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 Information
ISBN 9781978838710
Author Hye Seung Chung
Format Paperback
Page Count 230
Imprint Rutgers University Press
Publisher Rutgers University Press
Weight(grams) 454g