Lately, study on Korean Cinema in the Japanese colonial era has been briskly carried on according as several early Korean films were found in Japan and China since 1990s. There has been remarkable progress made in analyzing and historicizing them, bre...
Lately, study on Korean Cinema in the Japanese colonial era has been briskly carried on according as several early Korean films were found in Japan and China since 1990s. There has been remarkable progress made in analyzing and historicizing them, breaking out the existing nationalistic paradigm. Until now, however, there are not enough researches on why they were exported abroad, who watched them, and how they were received there.
In this study, I raise the necessity of considering Korean Diaspora and their cinematic experience during the colonial occupation. I hereby specifically examine early Korean films exported into Japan at the time and their receptions by Korean immigrants as well as Japanese. Korean film was showed not only in Korea but in Japan, Manchukuo, Hawaii, and so forth, with Japanese territorial expansion that pushed Koreans out there. Specially in Japan, some of them were imported from the silent era and there were quite frequent exchanges in human and material resources to make films together between Korean and Japanese since then. This paper clarifies what kind of Korean film was imported and shown in Japan, examining thoroughly the censorship records of the Japanese Interior Department and the source book of the Cooperative Association. And it also deals with the issue of the local colored film strategy to internationalize Korean film industry, however, which conformed Japanese stereotype about Korean and their culture.