Censorship Years

From the early 1960s into the late 1980s, South Korean film and broadcasting were shaped by a government that used them to push its own message. This chapter follows the laws, the people who were punished or pushed out, the strange case of Shin Sang-ok, and the arrival of television, which began to draw audiences away from the cinema.

A Corporation for Control

The Korean-cinema article says that in 1973 a Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corporation was created, "ostensibly" to promote the industry, but that its primary purpose was control. It adds that the corporation promoted "politically correct" support for censorship and government ideals.

• Who could release films. Only filmmakers with "ideologically sound" films who were loyal to the government could release new ones.
• Punishment. Those who bypassed censorship were blacklisted and sometimes imprisoned.
• A verdict from 1981. The article quotes the International Film Guide as saying that "No country has a stricter code of film censorship than South Korea."
• Propaganda films. The article says the "policy films" this system produced were unpopular, and that attendance fell "over 60 percent" from 1969 to 1979, with television cited as a factor.

The broadcasting side had its own rules. The television article says that in 1972, under President Park Chung Hee, the government "imposed censorship upon media through the Martial Law Decree" and revised the Broadcasting Law to require "all television and radio stations to review programming before and after transmission". The government said this answered public criticism, and the article notes that "many accused the government of wanting to establish a monopoly over television broadcasting."

The Case of Shin Sang-ok

One career runs through this whole period. Shin Sang-ok began as an assistant production designer on Viva Freedom! (1946) and became known as the "Prince of South Korean Cinema". His company, Shin Films, reportedly made "around 300 films during the 1960s", a figure the article takes from a film-database site. His 1961 film The Houseguest and My Mother was South Korea's first submission for an Academy Award in the foreign-language category.

• Trouble with the government. The Korean-cinema article says his licence was revoked in 1975. The article on Shin says only that "after Shin ran afoul of the repressive government in 1978, Park Chung Hee closed Shin's studio", and does not mention a 1975 revocation or say what the government action was. The two articles give different years, and I do not try to reconcile them.
• North Korea. The Shin article says that the actress Choi Eun-hee was kidnapped in Hong Kong in 1978, and that Shin, searching for her, was kidnapped too, on orders from Kim Jong Il. It then adds: "The North Korean authorities have denied the kidnapping accusations, claiming that Shin came to the country willingly." It says secret audio tapes made by Shin and Choi "supported their story", and that a UN Human Rights Council report cited in its notes supports the abduction account.
• The North Korean years. After two escape attempts he was imprisoned for over two years, then taken to Pyongyang in 1983, where he met Kim Jong Il. The couple remarried "shortly afterwards, as suggested by Kim Jong Il". Shin directed seven films for North Korea in 1984 and 1985; the best known is Pulgasari.
• Escape and return. In 1986 the couple fled to the United States embassy in Vienna during a film festival and asked for asylum. They lived in the United States, and Shin directed 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up (1995). He returned to South Korea permanently in 1999 and died on 11 April 2006.

The article on Shin also lists conflicting birth dates (1925, and three dates in 1926) and two ages at death, so even basic facts about him are uncertain. His case is a reminder that, in this period, a film career in the South could be broken by the state and that the story of what happened next is contested.

The Hostess Films

Not everything was controlled the same way. The Korean-cinema article says Kim Ho-sun's Yeong-ja's Heydays (1975) and Winter Woman (1977) were box-office hits, and describes them as "hostess films": allowed despite overt sexual content, in a genre that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. The article spells the second title Winter Woman in one place and Winter Women in another. Why such films were tolerated while political films were not is a question the article does not answer.

The Rise of Television

Television began small and then took over the living room. The television article says broadcasting started on 12 May 1956 with HLKZ-TV, "a commercially operated television station" set up by an American company. Its sentence on the first Korean TV drama gives the title The Gates of Heaven (1956), running "no longer than fifteen minutes".

• Growth. The article says the number of sets grew from four million in 1979 to nearly six million "in the same period" (it appears to mean 1979 to 1989), and the number of stations from 12 to 78.
• Colour. "Color television was not officially introduced in the country until late 1980", although colour sets were made for export before that.
• Consolidation. The article says "during Chun Doo-hwan's regime, several newspapers, broadcasters and publications were forcibly closed, or were merged into a single organization", with TBC-TV the example, "awarded to KBS" and replaced by KBS 2TV.
• Reform. After the 1987 reforms, the National Assembly set up the Foundation for Broadcast Culture to insulate broadcasters from politics. The article's wording of what exactly it protected is ambiguous.

A Door Opens, Slowly

The Korean-cinema article says the Motion Picture Law of 1984 "allowed independent filmmakers to begin producing films" and a 1986 revision allowed more imports. It also says script censorship was "officially dismissed" in the late 1980s, though producers were "unofficially" expected to hand over two copies. The film industry, it says, was "still subject to censorship" until 1996. Chapter 5 picks the story up there.

Exercises

Next chapter: The Korean New Wave and the Chungmuro Revival, which follows the late-1980s opening, Im Kwon-taek and the 1990s business turn.