kdrama1-11, Exercise 1: Who controls the screen?

Model answer (any four dated moments):

- Japanese rule (to 1945): Japanese-operated studios, live narrators who could add satire until sound brought harsher censorship, and propaganda films such as You and I (1941) and Suicide Troops of the Watchtower (1943).
- 1953: President Rhee exempted the film industry from taxation; foreign aid brought equipment.
- 1962: the Motion Picture Law, with an import quota; domestic production companies cut from 71 to 16 within a year.
- 1972 and 1973: censorship of media under the Martial Law Decree and a duty to review broadcasts; the Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corporation, "ostensibly" to promote the industry but with control as its primary purpose.
- 1984 and 1986: a law allowing independent producers, then more imports; script censorship "officially dismissed" in the late 1980s but producers "unofficially" expected to hand over copies; the industry "still subject to censorship" until 1996.

The screen quota (first enacted in 1967; at least 146 days a year re-enforced) protected domestic films, and the article said the late-1990s success was "largely due to" it. It was then cut to 73 days as a prerequisite for trade negotiations with the United States (undated in the article), and workers protested in February 2006. The same device shielded an industry and was bargained away.

Sources: the earlier chapters of this course (Wikipedia articles named there).