Rescuing film culture from the nation: Japanese cinema in South Korean cultural journalism of the 1980s and 1990s

ABSTRACT

This paper explicates how Japanese cinema was discussed and imagined in the South Korean cultural journalism of the 1980s and 1990s by analyzing news reports, lead editorials, film reviews, and readers’ letters published in major daily newspapers. The import and distribution of Japanese film was banned until October 1998, but it was not entirely absent or invisible in South Korea. In the first part of the paper, I assert the significance of cultural journalism in writing an inclusive history of the South Korea – Japan cinematic exchange. The second part analyzes newspaper articles published from the 1980s to the mid-1990s and illuminates discourse strategy explored to shape the public’s response to the government’s policies and perception of Japanese cinema. In the final part, I examine cultural journalism of the late 1990s that shifted its focus to the ideas of active audiences and ‘new cinema.’ I argue that Japanese cinema was present as journalistic discourse in South Korean film culture. Japanese cinema rendered visible social contentions in transitional South Korea, where assumptions and imaginations about Japanese cinema involved multiple agents’ discrete political and cultural interests, and the power structure between journalists and readers was being shifted.

KEYWORDS:

• South Korean cultural journalism
• Japanese cinema
• South Korea – Japan cinematic exchange

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.

Notes on contributors

Namhee Han

Namhee Han is Assistant Professor of Korean Humanities at Queens College, The City University of New York (CUNY). Her research interests encompass cinema and media in Korea and Asia, moving image technology, censorship, and critical archival practices. Her works appear in Acta Koreana, Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, The Road to Sampo (2021), The Cold War in Asian Cinemas (2020), Voyages of Discovery (2017), and Sengo Nihon Eigaron (2012).