Gendered and Censored Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soojin Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the ways in which a juxtaposition of two definitions of modernity are reflected in the two female singers, Yi Mi-ja and Patti Kim, who actively performed in postwar South Korea, particularly between the 1960s and the 1970s. While different social values and cultural practices constituted the modernity of South Korea, most scholarship on Korean popular music gives particular attention to the cultural products of modernity that have been influenced by the West, mostly by the U.S. This chapter, however, suggest that the different cultures from Korea, Japan, and the U.S. together constitute the modernity of Korea. Also, different collective memories from the Japanese colonial experience, the Korean War, and the Korean government-led economic development project shape the ideal form of modernization. Modernity in South Korean popular music shows that the periods between the 1960s and the 1970s juxtapose what the Korean society was facing and seeking at the time. Focusing on the Yi and Kim’s music and their performance styles, this chapter explores how different musical cultures and social values are reflected in their music as a way to construct gendered and censored modernity.

Occupation, Diplomacy, and the Moving Image

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sueyoung Park-Primiano
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Military Government ◽  
American Military ◽  
Cultural Imaginary ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Educational Films ◽  
Straightforward Interpretation ◽  
The U.S

This chapter, by S. Park-Primiano, examines the use of noncommercial films by the U.S. military to facilitate its diverse roles during its occupation of South Korea in the aftermath of World War II. Used by the American Military Government in Korea, educational films aided the U.S. military's efforts to Americanize the Korean population and combat Communism. Films were also used to inform and rally support for its policy in Korea from American military and civilian personnel at home as well as abroad. For this purpose, the U.S. military sought cooperation from and enlisted the assistance of Korean filmmakers in the production of films about Korean culture and history that challenge any straightforward interpretation of Americanization or a unidirectional influence. Moreover, such conflicting efforts had a long-lasting effect in South Korea. It was a practice that was continued by the succeeding information apparatus of the U.S. State Department and the United Nations during the Korean War and beyond to further expose the need for a closer examination of U.S. control of the Korean cultural imaginary.

Protestant Christianity in Modern Korea

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean C. Kim
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Corporate Leaders ◽  
The World ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Korean Missionaries

Korea is the only Asian nation with a significant Protestant presence. One in five South Koreans professes the faith. With more than eight and a half million believers, Protestantism as an organized religion ranks second numerically, not far behind Buddhism, but in terms of power and influence, it is unrivalled. Protestants occupy a central position in the country’s politics, society, and culture. Western missionaries, mostly Americans, introduced Protestantism in the late 19th century. As bearers of Anglo-American civilization, the missionaries built not only churches but also modern hospitals and schools. Korean converts, however, quickly assumed leadership under a policy of self-propagation, self-government, and self-support. In the 1920s and 1930s, the church came of age under popular revivalists who commanded national audiences. The process of indigenization also involved the adaptation to local beliefs and practices, producing a distinctive Korean Protestant tradition. Moreover, because of Japanese colonization, Protestantism did not suffer the stigma of Western imperialism common in other mission fields. Many Protestants, in fact, became nationalist leaders. Following World War II, Korea suffered the division of the country and the Korean War. Protestantism was extinguished in the communist north, leading to a mass exodus to the south, but in South Korea, it thrived. Industrialization and urbanization provided opportunities for the churches to create a sense of community, but it was primarily the aggressive one-on-one proselytization and mass evangelistic campaigns that fueled the dramatic expansion. From the 1960s to 1980s, South Korea became the fastest-growing Christian population in the world. The growth stalled in the 1990s because of the church’s support for previous dictatorial regimes as well as scandals involving Protestant political and corporate leaders. Yet Protestantism today remains a vibrant force in South Korea, home to the largest churches in the world and the base for thousands of Korean missionaries.

Working the Subempire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simeon Man
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
National Economies ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the Vietnam War through the lens of South Korea and the Philippines and their respective nation-building projects in the 1960s. It demonstrates how the two countries’ efforts to modernize their national economies dovetailed with and were dependent on their participation in the U.S. war. As the two governments mobilized their citizens for war, they generated discourses of gendered national belonging and racial intimacy with the Vietnamese that obscured their complicity with U.S. imperialism. The chapter further argues that the Vietnam War functioned as an engine of subempire for South Korea and the Philippines, that is, the relations of violence that were necessitated by the two countries’ incorporation into the capitalist world system. The chapter ends by examining the emergent counterpublics in South Korea and the Philippines that challenged their governments’ complicity in the war and their narrowed conception of citizenship and economic development.

Kim, Soo-yong (September 23, 1929--)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Cook
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Military Government ◽  
South Korean ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Youth Films ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Korean Film

Trained as a filmmaker during the Korean War, Kim Soo-yong debuted in 1958 amid the South Korean film industry’s postwar recovery and became one of the representative Korean filmmakers of the 1960s. Under the film policies of Park Chung-hee’s military government, the film industry suffered from censorship and quotas. The literary film emerged as an important genre signifying quality and artistic merit. Kim’s 1965 Kaenmaŭl [Seaside Village] marked him as a leading director of literary adaptations, which account for half his prolific oeuvre of over one hundred films. Kim also worked in popular genres, including comedy, melodrama, youth films, and anti-communist films, but is remembered for films that display realist, non-paternalistic perspectives on postwar society. His 1963 film Hyŏlmaek [Kinship] depicted the generational divide among North Korean defectors living in poverty on the fringes of society in the industrializing South. Seaside Village provocatively took on the sexuality of widows in a fishing community and contained lesbian innuendos. Several of his films also demonstrated a formal modernism. The 1967 An’gae [Mist], regarded as one of his highest achievements, employs experimental montage and a temporally complex flashback structure. In later years, he has been credited with helping ease film censorship in South Korea.

The Korean War

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James I. Matray
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The U.S

On June 25, 1950, North Korea’s invasion of South Korea ignited a conventional war that had origins dating from at least the end of World War II. In April 1945, President Harry S. Truman abandoned a trusteeship plan for postwar Korea in favor of seeking unilateral U.S. occupation of the peninsula after an atomic attack forced Japan’s prompt surrender. Soviet entry into the Pacific war led to a last minute agreement dividing Korea at the 38th parallel into zones of occupation. Two Koreas emerged after Soviet-American negotiations failed to agree on a plan to end the division. Kim Il Sung in the north and Syngman Rhee in the south both were determined to reunite Korea, instigating major military clashes at the parallel in the summer of 1949. Moscow and Washington opposed their clients’ invasion plans until April 1950 when Kim persuaded Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that with mass support in South Korea, he would achieve a quick victory. At first, Truman hoped that South Korea could defend itself with more military equipment and U.S. air support. Commitment of U.S. ground forces came after General Douglas MacArthur, U.S. occupation commander in Japan, visited the front and advised that the South Koreans could not halt the advance. Overconfident U.S. soldiers would sustain defeat as well, retreating to the Pusan Perimeter, a rectangular area in the southeast corner of the peninsula. On September 15, MacArthur staged a risky amphibious landing at Inchon behind enemy lines that sent Communist forces fleeing back into North Korea. The People’s Republic of China viewed the U.S. offensive for reunification that followed as a threat to its security and prestige. In late November, Chinese “volunteers” attacked in mass. After a chaotic retreat, U.S. forces counterattacked in February 1951 and moved the line of battle just north of the parallel. After two Chinese offensives failed, negotiations to end the war began in July 1951, but stalemated in May 1952 over the issue of repatriation of prisoners of war. Peace came because of Stalin’s death in March 1953, rather than President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s veiled threat to stage nuclear strikes against China. Scholars have disagreed about many issues surrounding the Korean War, but the most important debate continues to center on whether the conflict had international or domestic origins. Initially, historians relied mainly on U.S. government publications to write accounts that ignored events prior to North Korea’s attack, endorsing an orthodox interpretation assigning blame to the Soviet Union and applauding the U.S. response. Declassification of U.S. government documents and presidential papers during the 1970s led to the publication of studies assigning considerable responsibility to the United States for helping to create a kind of war in Korea before June 1950. Moreover, left revisionist writers labeled the conflict a classic civil war. Release of Chinese and Soviet sources after 1989 established that Stalin and Chinese leader Mao Zedong approved the North Korean invasion, prompting right revisionist scholars to reassert key orthodox arguments. This essay describes how and why recent access to Communist documents has not settled the disagreements among historians about the causes, course, and consequences of the Korean War.

“A Permitted Haven in a Heartless World: Colleges and Churches in South Korea in the 1950s”

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 209-232
Author(s):  
Dong-Choon Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Republic ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1950s, Christianity and educational achievement were the primary means for Koreans to break through the misery and powerlessness that the conflict from June 1950 to July 1953 had caused. Along with education, religion was a promising route in securing familial welfare for South Koreans. Among the several religions and denominations, Protestant churches were more popular for the uprooted people residing in urban areas. These two privately motivated daily activities—education and religion—captured the concern of the Korean people who had lost everything during the war. Under President Syngman Rhee’s “police state” and infrastructural ruin, religious and educational institutions filled the vacuum in the Republic of Korea that the Korean War had left in civil society. The Korean “habitus” of family promotion in the 1950s foretold the fast economic growth of the 1960s and 1970s. This paper will show how South Korea, during that decade, witnessed the formation of a new familialism, which tended to focus on the family’s fortune and money as a final goal. Ethical understandings and political decisions were secondary to the main priority of family promotion.

scholarly journals Wybrane komponenty współczesnej mentalności koreańskiej związane z grzecznością

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 219-231
Author(s):  
Chang Il You
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Korean History ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
The Impact

Selected components of contemporary Korean mentality related to politeness In the twentieth century, Korea had a violent change in its history. Initially, Korea lost its independence and became a Japanese colony. It regained freedom after the defeat of Japan, but soon, the Korean War broke out. From that time until today, Korea has been divided into two parts: the southern one and the northern one. After the war, South Korea was a country under military dictatorship for a long time. South Korea after the Korean War belonged to one of the poorest countries over the world. In the present time, however, South Korea has become a country that has a great impact on the global economy. This change in history had a huge impact (positively and negatively) on the mentality of Koreans. The aim of my article is to present the economic development of South Korea from a Confucian point of view and to analyze the impact of Korean history in the twentieth century on the mentality of Koreans and its operation in Korean society (work ethos and ethos of science, Korean language, etc.).

The Han’gŭl Crisis and Language Standardization: Clashing Orthographic Identities and the Politics of Cultural Construction

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-31
Author(s):  
Michael Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Language Standardization ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
Scientific Rationalism

Abstract The first attempt at spelling reform in South Korea took place in the early 1950s as the Korean War (1950–53) drew to a close. The subsequent Han’gŭl Crisis is often interpreted as an example of the authoritarianism of President Syngman Rhee (Yi Sŭngman), yet the event also represents a clash of generations between the supporters of the Unified Orthography of 1933 and the previous spelling standard. During the han’gŭl simplification debates, the legacies of Chu Sigyŏng (1876–1914) and Pak Sŭngbin (1880–1943) reemerged as their followers continued a contentious linguistic debate that stretched back into the colonial period. The event ended as a victory for the Unified Orthography of 1933, but several ambiguous questions remain for further investigation. Ultimately, behind the claims of “scientific rationalism” in the current han’gŭl spelling are the forgotten memories of linguistic activism and the difficulties in uniting divergent linguistic practices in post-Liberation Korean society.

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