ANTICOMMUNIST WAR FILMS of the 1960S and the KOREAN CINEMA’S EARLY GENRE-BENDING TRADITIONS
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ACTA KOR ANA VOL. 14, NO. 1, JUNE 2011: 175–196 ANTICOMMUNIST WAR FILMS OF THE 1960s AND THE KOREAN CINEMA’S EARLY GENRE-BENDING TRADITIONS By AE-GYUNG SHIM During the 2000s, the Korean cinema rose to prominence as one of the hot spots in the global film industry. Along with the U.S., India and Japan, the Korean cinema has now taken its place as one of the strongest local film industries. The contemporary Korean cinema embraces arthouse as well as commercial cinema, producing a variety of genre films based on Hollywood and other film conventions. Nonetheless, the Korean cinema has developed a hybrid entity of its own that mixes the local and the global (mainly Hollywood) through dynamic cultural and artistic processes of assimilating, modifying and re-creating. What we have come to call the ‘New Korean Cinema,’ with its real origins in the late 1980s, has reached maturity, and its exponents take pleasure in ma- nipulating what they have learned from Hollywood. As such, this article analyzes the historical development of a confidence and willingness to take on creative challenges. The genre-bending practice found in the Korean Cinema, however, has its historical connection to the 1960s, which is best represented by a hybrid genre-bending quality unique to Korea’s film history, indeed, one that is characterized by the 1960s anticom- munist film. Key words: Golden Age Korean Cinema, genre-bending, New Korean Cinema, film history, anticommunist film, Park Chung-hee media policy INTRODUCTION In the 2000s, Korean cinema rose to prominence as one of the hot spots of the world film market, backed by impressive local box office returns and an enhanced reputation on the international film festival circuit. Along with the U.S., India and Japan, Korean cinema has now taken its place as one of the world’s strongest local film industries. Directors such as Kim Jee-woon (Kim Chi-un), Park Chan- 176 Acta Koreana Vol. 14, No. 1, 2011 wook(Pak Ch’an-uk), Kim Ki-duk (Kim Ki-dŏk) and Lee Chang-dong (Yi Ch’ang- dong), to name a few, frequent invitees to international film festivals, have become internationally renowned auteurs; between them, they are responsible for greatly enlarging the spectrum of Korean cinema. Films such as My Sassy Girl (Yŏpkijŏgin kŭnyŏ, 2001), Il Mare (Siwŏrae, 2000), Into the Mirror (Kŏul sok ŭro, 2003), and The Host (Koemul, 2006) have been sold to US film studios for remakes, again demonstrating the creativity and quality of Korean films. This new ‘Korean wave,’ also known as ‘Hallyuwood’ (a fusion of Hollywood and Hallyu), embraces arthouse as well as commercial cinema. Perhaps most notably, the Korean film industry produces a variety of genre films based on Hollywood film conventions which are circulated through-out the globe, but with the addition of a very local twist. In characterizing con-temporary Korean cinema, terms such as ‘genre- bending’ and ‘hybridity’ are frequently used in newspaper stories, film magazines, festival brochures and websites. According to critic Christina Klein, this distinctive trait marks Korean cinema and films as a ‘transnational cinema, products of a complex textual engagement and negotiation with Hollywood’ (2008:895). In 2000, when Korean cinema began seriously attracting the attention of the world film market, Korean film critic and reporter Darcy Paquet expressed pleas- ant surprise at the arrival of a new stream of filmmaking—one marked by its willingness to experiment with Hollywood genre conventions—freely mixing and matching—and predicted that this trend would continue (6 July 2000 Koreafilm. org). Since then, Korean directors such as Bong Joon-ho (Pong Chun-ho), Kim Jee-woon, Jang Jun-hwan (Chang Chun-hwan) and Lee Muung-se (Yi Mung-se) have become iconic ‘genre-benders,’ inspiring film-makers in other countries in their turn.1 In his discussion of genre-bending in American films of the 1970s, Todd Berliner emphasized the ability of these films to wrong-foot the audience: ‘A genre bender relies on viewers’ habitual responses to generic codes, thereby mis- leading them to expect a conventional outcome. The film seems true to form at first, then, like a booby trap, it catches the spectator off guard’ (2001: 25). These films constituted an attempt to rebel against a set of genre conventions and 1 A recent article in Variety magazine ,”New-gen of Genre Benders,” reported that new wave filmmakers in Morocco claim inspiration from Korea’s genre films (Jan 3 2011: 3). In another Variety piece, director Kim Jee-woon is characterized as a ‘genre-bending helmer’ for his continued pursuit of genre-mixing since his debut film, the gothic-horror-comedy The Quiet Family (Choyonghan kajok, 1997) (Elley Variety 24 May 2008). Film scholar David Bordwell has called director Bong Joon-ho a ‘genre-hopper who’s hard to pin down’, referring particularly to Bong’s dexterous technique of mixing comedy, horror and social commentary (www.davidbordwell.net 29 September 2009). Shim: Anticommunist War Films 177 formulae established in the past. For film critic Kim Young-jin (Kim Yŏng-jin), contemporary Korean cinema is following in the footsteps of Hollywood’s New American Cinema of the 1970s in this respect (Cine21 17 September 2009). In so doing, these new Korean directors have ‘marked a clear break from the past’ (Paquet 2009: 3) and have created a body of what film critic Heo Moon-young (Hŏ Mun-yŏng) calls ‘auteurial genre films’, located somewhere between mainstream commercial films and self-conscious arthouse productions bearing a prominent auteurial signature (Cine21 17 September 2009). The leading representatives of this new wave of filmmakers are Bong Joon-ho, Kim Jee-woon, and Park Chan-wook, best known for the films Mother (Madŏ, 2009), The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (Choŭn nom, nappŭn nom, isanghan nom, 2008) and Thirst (Pakchwi, 2009), respectively.2 In an interview, director Bong Joon-ho took Berliner’s definition of cinematic genre-bending a stage further. Bong avoids basing his storytelling on a particular genre because ‘in this way, a chasm definitely opens up. Genre is something that has been constructed to fit the Hollywood version of reality and the formulae established by Hollywood, and Korean characters, situations and realities are of course very different from them. I take an interest in chasms of this kind’ (Kim et al. 2007: 33). Thus, genre-bending occurs as the natural outcome of interweaving Hollywood genre conventions with local (non-Hollywood) realities. In another interview, Bong confessed that he enjoys the ‘pleasure of betrayal’ involved in bending Hollywood genre conventions (Ddanji Daily 8 June 2009). For Bong and other Korean directors, the point is not just to catch the audience off guard, but to infiltrate a number of distinctively Korean cultural elements into their films. This double process means that the utilization of genre-bending by Korean dir- ectors is more complex than its use in Hollywood films. As director Bong testifies, ‘genre convention is nothing’ (Kim et al. 2007: 29). In her discussion of the new Korean blockbusters, Kim Soyoung (Kim So- yŏng) asserts that this category of film is conceived as a ‘compromise between foreign forms and local materials,’ and is a response to the industry’s ‘voluntary mimicry of, as well as resistance to, large Hollywood productions’ (2001: 11).3 Kim’s response appeared not long after the successful launch of the experimental Korean blockbuster Shiri (Swiri, 1999); the form has rapidly become an 2 In a similar vein, Darcy Paquet refers to these directors as ‘commercial auteurs’ (2009: 93). 3 In an article on blockbusters in China and Korea, Chris Berry declared that ‘the blockbuster is no longer American owned’ (2003: 218). Berry defines the Korean blockbuster as ‘a small-scale emulation of Hollywood’s deployment of big-budget entertainment to win international audiences (224)’, using the form ‘as a site to speak to local Korean issues’ (226). For further discussion of the Korean blockbuster, see Blockbusters, Korean Style (Choi 2010: 31–59). 178 Acta Koreana Vol. 14, No. 1, 2011 established genre in Korea, most fully represented by The Host (2006). Kim’s reading was later contradicted by American studies scholar Christina Klein, who substituted the terms ‘mimicry’ and ‘resistance’ with ‘appropriation’ and ‘reworking’ (2008: 873).4 For Klein this has entailed a ‘necessary’ and positive process of naturalization for Korean cinema, while the notion of cinematic genres originated in a foreign culture, Hollywood in particular, their contents did not. However the terms of the discussion are precisely framed, Korean cinema is undoubtedly a hybrid entity mixing the local and the global (mainly Hollywood) through the cultural and artistic processes of assimilating, modifying and recreating. What we have come to call the ‘New Korean Cinema,’ with its origins in the mid-1990s, has now reached maturity, and its exponents take pleasure in manipulating what they have learned from Hollywood, showing a confidence and willingness to take on the creative challenges involved. This process has had broader cultural ramifications. According to Sun Jung, the hybrid character of this contemporary cinema has enabled Korean popular culture to move out beyond its traditional boundaries, creating multi-directional transcultural flows (2011: 16). For Klein, this cinematic hybridity has been historically constructed through ‘the embeddedness of Hollywood’ in Korean cultural life since the post-war period, citing works produced in the golden age of Korean cinema in the 1950s and 1960s as evidence (2008: 891). Klein further claims that the genre-bending proclivities of contemporary directors such as Bong Joon-ho see him ‘following in the footsteps of his commercially minded Korean forerunners such as Kim Ki- young (Kim Ki-yŏng) and Han Hyeong-mo (Han Hyŏng-mo) (2008: 894).