In this article, I would like to examine cultural interactions between South Korea and Hong Kong in the 1960s. In the postwar era, ‘Free’ Asia of anti-communist states such as South Korea and Hong Kong shared human networks and similar historical ...
In this article, I would like to examine cultural interactions between South Korea and Hong Kong in the 1960s. In the postwar era, ‘Free’ Asia of anti-communist states such as South Korea and Hong Kong shared human networks and similar historical experiences which connect ed them beyond national borders. From the late 1950s, the two countries tested a possibility of cultural exchanges. A movie Love with an Alien co-produced by a South Korean company and Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers shows us the close distance of the two countries from an angle of an oversea Chinese woman who evacuated perhaps during the Korean War from South Korea to Hong Kong. Entering the 1960s, the Hong Kong Wave started in South Korea with surprising popularity of Wuxia films and novels. The Wuxia (Martial Arts) culture successfully appealed to South Korean popular audience who could easily understand moral heroism based on Confucian ethics. Especially, Shaw Brothers and ‘New Wuxia Culture’ of Hong Kong and Taiwan imagined transnational cultural identity of the Chinese at their Wuxia culture. Although South Koreans did not regard themselves as one of such imagined community, South Korean audience unexpectedly welcomed the Wuxia culture as universal stories, not as “Chinese” stories. As the 1960s came to an end, South Korea began to have its first Wuxia fandom which not only consumed the culture, but also tried to make their own local Wuxia culture. Many South Korean novels which claimed the authorship of Wolung Sheng appeared at the turn of the decade, and the phenomenon of the fake novels proved the rapid localization of Wuxia culture as a new sub culture in South Korea. Especially, the South Korean Wuxia culture took its root among male audience which embraced it as their new world of male fantasia. Thus, the popularity of Hong Kong Wave and hybridity of Wuxia culture in South Korea strongly indicates that South Korea was experiencing the dynamic growth of pop culture and the diversification of its cultural consumption and production.