Joint Security Area and Seopyeonje: Understanding Movie and Society Catalitic Effects on Viewers' Changed Perceptions.

Introduction

When Im Kwontaek's Seopyeonje is released in 1993 in Korea, it becomes an instant box office “with over a million admissions in Seoul alone^[1]”. For Kim, this “was an unforeseen surprise especially when few expected that a film on a traditional music that has long disappeared from popular memory would be attracting people in such magnitude”^[2]. According to Yau, “[a] major effect of the movie is its ability to evoke, in the Korean audience, pride and enthusiasm for pansori, or in a larger context, the country's sophisticated cultural heritage“^[3]. Indeed, “[f]ollowing the unprecedented success of Sopyonje were various aftershocks that later came to be known as Sopyonje syndrome. People began feeling that they indeed had a beautiful and valuable national treasure that had long been forgotten and abandoned. With the syndrome, some wanted to learn pansori or other traditional arts”^[4]. In his thesis on the shape of Korean national ideology, Hurt indicates that the film caught up in a “futurist discourse”^[5]. This notion is discussed in a paper on consumer nationalism in South Korea by Nelson.

Bold Psychologization of the DMZ Landscape in JSA

Some may argue that other movies like Kang Jegyu's 1999 Shiri might have resulted in a similar willingness to accomodate among South Koreans because the film also proposes a humanistic projection of North Koreans, and even broke JSA box office. Yet, that a group of ROK^[6] Army veterans stormed the offices of the company which produced the film, demanding an apology and the addition of notices at the beginning and end of the film asserting the purely fictional nature of its narrative^[7]after JSA's release, means that the film's Sunshine casting was unprecedented. According to Morris, “[i]t was Song Kang-ho, [...] playing a North Korean sergeant, who made the strongest impression. Song has an extraordinary range, shifting from hulking menace to bumbling shyness to slapstick mugging almost without effort. It was a very clever piece of Sunshine casting to make the main North Korean soldier funny and, in the end, the wisest survivor”^[8]. However, beyond this humanistic representation of North Koreans characters, it is the new way in which the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is portrayed that accounts for JSA singularity.

Origin of the 1997 Sunshine Policy

Although JSA and Sopyeonje share similar landscape juxtaposition cinematic characteristics, is that enough to assert that JSA played the same catalytic role for the change in perception of North Koreans by South Koreans, as Sopyeonje did for the renaissance of pansori in Korea? According to Fuhriman, to understand contemporary South Korean cinema, it is necessary to understand what Stringer calls “the dominant narrative of South Korean society in the twentieth century”^[9] which was shaped by several factors, including the division of the peninsula at the end of World War II, the Korean War, and the international political climate. Therefore, in order to understand the social context in Korea when JSA was released, it is essential to trace back the origin of the 1997 Sunshine policy. In his article on the border crossing in The Spy and JSA, Kim argues that “[s]ince the end of the Korean War, both Koreas have prohibited their citizens from engaging in any level of humanitarian contact outside of government-controlled channels, such as communications between separated family members, intellectual and cultural exchanges, and any type of political discourse”^[10]. Besides, Fuhriman emphasizes that “[e]ven though the government of South Korea was officially a constitutional republic, [a] Public Ethics Committee was given the authority to censor or modify films before their release to the theaters. [...] In the 1960s, two directors were arrested (on separate occasions) and imprisoned temporarily for making movies which were deemed to be “sympathetic” to communism”^[11].

Conclusion

In view of the above, we can say that JSA did not play a catalitic role for the change in perception of North Koreans by South Koreans, but the Pyeongyang Summit did. Morris highlights that “JSA was released [...] only three months after Kim Dae-jung's trip to Pyeongyang for the summit with Kim Jong Il”^[12]. For him, “[t]he timing of the film's release, in the wake of the Pyongyang summit, was effective”^[13]. According to Kim, “[a]s news coverage of the Summit meeting in 2000 showed the previously unthinkable image of a South Korean president setting foot in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, [... t]he new South Korean films laid bare the artificial nature of the border and projected it as a Korean version of the Berlin wall, which should be torn down to promote freedom and joy on the part of both peoples”^[14]. Thus, Morris concludes that “[t]he film was able to take advantage of the mood of optimism, temporary though it turned out to be, towards a possible shared future”^[15].

References

^[1] Kim, “Creation of Pansori Cinema,” 150.

^[2] Kim.

^[3] Yau, “Creation of Pansori Cinema,” 16.

^[4] Kim.

^[5] Hurt, “Hangukinron”, 98.

^[6] Republic of Korea.

^[7] Morris, “Korea 2012,” 158.

^[8] Morris.

^[9] Stringer, “New Korean Cinema,” 3.

^[10] Kim, “Crossing the Border,” 221.

^[11] Fuhriman, “Representations and Landscape in Film,” 101.

^[12] Morris, “Korea 2012,” 157.

^[13] Morris, “Korea 2012,” 158.

^[14] Kim, “Crossing the Border,” 225-226.

^[15] Morris, “Korea 2012,” 157.

Bibliography

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Hurt, Michael. “Hangukinron: The Shape of Korean National Ideology.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2014.
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