scholarly journals LIBERTY AS THE IMPOSSIBLE, THE LANGUAGE OF SILENCE: IN REREADING KIM SUYǑNG’S WORKS IN 1960s

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
Seoyoon CHOI
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The 1960S

This article examines several works written by Kim Suyǒng in the 1960s with a focus on negation as the poetic method in accordance with revolution. He lived through a late colonial period, the Korean War, the April Revolution, and Park Chung Hee’s regime and he was keenly aware Koreans had not spoken of liberty as the invention of modernity in our mother tongue throughout our history. He dedicated all his poems to demonstrating why liberty was impossible to be spoken in Korean. In the course of his writing, his authentic poetic language developed into silence as a martyr, the language of death and love. In so doing, he could “live liberty” through his poetry in accordance with his conscience in the authoritarian society.

Ku Ponung (구본웅, 具本雄) (1906–1953)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jungsil Jenny Lee
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Korean Art ◽  
Oil Paintings ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Literary Magazine ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Spine Curvature

Ku Ponung was a modern artist and critic active during the Japanese colonial period and the Korean War. Due to his spine curvature and eccentric personality, Ku was likened to the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) and called "The Seoul Lautrec." Ku attended the Taiheiyō School of Fine Arts in Tokyo, where he was introduced to Fauvism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, and other modern Western art styles. He later pioneered the acceptance of these styles in Korea. Many of Ku’s oil paintings were lost during the Korean War, but several portraits and still lifes survive. Ku worked closely with contemporaneous writers, and his friendship with the modern poet Yi Sang is well known. Ku also edited and published the literary magazine Ch’ŏngsaekchi. After the liberation of Korea from Japan in 1945, Ku worked to revitalize Korean art by experimenting with various formats and media, including traditional ink painting and newspaper illustration. His attempt at artistic revival continued, even during the turmoil of the Korean War.

A Not-yet-postcolonial Peninsula: Rewriting Spaces of Violence, Division and Diaspora

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-87
Author(s):  
Jini Kim Watson
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Korean American ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Childhood Home ◽  
Historical Accounts

In his controversial 2001 novel,The Guest(Sonnim), Hwang Sok-yong tells the story of elderly Korean American Ryu Yosŏp, who embarks on a journey back to his childhood home in Hwanghae province, now North Korea. At once a spatial, temporal, and psychological return, the novel revisits the early years of the Korean War to unveil the truth behind one of the war’s most horrific crimes: the slaughter of 35,000 Korean civilians in the Shinch’on massacre of 1950. In particular, Hwang examines the arrival of the two “guests” of the title—Christianity and Marxism—during the colonial period and their subsequent role in the violence of Shinch’on. By making visible forms of political agency achieved through the assimilation of these two guests, the novel complicates the ideological binaries that appear to have arrested decolonization of the Korean peninsula. Watson’s article reveals how Hwang’s experimental, multivocal narrative structure rewrites usual historical accounts of the Korean War and division by attending to the spatialized production of regions, nation, state, and diaspora. It offers a rethinking of the congealed ideologies, stories, desires, and topologies of this not-yet-postcolonial peninsular.

Cold War Mnemonics: History, Melancholy, and Landscape in South Korean Films of the 1960s

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-412
Author(s):  
Hyun Seon Park
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Mnemonic Devices ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Work Of Mourning ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract This article examines the way that cinematic mnemonics of 1960s South Korean films ciphers the heterogeneous and conflicting experiences regarding two entangled wars: the Korean War and the Cold War. In a close reading of Kim Suyong’s Mist (An’gae, 1967) and Yi Sŏnggu’s The General’s Mustache (Changgun ŭi suyŏm, 1968), the article argues for the multifaceted aesthetics of Cold War mnemonics, which illuminates a binding and unbinding technology of affective memories in which the traumatic experience of the Korean war parallels the dominant narrative of Cold War historiography. In Mist and The General’s Mustache, historical trauma and the experience of loss take up important positions in relation to melancholic landscape and mnemonic devices. Visualizing the interstice between melancholy and mourning, between memory and history, and between landscape and interiority through the devices of flashback, widescreen, montage, and metanarrative structure, the exploration of mnemonic technologies is inextricably linked with the postwar Korean subject’s dual efforts to remember historical loss and to incorporate shameful memories. While Mist shows the male protagonist’s short visit to his countryside hometown, during which he is troubled by memories of the past and, thus, his encounter with the unfinished work of mourning, The General’s Mustache, beginning with a photojournalist’s suspicious death, assembles the fragmentary pieces of modern Korean history’s secrets through multiple frames of testimony and confession. Produced during the time of Cold War turmoil as well as at the height of global modernization, these films release alternative thinking about time, memory, and history, asking us to remember what is left behind in Cold War historiography.

Britain's Retreat East of Suez and the Conundrum of Korea 1968–1974

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-95
Author(s):  
Tae Joon Won
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Korean Waters ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The 1960S

This article examines the discussions and decisions which occurred within the British government concerning Britain's military involvement in the Korean peninsula at a time when Britain was pulling out of its military obligations in Asia – colloquially known as the ‘retreat East of Suez’ – in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. After the end of the Korean War, Britain created the Commonwealth Liaison Mission in Seoul and provided a frigate for use in Korean waters by the American-led United Nations Command and British soldiers for the United Nations Honour Guard. When relations between North and South Korea reached crisis point at the end of the 1960s, London was concerned that Britain could be entangled in an unaffordable military conflict in the Korean peninsula. The Ministry of Defence therefore argued for the abolition of the commitment of the British frigate, but the Foreign Office opposed this initiative so as to mitigate the blow to Anglo-American relations caused by Britain's refusal to commit troops to Vietnam. When Edward Heath's government negotiated a Five Power Defence Agreement with Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand in April 1971, the Ministry of Defence was, despite the objections of the Foreign Office, finally successful in repealing the frigate commitment for reasons of overstretching military resources. Furthermore, the Ministry of Defence then called for the abolition of the Commonwealth Liaison Mission altogether when it was then discovered that the British contingent of the United Nations Honour Guard would have to fight under the command of the United Nations Commander in case of a military conflict in the Korean peninsula. But this proposal too was rebuffed by the Foreign Office, concerned that such a move would greatly damage Anglo-Korean relations at a time when Britain was considering establishing diplomatic relations with North Korea.

Tracing the Development of the Nuclear Taboo: The Eisenhower Administration and Four Crises in East Asia

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hanania
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Eisenhower Administration ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Nuclear Diplomacy ◽  
Changes Over Time

Many scholars have argued that a taboo on the use of nuclear weapons became widely accepted in the 1960s, spurred on by the Cuban missile crisis and the subsequent growth of U.S. and Soviet long-range nuclear missile forces. The Eisenhower administration, in contrast, has been seen as relatively more willing to use nuclear diplomacy to achieve its military objectives. This article examines the Eisenhower administration's attitudes toward nuclear weapons during four crises in East Asia: the end of the Korean War, the siege of Dien Bien Phu, and the shelling of Quemoy and Matsu in 1954–1955 and 1958. U.S. officials at first acted almost as if nuclear weapons were simply “bigger bombs,” but as the decade progressed, nuclear weapons were increasingly seen as all but unusable. Much of the confusion regarding Dwight Eisenhower's attitude toward this issue resulted from changes over time and the complex interactions he had with members of his administration who argued for a more aggressive stance toward foreign enemies.

Monochrome Movement [Tansaekhwa]

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pitchapa Cheri Supavatanakul
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
The State ◽  
Art World ◽  
Korean Art ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Park Chung Hee ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Rapid Industrialization ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S

Monochrome painting, otherwise known in Korea as Tansaekwa, was an art movement that emerged after the Korean War, lasting from the late 1960s through to the 1980s. It rose to prominence during an era of strict censorship and rapid industrialization in the 1960s and the 1970s. The policies imposed by South Korea’s then-president Park Chung-hee restricted direct political messages, thus actuating the emergence of hidden themes in abstractions within the limitations administered by the state. The Monochrome movement’s pioneer, Park Seobo (1931--), worked both with abstract artists who were critical of the government and with the National Documentary Paintings Project, producing government-commissioned artworks that advocated nationalism. Through abstraction, Monochrome paintings can raise awareness without being overtly political, and still resonate Korean tradition without submitting to the confines of the artistic establishment of the time. The Monochrome movement responded not only to political censorship, but also to the established standards of the Korean art world, eliminating notions of representation and the distance that sets the image apart from the canvas.

Kim, Soo-yong (September 23, 1929--)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Cook
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Military Government ◽  
South Korean ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Youth Films ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Korean Film

Trained as a filmmaker during the Korean War, Kim Soo-yong debuted in 1958 amid the South Korean film industry’s postwar recovery and became one of the representative Korean filmmakers of the 1960s. Under the film policies of Park Chung-hee’s military government, the film industry suffered from censorship and quotas. The literary film emerged as an important genre signifying quality and artistic merit. Kim’s 1965 Kaenmaŭl [Seaside Village] marked him as a leading director of literary adaptations, which account for half his prolific oeuvre of over one hundred films. Kim also worked in popular genres, including comedy, melodrama, youth films, and anti-communist films, but is remembered for films that display realist, non-paternalistic perspectives on postwar society. His 1963 film Hyŏlmaek [Kinship] depicted the generational divide among North Korean defectors living in poverty on the fringes of society in the industrializing South. Seaside Village provocatively took on the sexuality of widows in a fishing community and contained lesbian innuendos. Several of his films also demonstrated a formal modernism. The 1967 An’gae [Mist], regarded as one of his highest achievements, employs experimental montage and a temporally complex flashback structure. In later years, he has been credited with helping ease film censorship in South Korea.

scholarly journals Estimation of the Original Location of Haechi (Haetae) Statues in Front of Gwanghwamun Gate Using Archival Photos from Early 1900s and Newly Taken Photos by Image Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 491-504
Author(s):  
Hyundok Oh ◽  
Ho Hyun Nam ◽  
Yeongsik Yoo ◽  
Jung Gon Kim ◽  
Kitaek Kang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Image Analysis ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Digital Camera ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Metropolitan Government ◽  
The North ◽  
Current Location ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Gwanghwamun Gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace was dismantled and relocated during the Japanese colonial period, destroyed during the Korean War, reconstructed with reinforced concrete in 1968, and finally erected at its present location in 2010. A pair of Haechi statues located in front of Gwanghwamun was dismantled and relocated several times, and the statues have yet to be returned precisely to their original positions. This study assesses the historical accuracy of their current placement under the Gwanghwamun Square Restructuring Project of the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Cultural Heritage Administration based on archival photos from the early 1900s, and proposes a method to estimate the original positions of the Haechi through image analysis of contemporary photographs and recent digital camera photos. We estimated the original position of the Haechi before the Japanese colonial period by identifying the shooting location of the archival photo and reproducing contemporary photographs by calculating the angle and distance to the Haechi from the shooting location. The leftmost and rightmost Haechi were originally located about 9.6 m to the east and 7.4 m to the north and about 1.9 m to the west and 8.0 m to the north, respectively, of their current location indicators. As the first attempt to determine the original location of a building and its accessories using archival photos, this study launches a new scientific methodology for the restoration of cultural properties.

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