Breaking the Dam to Reunify our Country”

Alternate Histories of the Korean War in Contemporary South Korean Cinema

Bibliographic Data

ID12847241
AuthorsKristen Sun (University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume20
Issue2
Pages85-120
Publication date2015-08-31
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Korean History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1598-2041 • E-ISSN: 2508-5921
PublisherCenter for Korean History (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.22372/ijkh.2015.20.2.85
OpenAlexW2559094736
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited9

This article analyzes three contemporary South Korean films that (re)present alternate histories of the Korean War: 2009 Lost Memories (2009 Rosŭt’ŭmemorichŭ) (Lee Simyung (I Simyŏng), 2002), Welcome to Dongmakgol (Welk’ŏm t’u Tongmakkol) (Park Kwang-hyun (Pak Kwanghyŏn,) 2005), and Joint Security Area (Park Chan-wook, 2000). Despite focusing on different eras of history, I argue that they rewrite dominant narratives of the Korean War (Cold War logics of anticommunism v. communism) and instead focus on North Korean- South Korean friendships/collaborations. Each film also presents similar situations in which a group of disparate “heroes” (made up of unified Koreans) band together to circumvent the circumstances of division. This article analyzes historical conditions that influence the emergence of these similarly-themed films as well as film content in order to further think through memorial legacies of the Korean War, as well as to take seriously the radical possibilities of a different future that each film presents

Ancient history · Art history · Economic history · Geography · Movie theater · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Demography · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Japanese History and Culture

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access