Division and Golden Age

K-Drama and Korean Film

Course 1 · Chapter 3 · Division, War and the Golden Age

After 1945 Korea was free of Japanese rule and then divided, and within five years it was at war. Film output almost stopped, then in the mid-1950s it exploded. This chapter follows that arc, with a short, factual note on what happened to film in the North, and ends in the early 1960s, just as the state clamped down.

How this chapter was checked The facts come from Wikipedia's articles on the cinema of South Korea (the liberation and golden-age sections), the cinema of North Korea (the first part only), The Housemaid (1960 film) and Madame Freedom, as I read them. I read no books or archives. Where those articles disagree, I say so and do not choose between them.

Liberation: Viva Freedom!

The Korean-cinema article says freedom became the main theme of films in the late 1940s. Its best-known example is Viva Freedom! (1946), directed by Choi In-gyu, which depicts the independence movement and was "a major commercial success."

Two articles, one title The North Korean cinema article also names Viva Freedom! (1946) as one of the first feature films made in the North, alongside My Home Village (1949). I did not find an article that sorts out whether these are the same film, a shared claim, or a title that appears in both lists. This is an open question in what I read, and I do not resolve it here.

A Short Note on the North

This course is about South Korea, so this is deliberately brief. Everything below is from the cinema-of-North-Korea article, which is openly available, and I did not read any North Korean sources.

Structure. A Korean Documentary Film Studio was founded in 1946 and the state-run Korean Art Film Studio in 1947. The first North Korean film was the documentary Our Construction (July 1946).
Control. "All film production is supervised by the Workers' Party of Korea," and the article says production generally concerns propaganda.
Kim Jong Il. The article calls him "an avid film buff" and says he wrote On the Art of the Cinema in 1973.
The abduction. The article states without hedging: "In 1978, the North Korean government abducted the South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and his ex-wife, the actress Choi Eun-hee." It says the two escaped in 1986. Shin returns in the next chapter as a South Korean director.
Output. The number of films is "difficult to determine": the article cites estimates of about 80 a year (1992), about 60 a year (2001) and about five a year for 2000 to 2009, from three different sources.

The Korean War

The war began in 1950. The Korean-cinema article says only 14 films were produced between 1950 and 1953, and that "all of the films from that era have since been lost." After the 1953 armistice, President Syngman Rhee exempted the film industry from taxation, and foreign aid brought equipment and technology.

The Golden Age Begins

The article says South Korean film output rose from 15 films in 1954 to 111 in 1959, mostly melodramas. Four titles from the period stand out.

Film	Director	What the articles say
Chunhyangjeon (1955)	Lee Kyu-hwan	A "now lost remake" of the old tale. The article says it drew "10 percent of Seoul's population" to theatres, a figure with no source detail.
Madame Freedom (1956)	Han Hyung-mo	Released 9 June 1956. Described as a modern story about female sexuality and Western values. A professor's wife takes a shop job, and flirtations and nightlife strain her marriage; the husband expels her, and the film ends with her weeping at the gate. The film article is a stub and rests on one database synopsis.
The Housemaid (1960)	Kim Ki-young	Released 3 November 1960; Kim also wrote, produced and edited it. A household falls apart after a manipulative maid enters it. The article says the film was "discovered by the West" more than forty years later.
Obaltan	Yu Hyun-mok	With The Housemaid, "now considered among the best South Korean films ever made." The article gives the date as 1960 in one place and 1961 in another.

Two facts about The Housemaid link it to later chapters. The article says it began Kim's Housemaid trilogy, followed by Woman of Fire and Woman of Fire '82, and that Im Sang-soo directed a remake in 2010. It also reports Bong Joon-ho as saying that it inspired Parasite, the film of Chapter 1. Both are about an outsider from a poorer background who enters a wealthier household; that comparison is mine, and the article does not make it.

An award and a name The Coachman (1961), directed by Kang Dae-jin, won a Silver Bear Jury Prize at the 1961 Berlin festival, which the Korean-cinema article calls the first Korean film to win an international festival award. The article's own awards table calls the prize the "Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize", so the wording differs inside one article.

Then the State Stepped In

The article says filmmakers had "a brief freedom from censorship" in the gap between the Rhee and Park administrations. Park Chung Hee became acting president in 1962. The Motion Picture Law of that year brought "increasingly restrictive measures", including a quota on imports, and the article says it cut the number of domestic production companies "from 71 to 16 within a year." Censorship, it adds, targeted obscenity, communism and unpatriotic themes. A separate screen quota, limiting the days foreign films could be shown, was first enacted in 1967.

The 1960s were still a busy decade. Popular directors made six to eight films a year, and Kim Soo-yong made ten in 1967, including Mist, "considered to be his greatest work." The article also notes the first South Korean animated feature, Hong Kil-dong (1967), and the first science-fiction animated film, Golden Iron Man (1968).

Gaps in what I read The cinema articles I read give no start date for censorship in 1961 and name no studios for this period. They do not mention Lee Man-hee or Shin Sang-ok in the golden-age section, so I leave them for Chapter 4. The Housemaid article I read gives no information on the film's reception in Korea in 1960. The "10 percent of Seoul" figure for Chunhyangjeon is the article's own and unsourced in what I read.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Describe what happened to South Korean film production between 1945 and 1959, using the figures the articles give for the Korean War and for 1954 and 1959.

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Exercise 2

Choose two of Madame Freedom, The Housemaid and Obaltan, and say for each what the articles say about the film, naming the director and the year. Then point out one place where the articles disagree or hedge.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Explain what the Motion Picture Law of 1962 changed, and give two facts from the short note on North Korean film.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Viva Freedom!: 1946, Choi In-gyu; also listed in the North Korean article
Korean War: 14 films, 1950 to 1953, all lost
Output: 15 films in 1954, 111 in 1959
Madame Freedom: 1956, Han Hyung-mo
The Housemaid: 3 November 1960, Kim Ki-young
Obaltan: Yu Hyun-mok, 1960 or 1961 (the article varies)
The Coachman: 1961, Kang Dae-jin, Silver Bear Jury Prize
Motion Picture Law: 1962; companies cut from 71 to 16 in a year; import quota
North Korea: state studios 1946 and 1947; party supervision; 1978 abduction of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee, escape 1986
Check: the Viva Freedom! overlap, the Obaltan date, and the Chunhyangjeon figure

Next chapter: Censorship and the Dark Years, which follows Korean film and the rise of television under the Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan governments.