From ‘Years of Radical Change’ to ‘Korean Screen Culture’: the story of a conference name

In June 2016, King’s College London will host the fifth Korean Screen Culture Conference. To my knowledge, this is the longest running – perhaps the only – annual international conference devoted to the critical examination of Korean film, K-drama, K-pop videos and online gaming. Since 2012, speakers representing academic institutions in the UK, the USA, South Korea, New Zealand, Germany, Romania, France, Israel and many other countries have presented over 70 papers at four different venues. This special edition of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema includes papers from the fourth Korean Screen Culture Conference held at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, on 29–30 May 2015. This introduction provides a brief history of this event by exploring some of the difficulties that arose over the naming of the conference – a process that raised fundamental questions about how to locate and conceptualize Korean screen culture (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Poster for the fourth Korean Screen Culture Conference held at the University of Copenhagen, 2015.

My intention in 2012 was to bring together eminent scholars of Korean film based at UK universities for a one-day workshop. The original title ‘Korean Film: Years of Radical Change’ was supposed to reflect the dramatic shifts that had occurred in South Korean cinema between the 1980s and the 2000s. The period had seen the relaxation of censorship, the lifting of restrictions on production and the opening of the South Korean film market. The term ‘radical’ also referred to a post-dictatorship generation of politically engaged directors like Jang Sun-woo, Park Kwang-su and Chung Ji-young, who produced films that challenged previous representations of the Korean War, as well as addressing urbanization and working practices in South Korea (Paquet 2009, 21–28). These directors’ work had attracted academic analysis, but questions remained – such as why the momentum of this socially conscious period of filmmaking did not continue on the same level into the early part of the new millennium.

The first conference was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (SOAS) in May 2012, and invited speakers considered different aspects of South Korean film (Figure 2). Colette Balmain discussed female voices in recent South Korean horror cinema, while Jinhee Choi investigated 1960s actor Kim Seung-ho’s home dramas. Chi-yun Shin presented a paper on director E-J Yong, whose films include Dasepo Naughty Girls (Dasepo Sonyo, 2006), Julian Stringer examined sound in contemporary South Korean cinema and Mark Morris presented a paper on the representation of Joseonjok (ethnic Koreans in northeastern China) in the cinema of filmmaker Jang Ryul/Zhang lu. Subjects at the conference ranged from the Golden Age of South Korean cinema to gender in genre film, auteur directors, sound and diasporic film. While the diverse range of subjects presented was extremely well-received, the aims of the conference itself were comparatively restrictive and the title problematic.

Figure 2. Poster for the first event held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London in 2012

The event generated enough interest to justify a second conference the following year, and the search for a more suitable title began in earnest. ‘Hallyu’ (or the Korean Wave), ‘South Korean Popular Culture’ and ‘Korean Popular Culture’ were all names I initially considered. ‘Hallyu’ was a leading contender since 2012 was the year Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ video had become a global phenomenon, raising the profile of South Korean popular culture. The year 2012 also saw a spike in Hallyu-related academic research that led to the 2013–2014 publications of studies like The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (Kim 2013) and The Korean Wave: Korean Popular Culture in Global Context (Kuwahara 2014). However, Hallyu research was also coming under increasing academic attack. Kyung Hyun Kim pointed out superficial aspects of research into Hallyu and a tendency to sensationalize the success of South Korean product consumption (2014, 3). Sangjoon Lee and Abé Mark Nornes also criticized an ‘Academic–industry collaboration’ in which heavy South Korean investment into tertiary-level investigation of the spread of Hallyu via social media fostered an atmosphere where it was ‘impossible to be critical’ (2015, 9). In other words, some academic work had begun to walk a fine line between researching a cultural phenomenon and helping to market it. A final problem with using ‘Hallyu’ as a title was the misleading and limiting nature of its frame of reference. Hallyu for example is often translated as the ‘Korean Wave’, whereas it in fact refers to a specific type of South Korean popular cultural product.

In naming the event, I was keen to avoid all these pitfalls and devote discussion to papers that maintained critical distance from their subject matter while opening the conference up to research on reception as well as form and production. But it was the final problem that was particularly tricky. Naming what is ‘Korea’ and what is ‘Korean’ – and separating the two – is a minefield, as was evidenced by my own embarrassing faux pas in dedicating the first conference to the study of 1990s South Korean cinema and titling the event ‘Korean Film’. This question of nomenclature has also led to a curious discrepancy within academic texts when trying to describe cultural output on the Korean peninsula. In most articles and books on South Korean popular culture, and especially on Hallyu, it is common to find a parenthetic explanation specifying which Korea is being discussed. But this is never the case in books or papers discussing North Korean cultural product.¹ It is odd that studies clearly identify North Korea and North Korean culture for what it is – North Korean or North Korea, but literature seldom does the same when it comes to South Korean or South Korea. Occasionally in texts about Hallyu – and this may be more a misunderstanding of publishers rather than academics – the parenthetic identification is dispensed with totally.²

Such issues of nomenclature would be less controversial were it not for the fact that North and South Korea are two countries which are engaged in an ongoing and intense competition for international recognition and for legitimacy over which Korea has the right to speak for all Koreans (Armstrong 2013, 178–179). For many years, naming the other Korea was a site of contention. In the South, newspaper articles referred to the DPRK as the ‘Buk gwoe’ or the northern puppet regime. The North even managed to use the English name of its neighbour as a propaganda weapon. A perusal of Kim Jong Il’s early writings about cinema reveals the frequent use of an uncapitalized ‘south’ Korea. At first glance this might appear a typographic error, but it is deliberate, since capitalization would confer political recognition upon South Korea, whereas the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) has long considered the area south of the 38th Parallel as a puppet state of US imperialism (Kim 1992, 117). It is difficult to know what to make of the aforementioned discrepancies or the slips such as my own described above. Do they represent a conscious or unconscious desire to identify the Republic of Korea as the standard and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as the exception (without even considering the Korean diaspora at all)?

In naming the 2013 conference I was therefore keen to include ‘Korean’ in the title and to unambiguously embrace the analysis of cultural product from the South and the DPRK as well as the considerable Korean diasporas like the Joseonjok of north eastern China. ‘Korean Popular Culture’ would have been an obvious alternative to Hallyu were it not that situating the state media of the DPRK alongside the commercial popular culture of South Korea is questionable. As Kyung Hyun Kim has argued, commercialism, merchandizing, the star system, and other features of the popular cultural landscape visible in Seoul and in the other cities of South Korea are absent north of the border, and this is one fundamental and unavoidable difference (2014, 8).³ A second problem in associating the term ‘popular culture’ with the DPRK is manifest in such classic North Korean films as Sea of Blood (Pibada, Choe Ik-gyu 1969) which according to Kim operates according to a fundamentally different set of assumptions than commercial cinema. Capitalist films ‘“internalize” their political intentions and encode ideological assumptions’, whereas North Korean cinema reveals the regime’s political intentions without ‘much ambiguity’ (1996, 100). In other words, Kim argues that the didactic, propagandistic and mobilizing character of DPRK film and television makes the medium very distinct from cultural production by the capitalist South. Kim presents a powerful case for why the South has a popular culture while the North does not – although there are, of course, arguments against his claims. The DPRK’s state media does indeed possess something that resembles a popular culture, comprising film, TV dramas and even pop music videos. Travis Workman (2014, 145–146) also stresses the entertainment to be had by consumers of DPRK Socialist Realist cultural product. Kim bases his argument on Sea of Blood, which while important is not typical of all DPRK film, especially film influenced by director Shin Sang-ok who introduced film with a less intrusive political message and elements more associated with commercial cinema.⁴

Figure 3. Poster for the second event held at SOAS in 2013

The term ‘Popular culture’ remained problematic, and so for the second event in May 2013, ‘Korean Screen Culture’ was chosen at the suggestion of Isolde Standish, Reader in Film and Media Studies at SOAS (Figure 3). Standish’s original idea was based on the fact that global consumers had shown significant interest in the film, television (particularly dramas), videos and gaming of South Korea, and that it might therefore be a good idea to expand the conference beyond cinema. But the new title had other immediate advantages since ‘Korean’ left the event open to cultural product from the North and diasporic communities and ‘screen culture’ also allowed me to avoid the question of whether DPRK state media was indeed popular culture. For the third event, in 2014, the epithet ‘Radical Change’ – which mystified most participants – was finally dropped, and with that, the conference had a more appropriate title.

The events

Over the course of 2013, 2014 and 2015, the newly named conferences successfully opened the floor for papers examining different aspects of Korean screen culture. The majority of papers focused on the examination of form and production, but mixed in amongst them were some that trod less common paths, including in 2014 one ethnographic study of online gaming designers, and in 2015 a paper about an increasingly popular aspect of South Korean screen culture – webtoons. The conferences also featured reception-based research, with some participants taking an interesting turn away from the consumption of Hallyu in particular regions. In 2015, one paper investigated how fans at a South Korean university formed clubs to educate themselves in theoretical frameworks to improve their appreciation and understanding of cinema, and another in 2014 studied the consumption of film from both North and South Korea in China. All three events also provided a more complete reflection of cultural product from Korea featuring papers on K-drama, K-pop, diasporic cinema, historical studies of pre-division Colonial era cinema and comparisons of North and South Korean film.

Despite the wide range of subjects, almost half the presentations at the conferences were devoted to the investigation of genre in South Korean cinema; for example, horror, gangster and high school film. There have also been some particular shifts in the studies presented. In 2015, there were enough papers to justify a panel investigating television and film documentaries. This interest had grown and had received increased exposure thanks to events like the DMZ Documentary Film Festival and the box office success of features like My Love, Don’t Cross That River (nima keu kangeul geoneoji mayo, Jin Mo-yeong 2014). Many more researchers were also delving into the history of South Korean film – particularly the 1960s Golden Age – to discover indigenous influences on the current crop of successful directors. In 2013, an entire panel was devoted to the discussion of films both from and about the Japanese Colonial period (1910–1945). This reflected interest in recent archival discoveries outside Korea of lost films from the period, as well as a greater desire to research film on one of the most painful moments of Korean history. This influence is manifested in films like Blue Swallow (Cheong-yeon, Yoon Jong-chan, 2005), Modern Boy (Jung Ji-woo, 2008) and Once Upon a Time (Jeong Yong-gi, 2008). There was also a revival in the number of films made about another tragedy, the 1950–1953 Korean War. Panels on Korean War films from both the North and South were organized in 2013 and 2015, which sought to explain the changing representations of the conflict.

The papers presented over the course of the four events met the original aims by exploring Korean screen cultures, but there are still as yet underexplored areas such as South Korean online gaming. The government famously grants exemptions from the military so that gifted gamers can master their skills, and whole television channels are devoted to MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games) like Aion. It is therefore somewhat surprising that little academic interest has been expressed in exploring the production and reception of what still appears to be a growth industry (Jin 2013, 151).

Observers of North Korean cultural output have often remarked rather disparagingly about the restricted character of television broadcasts in the country.⁵ However, foreign visitors who have spent a considerable time in the country have noticed that televisions are in fact a great status symbol, so why are televisions so sought-after, and what do North Koreans watch? (Lankov 2007, 58–59) Thus far there has been little interest in analyzing state produced television or pop music videos. Another area for future research is the phenomenal growth of international festivals on the Korean peninsula dedicated to the promotion of study of film – among them the Jeonju International Film Festival, the Seoul Queer Film Festival, the Pusan International Film Festival, the Jecheon International Music and Film Festival and the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival (PIFF). Of special interest is the existence of two PIFFs on either side of the 38th Parallel – the Pyongyang and the Pusan International Film Festivals. Many of these festivals date back to the South Korean film boom of the early 2000s, and while scholars have noted their importance in facilitating pan-Asian co-productions (Davis and Yueh-yu Yeh 2008, 140), questions remain about their proliferation, impact and sustainability.

Finally, I return to the start of this introduction – the very title of the conference itself: Korean Screen Culture, which is for the moment a relatively untheorized area. ‘Screen culture’ can be used in terms of more traditional screen media such as film and television, but also in the context of rapidly developing media technologies and the phenomenal spread of touchscreens as a source of information, entertainment and communication.⁶ South Korean companies like Samsung and LG, of course, are leading players in the production and distribution of touchscreen technologies and South Koreans – and increasingly North Korean elites – are avid consumers of such hardware, so both understandings of the term ‘screen culture’ are relevant to the conference. Most of the submitted papers fall under the first category of screen culture, and the conference awaits papers dealing with the technological, production or distribution aspects of interactive screen culture. One area of future interest may link the two definitions and investigate how new interactive technologies are impacting the consumption and distribution of Korean film and television in South and North Korea and beyond. These questions, like many others, are ones that I hope will enliven future Korean Screen Culture Conferences.

Most of the articles collected here in terms of genre, approach and geographical focus reflect the wide range of papers that have been presented at the four conferences. They cover South as well as North Korean cinema, and K-drama. There are historically-based analyses and reception studies, as well as investigations of film form. While some critics of Hallyu have condemned it as a mere imitation of earlier Japanese popular culture, scholars of regional cultural flows like Iwabuchi (2002) and Chua and Iwabuchi (2008) have argued that the success of Japanese television dramas and pop music helped pave the way for the widespread distribution and consumption of K-pop and K-drama in East Asia. In ‘The Topography of 1960s Korean Youth Film: Between Plagiarism and Adaptation’, Chonghwa Chung contextualizes the history of cultural borrowing between South Korea and Japan by focusing on the plagiarism of 1960s Japanese youth film by South Korean directors. Chung provides a more nuanced exploration of what is a complex cultural relationship between the two countries, and argues that there was a short period in South Korean cinema where plagiarism offered a quick and easy way for small scale filmmakers to produce movies. This was a time when their very existence was under threat from the modernizing efforts of the Park Chung Hee administration (1960–1979).

Dima Mironenko, in ‘North Koreans at the Movies: Cinema of Fits and Starts and the Rise of Chameleon Spectatorship’ adds to a growing body of work on North Korean consumers of state media that challenges the assumption that North Koreans are simply pre-programmed to believe all propagandistic state cultural product. Previous studies by Epstein (2002) on literature and by Lee (2000) on film scoured texts for possibility of subversive meanings. However, Mironenko provides what is perhaps the first reception study of North Korean audiences to show the non-conformism of spectators. Drawing on information from 1950s and 1960s North Korean newspapers and journal articles, Mironenko discovers that far from being compliant, the movie-going public was at times downright unruly. Pablo Utin, in his article ‘Sliding Through Genres: The “Slippery Structure” in Korean Films’ challenges the notion of genre-bending that has been accepted as a given in much literature on South Korean film. Utin argues that films like The Host (Gwoemul, Bong Joon-ho, 2006) transcend genre mixing to create a tonal shift which is far more unsettling for the viewer. In ‘Reading the “New World”: Neoliberalism in the South Korean Gangster Film’ Graham Neil Gillespie uses globalization and neoliberal theories to analyze three gangster films made between 1997 and 2013. Gillespie discovers a neoliberal gangster figure with a different worldview from the morally righteous gangster anti-heroes who have featured in South Korean gangster films of the past. One central feature of Hallyu is the popularity of K-drama outside the borders of South Korea. In her paper, Barbara Wall tries to account for the popularity of My Love from the Star in mainland China, arguing that it can be seen as a parody of a Korean literary classic The Dream of the Nine Clouds (Guunmong), which contains explicit references to the work. More than this, Wall believes the drama ridicules the Hallyu phenomenon itself.

This edition of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema is the third publication devoted to papers from the Korean Screen Culture Conference. Work from the 2013 conference was included in Acta Koreana 16:2 (December 2013) while papers from the 2012, 2013 and 2014 events were made into an edited collection Korean Screen Cultures: Interrogating Cinema, TV, Music and Online games. It is my hope that future Korean Screen Culture conferences will generate more published research of this sort (Jackson and Balmain 2016).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following for their help: Peter Paik, Brian Yecies, Isolde Standish, Griseldis Kirsch, Colette Balmain, Immanuel Kim, Mark Morris, Jinhee Choi, CedarBough Saeji, Jacob Ki Nielsen, Jae-hoon Yeon, Chi-Yun Shin, Hyun Joo Choi, Karin Jakobsen, Rukiye Demir, Jane Savory, Martin Petersen, David Scott Diffrient, Hye Seung Chung and my Korean Studies students for their assistance in the 2015 conference and in this special edition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Andrew David Jackson is Associate Professor of Korean Studies at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He obtained his Ph.D. in Korean history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2011. He is the author of The 1728 Musin Rebellion: Politics and Plotting in Korea (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016), and co-editor (with Colette Balmain) of Korean Screen Cultures: Interrogating Cinema, TV, Music and Online Games (Peter Lang, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

I would like to thank the Korea Foundation for sponsoring the 2015 Korean Screen Culture Conference and the Academy of Korean Studies who sponsored the 2012 and 2013 events under an Academy of Korean Studies (KSPS) grant funded by the Korean Government (MOE) [AKS-2011-BAA-2104].

Notes

1 Try to find ‘This work discusses North Korean (hereafter Korean) cinema during the … ’, for example.

2 The advertising blurb on the back cover of a recent publication equates Hallyu with Korean cultural product, ‘Korea’s national image’ and ‘domestic economy’ with qualifications appearing in the introduction (Lee and Nornes 2015).

3 The association of popular culture with capitalist modernity is shared by many other cultural scholars. Williams argues in his foreword to Culture and Society that the idea of culture in its modern and popular sense depends upon there being in place a capitalist market economy (1963, 11). See also Storey (2013, 5–14).

4 Chung (2014, 179) writes that Shin’s films contained the first cinema credits for actors and attracted such demand that ticket scalpers operated outside cinemas.

5 Cha (2012, 4–5) claims there are two channels. Weekday programmes do not start until 5 pm.

6 http://trendwatching.com/trends/12trends2012/?screenculture.