kdrama1-2, Exercise 3: Sound and censorship

Model answer:

In the silent era, live narrators called byeonsa explained the film aloud. The article says they were imported from Japan and could add satire under Japanese rule where authorities were absent. When sound arrived, the dialogue was on the soundtrack and could be checked in advance, so the article says sound brought "much harsher censorship" because narrators could no longer slip messages in. The first Korean sound film was Chunhyang-jeon (1935), directed by Lee Myeong-woo.

Two propaganda films named in the article: You and I (1941), co-produced with Shochiku and directed by Hae Yeong, promoting Korean enlistment in the Japanese Army; and Suicide Troops of the Watchtower (1943), promoting naisen ittai, "Japan and Korea as one body". The article hedges that total mobilisation of the film industry "would not begin until after Japan's full-scale invasion of China in 1937".

Sources: Wikipedia, Cinema of Korea. The 1940 Korean Film Decree is not in the sources I read.