The Korean War and Transnational Politics of National Imaginaries in the 1950S

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Specters of the Cold War in America’s Century: The Korean War and Transnational Politics of National Imaginaries in the 1950s A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Junghyun Hwang Committee in charge: Professor Lisa Lowe, Co-Chair Professor Lisa Yoneyama, Co-Chair Professor Michael Davidson Professor Jin-kyung Lee Professor Nayan Shah Professor Shelley Streeby 2008 Copyright Junghyun Hwang, 2008 All rights reserved. The dissertation of Junghyun Hwang is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm: _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Co-Chair _______________________________________________________ Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2008 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ……………………………………………………………………..…… iii Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………...…….. iv List of Figures …………………………………………………………….……...……… v Acknowledgement ………………………………………………………………..…….. vi Vita and Fields of Study ………………………………………………………...……... vii Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………... viii I. Introduction. “The Pacific is the Ocean Bride of America”: The Cold War, the Korean War, and “Ghostly” Politics of History ……………………………………. 1 II. Cold War Liberalism, Masculinity, and Race in the American 1950s: John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957) in the Shadow of Manifest Destiny ………………………….... 35 III. Love and Death in America’s War in Korea: Manliness, Nation and Empire in William Styron’s The Long March (1952) and David Douglas Duncan’s Photojournalism ………………………………………………………….……….. 57 IV. Imagining Home in Cold War America: The Hollywood Korean War in The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955) and Battle Hymn (1957) …………………………………….... 101 V. Becoming “Modern” in the Aftermath of the Korean War: Gendered Nationalism in 1950s South Korean Films, Hell Flower (1958) and The Stray Bullet (1961) …... 135 VI. From Nostalgia to the End of History: The Manchurian Candidate Then and Now ………………………………………………………………………………...…. 181 References ………………………………………………………………………..…… 206 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: A Cartoon on the Korean War by C. D. Batchelor ………………………………….. 58 Figure 2: A Close-up of a Chinese POW ……………………………………………….……. 90 Figure 3: Photographic Faces of Korea …………………………………………………….….. 93 Figure 4: “The Case of the Three Mysterious Koreans” ……………………………………..... 97 Figure 5: Images of “Reciprocity” ……………………………………………………..…….. 133 Figure 6: Three Dimensions of the “Bridges” …………………………………………..……. 134 Figure 7: Still Pictures from Hell Flower (1958) ………………………………………...… 165 Figure 8: Still Pictures from The Stray Bullet (1961) ……………………………….... 170 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This dissertation would have been simply impossible without the intellectual, moral, and financial support from many people and institutions. I am deeply grateful to my extraordinary advisors, Lisa Lowe and Lisa Yoneyama, for their enthusiasm and abiding faith in my project. Their warm support and intellectual vision nurtured and sustained my work throughout the entire process. Very special thanks go to Jin-kyung Lee for reading the chapters in progress with keen interest and giving many insightful comments on them. I am also indebted to Michael Davidson for his kind attentiveness, Nayan Shah for pushing me to think beyond the parameters of my project, and Shelley Streeby for her astute observations on some crucial aspects of this dissertation. The financial support from the following institutions enabled me to conduct research and write the dissertation: the Literature Department at the University of California, San Diego, the Center for the Humanities at the University of California, San Diego, the Pacific Rim Research Program at the University of California, and the Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies at the University of California, San Diego. I dedicate this dissertation to my exceptional sisters, Taejin and Hyunjin. You are my friends and colleagues, and fellow travelers on the turbulent road of life. Thank you for being in this world and sharing the burden of living. I am also grateful to my mother for her patience and goodwill toward my stubborn pursuit of an academic career. Her inborn optimism and perseverance has been the sustaining pillar of our family. Finally, I thank my life’s companion for his good humor, intellectual partnership, and nurturing faithful love. vi VITA 2008 Ph.D. in Literature, University of California, San Diego 2007-2008 Center for the Humanities “Transborder Interventions, Transcontinental Archives” Award, University of California, San Diego 2007-2008 Department of Literature One-Quarter Dissertation Fellowship, University of California, San Diego 2006-2007 Pacific Rim Research Program Mini-Grant, University of California 2006-2007 Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies Award, University of California, San Diego 2006-2007 Center for the Humanities Graduate Student Fellowship, University of California, San Diego 2002-2008 Teaching Assistantship, University of California, San Diego 2001 M.A. in English, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 1999-2001 Teaching Assistantship, Department of English, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 1997 M.A. in English, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea 1992 B.A. in English, Hansung University, Seoul, Korea FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Transnational Asian/American Studies, Trans-Pacific Cold War Studies, Comparative U.S.-Korea Cultural and Literary Studies vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Specters of the Cold War in America’s Century: The Korean War and Transnational Politics of National Imaginaries in the 1950s by Junghyun Hwang Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2008 Professor Lisa Lowe, Co-Chair Professor Lisa Yoneyama, Co-Chair This dissertation explores the ways in which American as well as South Korean cultures of the 1950s, particularly in the transnational entanglements of the Korean War, functioned as crucial sites for rationalizing Cold War politics while negotiating national imaginaries under the emerging stipulations of global politics and power. In the first introductory chapter, I contextualize the rationale of Cold War politics within the Western viii epistemological tradition as well as specific historical conditions of the Cold War and the Korean War. The second chapter investigates Cold War liberalism as the dominant ideology of 1950s America, which re-visioned the national imaginary of Manifest Destiny through a discursive integration of racial, sexual and national others while the juxtaposition of John Okada’s 1957 novel No-No Boy unveils inherent ambiguities in the logic of inclusivity. Next two chapters focus on American popular representations of the Korean War, including William Styron’s The Long March (1952) and David Douglas Duncan’s photo-essay This Is War! (1951) in Chapter III, and several Hollywood Korean War films such as The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955) and Battle Hymn (1957) in Chapter IV. These chapters explore how American nationalism merged with the Cold War global imaginary of “benevolent supremacy,” and how this brand of Cold War Americanism was premised upon the recuperation of white masculinity through the representational incorporation of Cold War otherness into the metaphoric regime of marriage and the family. Chapter V shifts attention to the 1950s Korean society and the ways in which modern Korea was constructed in the transnational turmoil of war, Cold War ideology, Western modernity, and colonial legacies by scrutinizing South Korean films such as Hell Flower (1958) and The Stray Bullet (1961). Finally, in my sixth chapter, I attempt to put the Cold War in a broader historical perspective by juxtaposing the original Hollywood film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) with the 2004 remake as an occasion to ponder upon (dis)continuities of history from the Korean War to the Gulf War. ix I. Introduction “The Pacific is the Ocean Bride of America”: The Cold War, the Korean War, and “Ghostly” Politics of History The Pacific is the ocean bride of America – China and Japan and Corea – with their innumerable islands, hanging like necklaces about them, are the bridesmaids, California is the nuptial couch, the bridal chamber, where all the wealth of the Orient will be brought to celebrate the wedding. Let us as Americans – let us determine while yet in our power, that no commercial rival or hostile flag can float with impunity over the long swell of the Pacific sea. … It is on this ocean that the East and the West have thus come together, reaching the point where search for Empire ceases and human power attains its climax. Commodore Robert Shufeldt in 1882 qtd. in LaFeber, The American Age 182 We live in the era of the “post-Cold War” – a temporal marker that simultaneously expunges and implies what is deemed the Cold War, a term that “contains” the preceding historical period in a dual sense of the word. The demise of the Soviet Union following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated not just as the “end of the Cold War” but as the “end of History,” as an epochal milestone that arguably confirmed the triumph of capitalism and the verity of liberalism. 1 The past two decades since, however, witnessed anything but an apocalyptic arrival of

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