Customer Reviews

Contemporary Korean Cinema: Culture, Identity and Politics

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Hyangjin Lee's "Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, Politics" has a main text less than 200 pages in length and devotes only 50 percent of its space to North Korea. Even so, the book is one of the most valuable studies available on North Korea, for Lee demonstrates throughout the book how "film is essentially a construct....a creation reflecting salient aspects of a prevailing ideology." That this is especially important in the case of North Korea is due to the fact that all movies in this tightly-controlled state are prdouced and scripted by the government and that the guiding hand behind cinema since the late 1960s has been none other than Kim Chong-il's.

It is clear from the introduction to "Contemporary Korean Cinema" that Lee has been classically trained in the theory of cinematic studies. The chapters that follow, meanwhile, indicate that she has a superb ability to analyze the aesthetics and symbolism of individual films. At the same time, she traces, with a most laudable economy, changing trends in North Korean ideology. This last feature, in particular, makes this book a must-read for all those tracking the arcana of P'yongyang politics.

"Contemporary Korean Cinema" is also a welcome introduction to the film of South Korea, with which audiences in the West, Asia, and the Middle East are more familiar. As South Korean film and television gain ever greater popularity overseas, Lee's book itself should merit increasing consideration and study.

Modern Korea is a complicated culture. This is particularly emphasized in Korean cinema and in its filmmaking tradition. In many cases, Korean cinema is propaganda based, as it attempts to present a very sterile view of how the countries inhabitants interact with each other, their society and their allegiance to the country. But there is a secondary breed of Korean cinema, where the characters are more deranged and live outside of the accepted cultural identity. This book identifies both elements of the cinema that comes form Korea and the foundational factors, such as Japanese occupation, that have given birth to modern cinema in this country.

Overall this is a very good book as it presents aspects of the foundations and the application of modern Korea filmmaking.