초록
This article investigates representations of the Korean War in South Korean cinema, focussing on Pak Kwangsu’s To the Starry Island and Yi Kwangmo’s Spring in My Hometown and using the notion of cultural imagination, in which cinematic representations contribute to collective understandings of war. The article builds from Isolde Standish’s 1992 analysis, which argued 1990s Korean War films took an opposite stance to previous representations of the war while continuing to rely on nationalistic and melodramatic discourses. This article argues that in terms of their representation of the causes and character of the Korean War and their formal characteristics, Korean War films from the 1960s onwards are marked by continuity and rely on many of the discourses identified by Standish to account for the conflict; namely an externalisation of blame, problem-solving violence, and a narrative structure that displaces historical problems onto individual dramas. I argue To the Starry Island and Spring in My Hometown are unique because they place a far greater burden of blame on the Korean population and provide genuine critiques of the Korean War’s destruction. The films produce more ambiguous readings of the violence and identify reprisals as a key feature of the conflict, a phenomenon largely neglected in other Korean War films. To the Starry Island avoids a more romanticised treatment of pre-war Korea, presenting more anonymous sites of conflict that detract from heroic narratives of national mythmaking. Spring in My Hometown is a formally challenging work, and both films implicate the viewer in a brutal conflict.
키워드
Korean War, To the Starry Island, Spring in My Hometown, Pak Kwangsu, Yi Kwangmo
INTRODUCTION
2013 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Korean War (1950–53), a conflict which still cuts deep into the consciousness of many in South (and North) Korea. The war solidified the division of the peninsula and separated friends and family.
Guy Westwell argues war cinema plays an important role in the creation of what he calls the “cultural imagination of war,” the complex combination of representations “upon which a collective, shared sense of war is worked out, articulated and sometimes contested.”
Westwell argues that war films often appear in “cycles” representing particular “localised, industrial and cultural moves” that contribute to a cultural imagining of war.
This article builds on from Lee, Standish and Kim’s analysis of the 1990s Korean War cycle to include the most recent films, but also challenges some of their conclusions about two films in particular. I argue that in several core respects, Korean War films from the 1960s onwards are marked by continuity and that many of Kim and Standish’s criticisms are also applicable to the most recent films. I consider the cinematic representations of the causes and character of the conflict. The roots of the war reveal contested issues about culpability, and the war’s character provides an insight into the moral justification for the violence that ensured the survival of the South Korean state. In my analysis I pay special attention to the sites of conflict—the territories through which the Korean War is culturally imagined. I also examine formal structures such as the cinematography and narrative that help naturalize the inherent meanings of the film. These areas form the basis of my analysis of two neglected feature films from the 1990s cycle. Guy Westwell’s analysis concludes that
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
There are several historical features that are salient to my argument. The Korean War was at times entirely led, funded and prosecuted by United Nations forces or the communist Chinese government and virtually every major area on the Korean peninsula changed hands several times. The capture of an area brought the establishment of a new government according to radically different principles, and this often resulted in official reprisals against the representatives of the old order, like the Podo League massacres.
14 The United Nations estimated 20,000–22,000 deaths during the North Korean invasion (June to September 1950). In addition to the Podo League incident, South Korean army divisions massacred unarmed civilians in Sanch’ŏng, Kŏch’ang in Kyŏngsang province, and Kanghwa between 1950 and 1951. Spencer C. Tucker (Ed),
ROOTS OF THE WAR
Isolde Standish argues that 1990s New Wave films place the burden of blame for national division and for the conflict onto anti-government and anti-American sentiments;
Neither side will win; our tragedy is we didn’t liberate ourselves from Japan because of our own strength, but because of outside forces. The only winner will be the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R.
1990s films are clear about the forces that caused division and war, encapsulated in the words of director Pak Kwangsu that Korea was “raped” at the “hands of the colonial powers.”
Korean War films from the dictatorship cycle and the 2000s also take a position on the ultimate causes of the division of the peninsula, and in most cases blame is externalized. Many dictatorship-era films place the cause of the war firmly at the door of North Korea. Any hint of South Korean culpability or aggression is avoided, as can be seen in the deliberate choice of historical action in the trench warfare of
Central to the externalisation of blame is the imagination of an idyllic pre-war Korea; in reality, this was a period when the southern authorities were in a virtual state of war against leftists.
15 Standish, “United in
16 Kim,
17 Tony Rayns,
18 Michael Robinson,
19 Cumings,
THE CHARACTER OF CONFLICT
Theodore Hughes argues that within recent Korean War films there is a “simultaneous desire for and rejection of action and violence, all the while casting an anxious glance at the commodification of the image upon which the success of
Dictatorship era films show no such ambivalence to the violence of South Korean forces over the North Koreans, and these films are characterised by largescale battle sequences. We mainly venture into civilian territory to set the scene for later North Korean atrocities against non-combatants as in
Films from all cycles show a preoccupation with battlefields as locations for what Tom O’Regan argues are “nationally formative moments”; moments of victory, defeat, heroism, self-sacrifice and martyrdom that allow us to concepttualise our sense of national self.
20 Theodore Hughes, “Planet Hallyuwood: Imaging the Korean War,”
21 Hughes, “Planet Hallyuwood,” 206.
22 Kendrick,
23 Hyangjin Lee,
24 Standish, “United in
25 In contrast to “strong” violence that shows the ugliness of violence; Devin McKinney, “Violence: The Strong and the Weak,”
26 Tom O’Regan, “A National Cinema,” in G. Turner ed,
27 Sallie Yea, “Maps of Resistance and Geographies of Dissent in the Chŏlla Region,”
NARRATIVE AND STYLE
Isolde Standish argues that
Most recent Korean War films, like those from the dictatorship, are structured according to a mission-adventure narrative, focussing on the heroic exploits of a central protagonist attempting to achieve a clear-cut goal. The P’ohang schoolboys of
28 Isolde Standish, “Korean Cinema and the New Realism: Text and Context,” in Wimal Dissanayake ed,
29 Standish, “The New Realism,” 76.
30 For more on
31 Hayward,
32 Jinhee Choi,
TO THE STARRY ISLAND AND SPRING IN MY HOMETOWN
Of all these South Korean produced Korean War films, two stand in contrast to many of the representations of the Korean War discussed above.
The phenomenal success and exposure of
…the camera remains distant from the sequence of action and drama [and this] removes the horror and violence historically unleashed by class contradiction…historical reality competes with the aesthetic beauty in each shot. Then the history that is enunciated in all of these shots…is translated into the mythological, unidentifiable, and indecipherable murmuring that can be easily consumed by the West as picturesque images from the non-West.
Kim argued the cinematography attempts a “postcard impression of the past” that blotted out the historical depth and undermined the film’s counterhegemonic credentials.
Both
The central event of
Unlike any of the other Korean War films discussed above, both
The contours of the violence we witness in
The distinctive cinematography has a specific impact upon our perception of the perpetrators and victims of violence. Because of the camera distance, it is all but impossible to see facial expressions, or to distinguish one character from another, and this prevents any identification with individual protagonists. The use of long shots perhaps universalizes the characters—they could be anyone, they could be the audience or their forebears. This spectacle was perhaps an intensely uncomfortable prospect for many domestic audiences who, according to Yi Kwangmo, found the cinematography disorientating and complained they were unable to recognise the identity of the actors in a cast that included An Sŏnggi.
The film manages to create a more nuanced view of all the characters through the cinematography. As Hye Seung Chung points out, the almost exclusive use of long shots in the film enforces a neutral viewing position over the protagonists in the film; characters are seen from a distance, as if a “faceless gaze outside the realm of identification or anti-identification.”
One central feature of
Two important points are raised by Pak Kwangsu’s portrayal of the island; the first about the representation of the traditional Confucian family and the second about the forces that caused the destruction of the war. Unlike other representations of the Korean War, we do not encounter a simplistic and ideal microcosm of rural Korean society, or a Confucian paradise shattered by war. Pak Kwangsu manages to recreate a very real place with real problems.
The narratives of both films centre on the treatment of a corpse, but neither film offers any closure. At the end of
In neither film, then, is there a discussion of a pre-war idyllic past or a desire to return to a pre-war world. Both films are about leaving and
David Bordwell, in his analysis of sound in classical narrative film and alternatives to such narratives, argues that sound in film can guide us through images and indicate what we should be watching, but the effect can be very different in
Another distinctive formal visual feature of
The intertitles are written like someone returning to entries in a diary and commenting upon these events with the benefit of hindsight. The identity of the narrator is also unclear although one film critic argues this is Sŏngmin commenting on his past at an undisclosed time.
I argue the use of intertitles in conjunction with the characteristic cinematography and sound and narrative complexity has a specific effect. The constant use of long shots and indistinct dialogue means it is difficult to identify characters or their motivations. The picturesque quality of the long shots raises curiosity for the audience and the visually distant events invite the audience into the narrative, but the long shots do not provide the answers, leaving the audience to use the intertitles and fragments of dialogue to piece together the tragic history of Ch’anghŭi and Sŏngmin. The film continually delays or even denies the resolution of questions (perhaps reflecting the insoluble character of many questions about the Korean War).
33 Gonul Donmez-Colin, “Interview with Lee Kwang-Mo,” in
34 Peter Rist & Donato Totaro, “Lee Kwang-Mo: Where there’s hope there’s a way,”
35 See Rayns,
36 Donmez-Colin, “Lee Kwang-Mo,” 13.
37 Rist and Totaro, “Lee Kwang-Mo,” 32.
38 Rayns,
39
40 So Sŏngmin, “Yi Kwangmo kamdok
41 Kim,
42 Kim,
43 David Slocum,
44 Joel Black,
45 James Kendrick,
46 Donmez-Colin, “Lee Kwang-Mo,” 13.
47 Hye Seung Chung, “From Saviors to Rapists: G.I.s, Women and Children in Korean War Films,”
48 Yi Hyoin,
49 Rayns,
50 In interviews, Yi Kwangmo implies Ch’anghŭi and Sang’ŏn are the same person; Rist and Totaro, “Lee Kwang-Mo,” 34.
51 So Sŏngmin, “Yi Kwangmo kamdok,” 1998.
52 David Bordwell and KristinThompson,
53 Bordwell & Thompson,
54 So Sŏngmin, “Yi Kwangmo kamdok,” 1998.
55 Chapman,
56 Westwell,
57 Rosenstone,
58 Bordwell & Thompson,
CONCLUSION
Korean War films from different cycles reveal the political and cultural preoccupations of the periods of their construction. However, the films are reliant on contending strands of the same nationalist discourse identified by Standish and Kim. Despite the shifts in the cultural imagining of the Korean War that have accompanied political, social and economic changes, underlying themes about the causes and character of the conflict run true to most Korean War films; particularly the externalization of blame, the focus on violence as a problem solving strategy in the defence of community and nation, and narrative structures and cinematic form that encourage audiences to see complex historical issues as personal, solvable dramas. Two films,
59 Chapman,
60 David McCann, “Our forgotten War: The Korean War in Korean and American Popular Culture,” in Jackie Hiltz, Steven I. Levine, & Philip West,
61 Rosenstone,
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2 Statistically it was more dangerous to be a civilian than a soldier, and there were between a million and 2.5 million Korean civilian deaths; Rees,Korea: The Limited War , 461.
3 Guy Westwell,War Cinema: Hollywood on the frontline (London: Wallflower, 2006): 5–7.
4 Westwell,War Cinema , 113. Where Korean War films are feature films that consider conflict between 1950 and 1953 rather than legacy pictures of post-1953 conflict between North and South Korea like Silmido (dir: Kang Woo-suk, 2003).
5 Westwell,War Cinema , 8–9.
6 Moon Jae-cheol, “The Meaning of Newness in Korean Cinema: Korean New Wave and After,”Korea Journal 46.1 (Spring 2006): 57.
7 There are other cycles of Korean War film, notably the 1950s. There were, for example, twentyseven Korean War films made between 1950 and 1954. See:Han’guk yŏnghwa ch’ongsŏ (Seoul: Han’guk yŏnghwa chinhŭng chohap, 1972): 293–294; Yi Yŏngil, Han’guk yŏnghwa chŏnsa (Seoul: Tosŏ ch’ulp’an sodo, 1969): 277–280.
8 Isolde Standish, “United inHan : Korean Cinema and the ‘New Wave’,” Korea Journal 32.4 (Winter 1992): 112.
9 Hyang-Jin Lee,Contemporary Korean Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001): 104 & 130. Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: Norton, 1997): 488– 489.
10 Kyung Hyun Kim,The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema , (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004): 80.
11 Kim,The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema , 80; Standish, “United in Han ,” 109.
12 Westwell,War Cinema , 114; Westwell cites All Quiet on the Western Front (dir: Lewis Milestone, 1930), Paths of Glory (dir: Stanley Kubrick, 1957), and “possibly” Apocalypse Now (dir: Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) as examples of films that critique war. War cinema, Westwell argues, encourages us to think of war as a “productive mechanism of progressive change tied…to codes of honour, selfsacrifice, and national esteem…we are discouraged from questioning why and how so much life was wasted…” Westwell, War Cinema , 6.
13 Westwell,War Cinema , 6.