Cold War Cosmopolitanism: The Asia Foundation and 1950s Korean Cinema

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-316
Author(s):  
Christina Klein
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Korean Cinema ◽  
Major Objective ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Instrument

Abstract South Korean films first became visible on the world stage in the late 1950s when they began to be exhibited and win prizes at international film festivals. Yi Pyŏngil’s The Wedding Day (1956) and Han Hyŏngmo’s Because I Love You (1958) were among Korea’s earliest award-winning films. These two films exemplify a postcolonial and postwar discourse I am calling “Cold War cosmopolitanism.” The cultivation of this cosmopolitan ethos among cultural producers was a major objective for Americans waging the cultural Cold War in Asia, and the Asia Foundation was Washington’s primary instrument for doing so. This article traces the history of the Asia Foundation from its inception in the National Security Council in the late 1940s through its activities in Korea in the 1950s and early 1960s. It pays particular attention to the foundation’s support for Korean participation in the Asian Film Festival. It offers a close textual and historical reading of Yi’s and Han’s films as a means of exploring how Korean cultural producers, acting as Cold War entrepreneurs, took advantage of the Asia Foundation’s resources in ways that furthered their own aesthetic, economic, and political interests.

Complementary Tools for Studying the Cold War in Africa

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla R. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Race And Culture

This review of Piero Gleijeses’ monumental historical text, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976, and Jihan El-Tahri’s award-winning documentary, Cuba: An African Odyssey, not only examines the strengths and weaknesses of these powerful complementary texts regarding Cuban internationalism in Africa but also provides pedagogical guidance for their use in teaching about the Cold War in Africa. These texts demonstrate how central Africa was to the history of the period and provide a means for educators to undermine students’ preconceived notions of the power of the West, African insignificance, and the major actors in the Cold War. This review offers suggestions for how instructors might use the two media to stimulate students’ critical thinking about such broad historical and political themes as race and culture, imperialism and anticolonialism, nationalism, revolution, and nation building foundational to the discourse. Additionally, it suggests other resources—books, newspaper articles, and primary documents—that might also be used when examining this tumultuous historical moment.

Propaganda leaflets and Cold War frames during the Korean War

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-264
Author(s):  
Seong Choul Hong
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Moral Judgement ◽  
Causal Interpretation ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

In the history of world wars, the Korean War (1950–1953) was not a forgotten war but the apogee of a propaganda war. By analyzing the contents of propaganda leaflets distributed during the Korean War, this study explored which frames were dominantly employed. The resulting findings were that the frames of ‘demoralization’ (25.7%) and ‘encouraging surrender’ (24.4%) were the most frequently used during the overall war period. Furthermore, the dominant frames varied depending upon the target audiences and language used. In terms of functional frames, the leaflet messages corresponded to definition and causal interpretation (22.8%), moral judgement (26.2%) and solution (49.9%). Interestingly, Chinese and North Korean leaflets preferred the imperialist frame to the Cold War frame even though the US and South Korean leaflets more heavily used the Cold War frame when they referred to foreign troops. Moreover, thematic frames (91.4%) were more widely used than episodic frames (8.6%) in the samples.

scholarly journals Korean Men in Western film festival: The representation of filmic masculinity in five South Korean award – winning films

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
Gabriel F. Y. Tsang
Keyword(s):  
Sole Source ◽  
Gender Identification ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Globalization ◽  
South Korean ◽  
International Perspectives ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Western Film ◽  
Gender Features

Masculinity is volatile, subject to representation. It is both personal and collective, interchanging with historical and cultural dynamics. This essay holds a focus on Korean masculinities represented in five award-winning South Korean films. In both diachronic and international perspectives, it differentiates between ideal, real and filmic masculinities, illuminating that ancient and modern Korean masculinities do not purely stick to a fixed, expected and shared ideology. There are variations in response to personal intention, nationhood and cultural globalization. The main argument of this essay is that conventional regulation is not the sole source to influence masculinity representation. Even violation of idealized manhood could deliver a sense of masculinity. Extending this argument to the concern with international film marketing, this essay questions about whether diversification of gender features would blur Korean masculinity and create new gender identification.

scholarly journals Postwar Korean Cinema

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Leong Toh
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Korean Cinema ◽  
Class System ◽  
Economic Miracle ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Korean Film

POSTWAR KOREAN CINEMA: FRACTURED MEMORIES AND IDENTITY IT IS generally agreed by South Korean film scholars that the Golden Flowering of Korean cinema took place in the turbulent 1950s after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, amidst the rapid industrialisation and modernisation of a predominantly agrarian society based on a highly stratified class system. Like its highly reactive Hongkong counterpart, South Korean cinema acts as a sensitive reflection of the constant changes and upheavals -- both socio-economic and political. These include the liberation in 1945 from Japan, the Korean War, the 1970s economic miracle and the current traumatic transformations that are shaping this troubled peninsula. This year, the astute Asian programmer of the 20th Hongkong International Film Festival, Ms Wong Ain-ling introduced a total of 12 "Rediscovered Korean Classics," with 6 of them set in the 1950s and 60s, emphasising the important role of Korean women during these...

Projecting Asian Cinema to the World

2020 ◽  
pp. 114-134
Author(s):  
Sangjoon Lee
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
International Level ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The World ◽  
American Society ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Asian Cinema

This chapter examines Unheeded Cries, South Korea's official submission to the fourth San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) in 1960, which tells the story of postwar orphans in the slums of Seoul. It discusses the Berlinale, San Francisco, and Asian Film festivals that consistently invited South Korean films to their competition sections during the first half of the 1960s. It also mentions the occupied force's cultural representative, Oscar Martay, who promoted Berlin as the Western cultural showcase of the East. The chapter reviews how SFIFF was organized and managed by Irving “Bud” Levin, whose ultimate aim was to raise his profile to become an international-level figure. It elaborates the Asia Foundation's (TAF) attempt to use SFIFF to showcase non-communist and ideologically correct Asian films for mainstream American society.

scholarly journals Who Debarred "you‟?

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Vineetha Krishnan
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Select Group ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Festival

The paper examines the idea of „unqualified public‟ in International Film Festival of Kerala, IFFK.  The general notions about the public in IFFK will be described by narrating incidents and tales of hindrances people faced while entering into the above-mentioned space. The criticisms leveled against cinema in the discussions, outside the space, always contributed to number of censures of the Film Festival too, spurring debates centering around who should watch a movie or who should participate in IFFK. A paper that aims to understand the notion of public, in an international festival on films in Kerala, cannot possibly neglect the typical perspectives and publicnotions about movies, especially among a select group of people in Kerala. While unpacking the notions of who these public individuals are and what their opinions on films are, the paper will also raise questions such as: Do films really imagine a homogeneous public, an idea of public without differences? What is the film‟s conception of public sphere? Do films create a new kind of public sphere? Then, what about cinema kottakas and film festivals? The paper takes note of one of the burning controversies in 2014 in the history of IFFK, that each delegate should submit a note on his/her ideas about cinema. Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Malayalam film director had suggested that only those who know English can enjoy all the movies as the Festival includes movies in other languages with subtitles (Ramnath 2014). So I here look at how specifically, language becomes a key factor to determine a „qualified public‟ in IFFK, among other factors that aid in the manufacturing of the „qualified public‟. For this study on IFFK the aim would be to focus on  the description and analysis of (unqualified) public in IFFK in relation to the recent controversies, to reveal the multi-layered construction of the „qualified public‟. 

scholarly journals The Occult of Personality: Korea's Candlelight Protests and the Impeachment of Park Geun-hye

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 851-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Doucette
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
New Right ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Park Chung Hee ◽  
Development Experience ◽  
Cult Of Personality ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

The phrase “cult of personality” is used more often to describe North Korea's Kim dynasty than the legacy of South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee, father of the recently impeached President Park Geun-hye. And yet Park's legacy has long been mythologized by conservative forces in both Korea and abroad as that of a virtuous and wise political leader. The praise of Park's virtues (especially his “economization of politics,” as one prominent conservative economist puts it) has many uses. During the Cold War, it was used to secure legitimacy for a president who had come to power through a military coup and whose vision of “administrative democracy” invested enormous power into the institution of the presidency itself. More recently, it has been deployed to help rewrite Korea's highly contentious development experience in a manner that praises both the state and oligarchic interests for past achievements. The myth of Park has been circulated through Korea's Official Development Assistance policies to help satisfy the demand for knowledge of Korea's development experience and to secure international prestige for the Korean development “model.” Meanwhile, intellectuals associated with Korea's New Right movement have praised Park's much-vaunted legacy of economic planning and the establishment of a Korean middle class as prefiguring democracy, a narrative that is used to denigrate a history of democratic mobilization deemed dear to the liberal and progressive opposition and their supporters.

scholarly journals Negotiating ‘Asianness’ at the Tokyo International Film Festival Local, Regional and International Dynamics Through Programming Practices and Film Markets

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenio De Angelis
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specific Interests ◽  
Asian Cinema ◽  
Programming Practices ◽  
International Status ◽  
Over Time

In this paper I will trace a brief history of major Asian film festivals to understand how the notion of ‘Asianness’ evolved over time and how it is expressed nowadays through programming practices and film markets. Then I will focus on the case study of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) as a problematic site where cultural and economic dynamics converge. As an A-category festival, TIFF has to balance its international status with regional relevance, negotiating ‘Asianness’ in a complex relationship involving the local film industry, since questions on ‘Asian cinema’ are deeply linked to the national. Finally, I will draw some conclusions, discussing how TIFF relates to other major film festivals in Asia, where ‘Asianness’ has been used as a shared effort to distinguish themselves from the paradigm set by European film festivals. However, this is an ongoing process, TIFF struggles to use ‘Asianness’ as a unifying element and the specific interests of each festival obstruct the possibility to create a more systematic trans-Asian model.

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