The Identity of “Joseon Film”: Between Colonial Cinema and National Cinema

Abstract

Inspired by the idea that Korean films during the colonial and post-liberation periods (1919–1948) constantly question the boundaries of Korean national cinema, this article suggests that those films produced during the periods be designated as “Joseon film” (Joseon yeonghwa) and aims to examine the backdrops and potential effects of the nomenclature. In doing so, this paper reexamines the boundaries of Korean film history. At the center of this discourse are ten Joseon films the Korea Film Archive has rediscovered over the past decade, of which this article focuses on three Tuition (1940), Angels on the Streets (1941), and Seagull (1948); all discovered at overseas film archives. These three films constantly evoke and prompt questions on the conceptual definition of Korean film, even though they have been included in the historiography of early Korean cinema and been preserved materially in the Korean Film Archive. Tuition and Angels on the Streets, dating from the Japanese colonial period, and Seagull, dating from the post-liberation period. I examine their production and distribution on the boundaries between Joseon and Korean cinema and between colonial and nation-state cinema. Although the former two films aimed at becoming imperial Japan’s state (Gukka) films, they came to be categorized as Joseon (Minjok, ethnic) cinema by imperial Japan since the colonial realities reflected in the film were problematic to mainland Japan. The nationbuilding propaganda film Seagull, which was produced and distributed in 1948, had to start negotiating with the state to become South Korean film. It could not be legitimated as a South Korean film as it was filmed, since the print was confiscated by the authorities due to the actors who defected to North Korea. Reviewing the designations of and the boundaries between Joseon and Korean cinema, this article takes a critical approach to Korean film historiography of the Japanese colonial and post-liberation periods in Korea.