Cinema under National Reconstruction: State Censorship and South Korea’s Cold War Film Culture

By: Hye Seung Chung

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: Cinema under National Reconstruction calls for a revisionist understanding of state film censorship during successive Cold War military regimes in South Korea (1961–1988). Drawing upon primary documents from the Korean Film Archive’s digitized database and framing South Korean film censorship from a transnational perspective, Hye Seung Chung makes the case that, while political oppression/repression existed inside and outside the film industry during this period, film censorship was not simply a tool for authoritarian dictatorship. Through such case studies as Yu Hyun-mok’s The Stray Bullet (1961), Ha Kil-jong’s The March of the Fools (1975), and Yi Chang-ho’s Declaration of Fools (1983), the author defines censorship as a dialogical process of cultural negotiations wherein the state, the film industry, and the public fight out a battle over the definitions and functions of national cinema. In the context of Cold War Korea, one cannot fully understand or construct film history without reassessing censorship as a productive feedback system where both state regulators and filmmakers played active roles in shaping the new narrative or sentiment of the nation on the big screen.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:: 9781978838710
Related ISBNs:: 9781978838741, 9781978838727
Publisher:: Rutgers University Press
Date of Addition:: 11/15/24
Copyrighted By:: Hye Seung Chung
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Entertainment, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Politics and Government
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.