Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Sun Jung, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Recently, Korean films, TV dramas, songs (or Hallyu, Korean Wave) are becoming widely popular in East Asia, including Japan which used to be the epicenter of Nichiryu (Japanese Wave). A 2012 song, ‘Kangnam style’ was a global hit. With wonder, academics in cultural studies deal with the sudden success of the Korean brand. Overlooked part is the colonial origin of Korean films, particularly the so-called Manchurian Westerns, a decade-long running action genre in the 1960s, in which Korean guerillas fought and defeated Japanese soldiers in Manchuria, Chinese continent, and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. The genre provided a jumping board for a number of Korean actors’ career and brought forth the golden age of Korean films. Above all, the dissemination of Korean nationalism was heavily indebted to this genre, which echoed with the Korean official discourse.

Analyzing several layers, diachronic and diachronic ingredients of the genre, this paper tackles the salience of Koran nationalism in the post-liberation period. It suggests two things. Firstly, the genre formed the Korean masculinity in the cold war competition, namely Korean nation which would assume the mission of modernization, defeating enemies (not only Japan, but also the extension, North Korea), marching toward the future in the Hegelian sense. Secondly, Korean nationalism was ironically disseminated through the appropriation of Manchukuo films (the atmosphere, protagonists, props, orientalist theme, songs, etc.) and the realm of the Japanese empire (from Manchuria to Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands), originally praised for the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. As Lefvre notes, space is not a given entity, but a socially produced process. Korean film artists borrowed Manchuria as a space for Korean nationalism.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Suk Jung Han is Professor at the Department of Sociology and ex-Vice President of Dong-A University, Korea. He got his PhD from the University of Chicago. In Korean, he authored Reinterpreting the State-Formation of Manchukuo (Book Awarded) and dozens of articles, edited Manchuria as a Space of Fusion, Global Search for Manchurian Data, translated two books (one of which was chosen by Korean Ministry of Culture as one of recommended books for students), and led group projects on modern Manchuria. In English, he published several papers, including one in Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique and book reviews on modern Manchuria and Manchukuo for The Journal of Japanese Studies, The China Journal, etc. He was President of the Manchurian Studies Association in Korea, Fulbright Lecturer at UC Irvine, and Visiting Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto. He has been widely interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Asahi Newspaper, BBC and NHK for the issues on Manchuria, Korea-Japan Normalization, and the contemporary Korean politics.

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