SHIN FILMS PRESENTS: THE ‘KOREAN-STYLE’ STUDIO SYSTEM AND THE MODERNIZATION OF THE FILM INDUSTRY In SOUTH KOREA, 1952–1975

Abstract

Shin Films is known as the largest film studio ever operated in South Korea. Shin Films was a symbolic landmark of South Korean cinema’s so-called “Golden Age.” Shin Sang-ok, the founder and de facto owner of Shin Films, aspired to build a Hollywood-style film studio and catch up with the current filming technologies of the West. Under his direction, Shin Films produced 238 films between 1952 and 1975. The studio even expanded its market to Southeast Asia, where it actively co-produced and exported many of its films. Shin Films, however, was liquidated by decree of the Park Chung Hee government in 1975 due to the regime’s ever-changing film regulations. However, instead of focusing on the state’s oppressive intervention in the film industry, this article argues that multiple factors contributed to the rise and demise of the studio. Shin Films was not just a victim of the autocratic government. Rather, the studio engaged with the Park regime while negotiating with the authorities. And Shin Films was the most successful beneficiary of the authoritarian state’s film policy. This study demonstrates that the fall of Shin Films was more attributed to the studio leaders’ mismanagement, a lack of talent pool, fluctuating market conditions, and regional film studios’ collaboration and competition. Using archival materials, in-person interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, and available film scripts, this article examines the studio’s business structure, management system, human factors, dominant genres, distribution and exhibition subsidiaries, and imports and exports business, which together constitute Shin Film’s mode of production,

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Strictly speaking, “Shin Films” existed for precisely a decade, from 1960 to 1970. Shin Films’ iconic emblem, a flaming brazier, appeared on the screen during that decade. In this article, “Shin Films” refers to a set of film companies, including Shin Sang-ok Production, Seoul Production, Tŏk’ŭng Pictures, Anyang film production, and Shin-A films, that were operated, controlled, and structured by the same executive, Shin Sang-ok, between 1952 and 1975.

2 Brian Yecies and Aegyung Shim, The Changing Face of Korean Cinema: 1960 to 2015 (Routledge, 2016), 28.

3 Jinhee Choi, The South Korean Film Renaissance (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010), 6–7.

4 Ibid., 25.

5 Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann, “Introduction: Gender, Genre, and Nation,” in South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre, and National Cinema, ed. Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press), 2–3.

6 There is no consensus regarding the total number of films produced by Shin Films between 1952 and 1975. I used statistics compiled by Cho Junhyoung, the author of Shin Films: The Movie Empire (2009). Cho provided me with information on 23 April 2023.

7 Cho Hee-moon, “Han’gukyŏnghwa kiŏp’waŭi kanŭngsŏnggwa han’gye [Shin Fims: The Possibilities and Limitations of the corporatization of Korean Cinema],” Yŏnghwayŏn’gu [Film Studies] 14 (2006): 436.

8 Seoul Sinmun, 17 July 1965: 5.

9 For more about the definition and theory of the developmental state studio, see Sangjoon Lee, Cinema and the Cultural Cold War: US Diplomacy and the Origins of the Asian Cinema Network (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020), 145–47.

10 David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (London, UK: Routledge, 1985),

89.

11 Kim Soyoung, “Korea-Hong Kong Coproduction Film Love with an Alien,” Wepchin minyŏn [Research Institute of Korean Studies], June 2013, http://rikszine.korea.ac.kr/front/article/humanList.minyeon?selectArticle_id=382&selectCategory_id=22.

12 Kim Soyoung, “Cartography of Catastrophe: Pre-Colonial Surveys, Post-Colonial Vampires, and the Plight of Korean Modernity,” The Journal of Korean Studies 16, no. 2 (2011): 285–301.

13 Cho Junhyoung’s Yŏnghwajegung shinp’illŭmr han’gukyŏnghwa kiŏp’warŭl hyanghan kkumgwa chwajŏl [Shin Films: The Movie Empire] (Seoul, KR: Korean Film Archive Press, 2009) is still the only academic publication on the subject, although most scholars fully acknowledge the sheer importance of Shin and Shin Films in the history of South Korean cinema.

14 Shin Sang-ok, Nanŭn yŏnghwayŏtta [I Was Movie] (Seoul, Korea: Random House Publishing, 2007), 19. The reliability of Shin’s autobiography is in question. So I approached it as objectively as possible through periodicals, newspapers, and oral histories of other filmmakers, performers, and producers from the same era, rather than relying heavily on Shin’s autobiography.

15 Steven Chung, Split Screen Korea: Shin Sang-ok and Postwar Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 90.

16 Shin, I was Movie, 18.

17 Quoted in Lee, Cinema and the Cultural Cold War, 144.

18 Lee, Cinema and the Cultural Cold War, 137.

19 Allen J. Scott, On Hollywood: The Place, The Industry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 79.

20 Tino Balio, “Struggles for Control,” in The American Film Industry (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 91–2.

21 Michael Storper, “The Transition to Flexible Specialization in the US Film Industry: External Economies, the Division of Labour, and The Crossing of Industrial Divides,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 13 (1989): 275.

22 Lee, Cinema and the Cultural Cold War, 47–67.

23 Ibid., 138.

24 According to Staiger, the five systems are; 1) The “director” system, the dominant system from 1907 to 1909; 2) the “director-unit” system, which developed as the manufacturers increased their output after 1909; 3) the “central producer” system, which became dominant around 1914; 4) the “producer-unit” system, which resulted from a major rearrangement in the early 1930s; and 5) the “package-unit” system, which started in the early 1940s and became dominant by the mid-1950s. Bordwell et al., The Classical Hollywood Cinema 93.

25 Ibid., 94.

26 Douglas Gomery, Hollywood Studio System: A History (London, UK: British Film Institute, 2019), 7.

27 Janet Staiger, “Dividing Labor for Production Control: Thomas Ince and the Rise of the Studio System,” Cinema Journal 18, no. 2 (Spring 1979): 21.

28 Ibid., 24–5.

29 Stephanie Po-yin Chung, “The Industrial Evolution of a Fraternal Enterprise: The Shaw Brothers and the Shaw Organization,” in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), 2.

30 Interview with Yi Hyŏng-p’yo, 8 August 2008.

31 Interview with Pak Haeng-ch’ŏl, 31 July 2008.

32 Cho, Shin Films, 30.

33 Ibid., 66–8.

34 Ibid., 67.

35 Ibid., 81–2.

36 Ibid., 118.

37 Interview with Ch’oe Kyŏng-ok, 2 October 2008.

38 According to Pak Haeng-ch’ŏl, Shin Sang-ok handed down a script of Madame

White Snake to him that was still in the Japanese language.

39 Interview with Pak, 2008.

40 Cho Junhyoung, et al., Oral History Project 2008: Shin Films (Seoul: Korean Film Archive, 2008), 129–30. Quoted in Lee, Cinema and the Cultural Cold War, 138.

41 Interview with Ch’oe, 2 October 2008.

42 Bordwell, et al., Classical Hollywood Cinema, 134.

43 Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 1.

44 Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 2nd ed. (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 139.

45 Park Ji-yeon, “Haebanggibut’ŏ 1960nyŏndaekkajiŭi yŏnghwajŏngch’aek” [From the Liberation to the 1960s’ Film Policy], A History of Korean Film Policy, 194–5.

46 Yi Young-il, Han’gukyŏnghwajŏnsasa [The Complete History of Korean Cinema] (Seoul, Korea: Sodo, 2004), 288.

47 Interview with Yi, 2008.

48 There are no reliable figures for the budget for local films produced in the 1960s. Cho Junhyoung provides highly valuable information regarding the evolution of the local film’s budget between 1968 and the early 1980s. According to Cho, the ‘average’ budget for a black-and-white film was KRW 6–7 million and for a colour cinemascope film was KRW 10 million in 1968 and 1969. The term ‘Big-Budget’ referred to films with a budget of approximately or greater than KRW 20 million during the period. See Cho Jun-hyoung, “1970nyŏndae yŏnghwaŭi saengsanjogŏn: taeryangsaengsanch’eje p’at’an’gwa chŏyesan yŏnghwa yangsan kujoŭi chŏn’gae” [Film Production Conditions in the 1970s: The Collapse of the Mass Production System and the Rise of Low-Budget Film Production], a conference paper presented at ‘B-Kŭp Yŏnghwaŭi Shidae: 1970 Nyŏndae Yŏnghwawa Han’guksahoe [The Age of B-movies: Korean Cinema and Society in the 1970s]’ conference, 27 November 2021, Korean Film Archive.

49 Interview with Ch’oe, 2008.

50 Shin, I was Movie, 85.

51 “Han’gukch’oedae sŭt’yudio anyangch’waryŏngso” [Korea’s Biggest Motion Picture Studio: Anyang Studio], Sin Yŏnghwahwa (December 1957).

52 Lee Jin-seop, “The Story of Anyang Studio,” Daehan ilbo, 8 July 1965: 5–6; Kim Mi-hyun, Korean Film History (Seoul: Communication Books, 2005), 175–7.

53 Interview with Pak, 2008.

54 Interview with Ch’oe, 2008.

55 Unidentified newspaper article.

56 Shin, I was Movie, 193.

57 Interview with Pak, 2008.

58 Ibid.

59 According to Ch’oe, approximately 150 contracted staff workers were under his control in the late 1960s. Interview with Ch’oe, 2008.

60 Interview with Ch’oe, 2008.

61 Bordwell et al., Classical Hollywood Cinema, 330.

62 Ibid., 331.

63 Interview with Ch’oe, 2008.

64 Park, From the Liberation to the 1960s’ Film Policy, 208–17.

65 Donga ilbo, 8 January 1963: 5.

66 Kim Soo-mee, “Han’gukyŏnghwa kwan’gaekpyŏnhwa yŏn’gu” [The Transformation of Korean Movie Audiences] (MA thesis, Choong-Ang University, 2003), 52–3.

67 “Yŏnghwajejakŭl kiŏp’washik’in 1pŏnt’aja hanyangyŏnghwasa [Hanyang Studio Leads Korean Cinema’s Industrialization],” Yŏnghwasegye (January 1963).

68 For more about taiyozoku (sun tribe) cinema, see Michael Raine, “Ishihara Yûjirô: Youth, Celebrity, and the Male Body in Late-1950s Japan,” Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, edited by Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000), 202–25; Kim, “Hanguk Yeonghwa Gwangaek Byeonhwa Yeon-gu” 62–3.

69 Han’gukyŏnghwa charyop’yŏllam [The Complete Index of Korean Film Materials] (Seoul: Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corporation, 1976), 109–35.

70 Sangjoon Lee, “Introduction: Rediscovering Korean Cinema,” in Rediscovering Korean Cinema, ed. Sangjoon Lee (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019), 16–17.

71 “Kkumŭi kongjang shinp’illŭmiyagi [Story of a Dream Factory: Shin Films],” Yŏnghwajapchi (August 1970): 126–7.

72 Interview with Chin Bong-jin, 18 August 2008.

73 Interview with Lawrence Wong Ka-hee, 8 January 2008.

74 For more about Chŏng’s works in Hong Kong, see Lee, Yong-kwan, et al., eds., Chung Chang-Wha: The Man of Action! (Pusan: Eighth Pusan International Film Festival, 2003).

75 Lee Yeon-ho, “shinsangok tangshinŭn nugushimnikka?” [Shin Sang-Ok, Who Are You?], KINO 120 (1997): 120–7.

76 Interview with Kim Kap-ŭi, 22 August 2008.

77 Shin Films established Anyang Arts High School in 1967. It was the first Korean arts high school to establish a Department of Drama & Film.

78 Lee, Cinema and the Cultural Cold War, 168.

79 Shin, I Was Movie, 74.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2021S1A5C2A02086967).

Notes on contributors

Sangjoon Lee

Sangjoon Lee is an Associate Professor of Film Studies in the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. Lee is the author of Cinema and the Cultural Cold War: US Diplomacy and the Origins of the Asian Cinema Network (Cornell University Press, 2020) and the editor/co-editor of Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media (University of Michigan Press, 2015), Rediscovering Korean Cinema (University of Michigan Press, 2019), The South Korean Film Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2024), and Remapping the Cold War in Asian Cinemas (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).