council, são abordadas para explicar o fenômeno. Finalmente, argumenta-se que a exibição desses filmes no âmbito do 22º BIFAN representa um avanço significativo no âmbito da troca entre Coreia do Norte e Coreia do Sul no campo cinematográfico e na aproximação simbólica entre os dois países.
For a long time, the world thought that the collapse of the USSR in 1991 would lead to a similar outcome in North Korea. Although the Kim regime suffered harsh economic troubles, it was able to distance itself from communism without facing an ideological crisis and losing mass support. The same core political myths are still in use today. However, after the DPRK left the ideas of socialist realism behind, it has become clearer that the ideology of the country is a political religion. Now, its propaganda is using more supernatural elements than ever before. A good example is the movie The Big-Game Hunter (Maengsu sanyangkkun) in which the Japanese are trying to desacralize Paektu Mountain, but instead experience the fury of the holy mountain in the form of thunderbolts. The movie was produced in 2011 by P’yo Kwang, one of the most successful North Korean directors. It was filmed in the same year Kim Chŏng-ŭn came to power. The aim of the paper is to show the evolution of the DPRK political myth in North Korean cinema, in which The Big-Game Hunter seems to be another step in the process of mythologization. It is crucial to understand how the propaganda works, as it is still largely the cinema that shapes the attitudes and imagination of the people of the DPRK.
Although North Korea is one of the most closed countries in the world, it has long been pursuing international cooperation with other countries in order to upgrade the quality of its film industry to international standards. Preceding studies on this topic have mainly focused on the political influences behind filmmaking in general and very few studies have exclusively dealt with North Korea’s international co-productions. In this respect, in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of the internalization strategy of North Korea’s film productions, this paper uses the global value chain as a framework for analysis. This approach helps understand the internationalization pattern of each value chain activity of film co-productions in terms of the film location and the methods for collaborating with foreign partners. By dividing the evolution of North Korea’s international co-productions into three periods since the 1980s, this paper finds that although North Korea has shown mixed results with different aspects of the film value chain, it has generally improved its internationalization over the three periods. This paper further provides strategic directions for North Korea by learning some of the successful Chinese experiences in the film sector regarding collaboration with foreign partners—to foster a win-win situation for all involved parties.
Confidential Assignment (Kongjo, Kim Sung-hoon), released on January 18, 2017 between DPRK nuclear tests, tells a story of two special agents. One is from North Korea and the other one from South Korea, and they unite to fight against a common enemy. Extraordinarily, the North Korean agent is portrayed as more formidable than his South Korean counterpart who is unable to match him in every field. Also, the North Korean agent is portrayed by a Korean super star, Hyun-Bin. In this paper, I analyze two other similarly themed movies: The Net (Kŭmul, Kim Ki-Duk) and Steel Rain (Kangch’ŏlbi, Yang Wooseok). All of them were released recently and were huge commercial successes in South Korea. The aim of the following paper is to show and analyze the evolution of the image of North Korean characters in South Korean cinema. During the analysis, the question of how the change from villain to super hero was possible is answered. The way in which the movies talk about inter-Korean relations and how they portray both countries is particularly important to understand the current political sentiments in the Peninsula and how it can affect the Moon Jae-in presidency.
The Korean Wave, or Hallyu, the transnational mobility of South Korean popular culture, has spread globally, including to communist North Korea. This study perceptively examines the South Korean media as a form of soft power and articulates media studies of the Korean Wave and transnational media flows. It focuses on the influence of South Korean media on North Korean society, especially on how it motivates North Koreans to defect and facilitates their adaptation to life in South Korea following their defection. Interviews with 127 North Korean defectors (46 males, 81 females aged 20–50 and over) were analysed. Results reveal that increasing exposure to South Korean media and its soft power continues throughout the media consumption process, which eventually motivates North Korean defection. However, the attractiveness of the media did not positively influence defectors’ adaptation as much. This work offers invaluable empirical data on North Koreans’ use of South Korean media, and timely policy implications which further aims to contribute to the literature of soft power by focusing on its relevance to transcultural consumption.
Korea’s Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948 compares and contrasts the development of cinema in Korea during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) and US Army Military (1945-1948) periods within the larger context of cinemas in occupied territories. It differs from previous studies by drawing links between the arrival in Korea of modern technology and ideas, and the cultural, political and social environment, as it follows the development of exhibition, film policy, and filmmaking from 1893 to 1948. During this time, Korean filmmakers seized every opportunity to learn production techniques and practice their skills, contributing to the growth of a national cinema despite the conditions produced by their occupation by colonial and military powers. At the same time, Korea served as an important territory for the global expansion of the American and Japanese film industries, and, after the late 1930s, Koreans functioned as key figures in the co-production of propaganda films that were designed to glorify loyalty to the Japanese Empire. For these reasons, and as a result of the tensions created by divided loyalties, the history of cinema in Korea is a far more dynamic story than simply that of a national cinema struggling to develop its own narrative content and aesthetics under colonial conditions.
This article attempts to analyze the construction and maintenance of political legitimacy in North Korea through the lens of its state-produced films. After classifying North Korea’s regime as totalitarian, we then discuss the strategies of legitimation available given this classification, and highlight the importance of ideology therein. Next, we demonstrate the importance of film within North Korea’s ideological apparatus and thematically analyze six North Korean films dating from 1948–2006. From this analysis, we situate the social role of film in contemporary North Korea and argue that it will remain a crucial force amongst the country’s various attempts to maintain legitimacy.
By definition, the cold war was understood on both sides of the conflict to be a global struggle that stopped short of direct military engagement between the superpowers (the U.S. and the USSR). In Europe, the putative center ofthat struggle, the geopolitical battle lines were fixed after the early 1950s, or they at least could not be altered by normal military means without provoking World War III—which would result in mutual annihilation. Therefore, each side hoped to make gains over the other by using more subtle, political, and often clandestine methods, winning the “hearts and minds” of people in the other bloc (as well as maintaining potentially wayward support in one's own bloc), hoping to subvert the other side from within. The cold war was an enormous campaign of propaganda and psychological warfare on both sides. A vast range of cultural resources, from propaganda posters and radio broadcasts to sophisticated literary magazines, jazz bands, ballet troupes, and symphony orchestras, were weapons in what has recently come to be called the “Cultural Cold War” (Saunders 1999). Studies of the cultural cold war have proliferated since the late 1990s, most of which focus on U.S. cultural policy and are concerned with the European “theater” of this conflict (Hixson 1997; Fehrenbach and Poiger 2000; Poiger 2000; Berghahn 2001).
"North Korea is not just a security or human rights problem (although it is those things) but a real society. This book gets us closer to understanding North Korea beyond the usual headlines, and does so in a richly detailed, well-researched, and theoretically contextualized way." ---Charles K. Armstrong, Director, Center for Korean Research, Columbia University "One of this book's strengths is how it deals at the same time with historical, geographical, political, artistic, and cultural materials. Film and theatre are not the only arts Kim studies---she also offers an excellent analysis of paintings, fashion, and what she calls 'everyday performance.' Her analysis is brilliant, her insights amazing, and her discoveries and conclusions always illuminating." ---Patrice Pavis, University of Kent, Canterbury No nation stages massive parades and collective performances on the scale of North Korea. Even amid a series of intense political/economic crises and international conflicts, the financially troubled country continues to invest massive amounts of resources to sponsor unflinching displays of patriotism, glorifying its leaders and revolutionary history through state rituals that can involve hundreds of thousands of performers. Author Suk-Young Kim explores how sixty years of state-sponsored propaganda performances---including public spectacles, theater, film, and other visual media such as posters---shape everyday practice such as education, the mobilization of labor, the gendering of social interactions, the organization of national space, tourism, and transnational human rights. Equal parts fascinating and disturbing, Illusive Utopia shows how the country's visual culture and performing arts set the course for the illusionary formation of a distinctive national identity and state legitimacy, illuminating deep-rooted cultural explanations as to why socialism has survived in North Korea despite the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China's continuing march toward economic prosperity. With over fifty striking color illustrations, Illusive Utopia captures the spectacular illusion within a country where the arts are not only a means of entertainment but also a forceful institution used to regulate, educate, and mobilize the population. Suk-Young Kim is Associate Professor in the Department of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and coauthor with Kim Yong of Long Road Home: A Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor.
Benshi and the Introduction of Motion Pictures to Japan 15 Yi, Understanding Korean Film, p. 26. 16 Yi, Understanding Korean Film
- Jeffrey A Dym
Jeffrey A. Dym, "Benshi and the Introduction of Motion Pictures to Japan," Monumenta
Nipponica vol. 55, no. 4 (Winter 2000), p. 511.
15 Yi, Understanding Korean Film, p. 26.
16 Yi, Understanding Korean Film, p. 25.
17 Yu Hyŏn-mok, Hanguk yŏnghwa paltalsa [History of the Development of Korean Cinema]
(Seoul: Hanjin, 1980), p. 57.
18 Michael Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1988).
History of Korean Film, p. 16; Hanguk yŏnghwa ch'ongsŏ [Anthology of Korean Films] (Seoul: Korean Motion Picture Promotion Association
19 Chŏng, History of Korean Film, p. 16; Hanguk yŏnghwa ch'ongsŏ [Anthology of Korean Films]
(Seoul: Korean Motion Picture Promotion Association, 1970), p. 104.
20 Chŏng, History of Korean Film, p. 16; Anthology of Korean Films, p. 111.
Jiyu-sha, 1982), p. 143. 47 Andrei Lankov, Soryŏn-ŭi charyo-ro pon Pukhan hyŏndae chŏngch'isa [North Korean Contemporary Political History through Soviet Sources], trans
- Lim Un
Lim Un, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea (Tokyo: Jiyu-sha, 1982), p. 143.
47 Andrei Lankov, Soryŏn-ŭi charyo-ro pon Pukhan hyŏndae chŏngch'isa [North Korean Contemporary Political History through Soviet Sources], trans. Kim Kwang-nyŏn (Seoul: Orŭm, 1995),
pp. 313-314.
Unification and independence
- Kim U-Sŏng
Kim U-sŏng, "Unification and independence," p. 12.
General Kim Il Sung has given the land to our peasants. Kwan-p'il: Yes. From now on, the land belongs to the peasants forever. Panning shot of the native landscape, swelling music
- Ok-Tan
Ok-tan: Oh, General Kim Il Sung has given the land to our peasants.
Kwan-p'il: Yes. From now on, the land belongs to the peasants forever.
Panning shot of the native landscape, swelling music, fade-out.
il: Yes. From now on, the land belongs to the peasants forever. Panning shot of the native landscape, swelling music
- Kwan-P
Kwan-p'il: Yes. From now on, the land belongs to the peasants forever.
Panning shot of the native landscape, swelling music, fade-out.
Hanguk yŏnghwa ch'ongsŏ
- Chŏng
Chŏng, History of Korean Film, p. 16; Hanguk yŏnghwa ch'ongsŏ [Anthology of Korean Films]
(Seoul: Korean Motion Picture Promotion Association, 1970), p. 104.
History of Korean Film, p. 16; Anthology of Korean Films
- Chŏng
Chŏng, History of Korean Film, p. 16; Anthology of Korean Films, p. 111.
History of North Korean Film
- Ch'oe
Ch'oe, History of North Korean Film, p. 36.
So far I have not been able to locate a copy of "Blast Furnace
- Ch'oe
Ch'oe, History of North Korean Film, p. 37. So far I have not been able to locate a copy of
"Blast Furnace," and have had to rely on second-hand accounts.
Hanguk yŏnghwa paltalsa
- Yu Hyŏn-Mok
Yu Hyŏn-mok, Hanguk yŏnghwa paltalsa [History of the Development of Korean Cinema]
(Seoul: Hanjin, 1980), p. 57.
Unification and independence of the fatherland and the mission of film artists
- Hyŏn Su
- Chŏkchi Yungnyŏn
Hyŏn Su, Chŏkchi yungnyŏn, p. 19.
60 RG 242, SA 2008 9/2. Yŏnghwa yesul [Film Arts] number 2, February 1949. Kim U-sŏng,
"Unification and independence of the fatherland and the mission of film artists," p. 9.