The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 44 | Number 3 | Article ID 3437 | Nov 01, 2010

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Disarming Japan's Cannons with Hollywood's Cameras:Cinema in Korea Under U.S. Occupation, 1945-1948　ホリウッドの映写機による脱日本化−−１９４５−４８年米国占領下の韓国における映画

Brian Yecies, Ae-Gyung Shim

Disarming Japan’s Cannons withHollywood’s Cameras: Cinema inKorea Under U.S. Occupation,1945-19481

Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim

Key words: Korean Cinema, Hollywood in SouthKorea, USAMGIK, Motion Picture ExportAssociation, U.S. Occupation, film policy

Abstract

Reorienting the southern half of the KoreanPeninsula away from the former Japanesecolonial government's anti-democratic, anti-American and militaristic ideology whileestablishing orderly government was amongthe goals of the U.S. Army Military Governmentin Korea (USAMGIK, 1945-1948). To helpachieve this aim on a wide front and as quicklyas possible, USAMGIK’s Motion Picture Sectionin the Department of Public Informationarranged the exhibition of hundreds ofHollywood films to promote themes ofdemocracy, capitalism, gender equality andpopular American culture and values. WhileU.S. troops in the field enjoyed the increasedavailability and calibre of American featurefilms, the Korean government-in-waiting wasaffronted by their perceived immorality.Standard Korean film histories focus on thehardships endured by Korean filmmakers, andthe conflicts among them, and on Hollywood’smonopoly of the screen in the era, a situationwhich USAMGIK film policy – strikingly similar

to the ordinances previously set in place by theJapanese – assisted. This study demonstrateshow many of these ‘spectacle’ films, which havehitherto largely gone unlisted, were designedto inculcate Western notions of liberty amongKoreans, while distracting them from atumultuous political scene. However, the filmsexhibited did not always live up to this loftypurpose. Along with positive portrayals of the‘American way of life’, representations ofviolent, anti-social and misogynistic behaviorwere foreign to Korean cultural and aesthetictraditions, and often provoked negativeresponses from local audiences.•

In July 1950, within days of the start of theKorean War, hundreds of 16mm prints ofHollywood feature and short films and morethan fifty film projectors were rushed fromJapan to US Army and United Nations troops inthe field. With many thousands of movies andover one thousand new projectors eventuallysent from the United States, the Motion PictureDivision of the Army’s General Headquarters,Far Eastern Command, went to great lengths toentertain the troops with some of the latestcommercial releases – such as SunsetBoulevard (1950), The Next Voice You Hear(1950), The Black Rose (1950) and Father ofthe Bride (1950) – as well as Disney animationsand current newsreels of the war (Pacific Starsand Stripes, 28 October 1950).

Onscreen entertainment was available tosoldiers in the field almost every nightthroughout the three-year conflict. Troops

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swapped foxhole assignments and huddledinside abandoned railroad tunnels, burned-outhouses and half-bombed buildings, enduringrain and freezing weather to catch a glimpse offilms that were often simply projected ontowalls or hanging bedsheets. In the words of oneanonymous soldier, “When you go the moviesover here, you get out of Korea for a couple ofhours” (Pacific Stars and Stripes, 28 Aug 1951,p. 10). These daily Hollywood film screeningswere a critical catalyst for raising the moraleand national spirit of the troops on the frontlines in Korea – an intriguing military strategyfor bolstering the fight for democracy.

This was not the first time that Hollywood filmsplayed a vital role in military affairs in Korea.Within seven months of Korea’s liberation fromJapanese colonial rule (1910-1945), and afterthe United States and Russia had carved thecountry in half, US film distributors rushedtheir most popular films to the southern half ofthe Korean peninsula. They were simplyfollowing the adage ‘trade follows the flag’(Self, 1944, p. 6), even as Lt. General John R.Hodge and his US Occupation forces weredisarming the Japanese military.2 Amid chaoticsocial, political and cultural change, localcinemas were inundated with a range of genrefilms from Hollywood. These were productionsthat the US Army Military Government in Korea(hereafter USAMGIK, 1945-1948) – underadvisement from the Central Motion PictureExchange, the U.S. film industry’s East Asianoutpost – believed would assist them to reversefour decades of Japanese influence – inparticular, to inculcate a sense of ‘liberty’among Koreans. Instead of thinking and actingsimilarly to Japanese, Koreans were nowexpected to think about what ‘America’ anddemocracy had to offer them.

Despite the monumental s ize of th isundertaking, most histories of the USAMGIKperiod such as Cumings (1997), McCune(1947), Meade (1951), and Oh (2002) lack asustained discussion of this significant cultural

aspect of the USAMGIK’s occupation strategyand its impact on local culture. These previousstudies mostly focus on politics and theeconomy – not culture, and especially not filmpolicy. Standard Korean film histories such asLee and Choe (1998), Lee (2000), Kim (2002),Min, Joo and Kwak (2003), Yi (2003) and Cho(2005) are important, but they focus narrowlyon the hardships and conflicts of Koreanfilmmakers in this era, and see Hollywood’sdomination of Korean screens as a threat tolocal culture.

Until now, little has been published in eitherKorean or English about the hundreds ofAmerican films – made with ‘Hollywood’scameras’, in contradiction to Japan’s nowsilenced ‘cannons’ (see Figure 1) – that weretargeted explicitly at Korean audiences throughadvert isements in Korean- languagenewspapers. Indeed, this plethora of films wasconsumed by thousands upon thousands oflocal cinemagoers, including, of course, U.S.Army personnel.

Soon after liberation, local filmmakers andentertainment entrepreneurs becamefrustrated at the ‘undemocratic’ ways in whichUS occupation policy was restricting theiractivities. A wave of young and experiencedfilmmakers, many of whom who had grown upon a heavy diet of Hollywood films between1926 and 1936, and who had gained valuabletraining making propaganda films for theKorean Colonial Government, were ready toexplore realist aesthetics, film as art, andnarratives that resisted Japanese power. Yet,USAMGIK film policy, which was a close copyof laws promulgated by the former colonialgovernment, kept Korean fi lmmakers subservient, albeit temporarily, to an

authoritative agenda that aimed at restoringdemocratic order to the region.

After 1945, members of the Korean filmindustry, in common with other cultural critics,expressed concern that Korea was simply being

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opened up to American goods and services, andKorean entrepreneurs were being sidelined. Infact, as this article shows, US film distributors(like the mining industry, for instance) weresimply seeking to restore the level of businessthat they had enjoyed in Korea before theColonial Government began suppressingAmerican film culture and commerce withAmerica more generally.

By analysing the impact of USAMGIK filmpolicy, and the major themes of a cross-sectionof Hollywood films exhibited in Korea, we seekto explain the circumstances in which theproject both failed and succeeded. Many of thespectacle films discussed here were used toevoke a sense of personal and political liberty,while distracting local audiences from thepolitical turmoil of the period. With thesethemes in mind, this exploratory study providesnew and important information about SouthKorea’s post-liberation film industry, which wasdesperate to break free from the legacy of 35years of Japanese colonial rule.

First, however, a brief history of Hollywood’sdominance in the region is presented to helpaccount for the influence of American film andAmerican culture on Koreans.

Korea Awakening

Between 1926 and 1936, Hol lywoodexperienced its first golden age in Korea(Yecies 2005). During this period, Americanfilms overwhelmingly dominated the Koreanmarket. In 1932, films from the U.S. (calculatedby length) amounted to 63 per cent of all filmprints exhibited (Yecies 2008, p. 163).Hollywood had a much smaller market share inJapan, where about 70 per cent of all filmsscreened were Japanese (Langdon 1934).During this decade, al l major US fi lmcompanies had direct distribution offices inSeoul, submitting around 5,700 prints to theGovernment-General of Korea’s film censorshipoffice through local Japanese, Korean,American and Chinese representatives. An

additional 640 Argentinian, British, Chinese,French, German, Italian and Russian films weredivided evenly between Japanese and Koreanrepresentatives, both individuals andcompanies.

Among the most popular American film genresfrom the mid-colonial era were musicals,mysteries, action adventures, historicaldramas, and gangster films. These were thegenres described by Hollywood mogul JosephM. Schenck, chairman of 20th Century-Fox, asmaking the big screen an ‘effective salesman ofAmerican products and the American way oflife’ (Benham 1939, p. 410). Asia was notimmune to this cultural allure.3

Perhaps surprisingly, colonial censorshiprestrictions posed little threat to this influxfrom Hollywood. From the evidence of filmcensorship statistics for the period betweenAugust 1926 and March 1935 – presented tothe 69th Imperial Diet by the Library Section ofthe Bureau of Police Affairs of the KoreanColonial Government – censorship in Korea wasstrict and careful. Korean customs and culturalnorms were seen as differing from those inJapan, and all films entering the country forpublic exhibition were assessed in light ofthis.4 Generally speaking, censorship lawsrestricted freedom of expression throughoutthe empire and suppressed films that critiquedKorean society under Japanese rule or glorifiedrevolution.5 With these considerations in mind,the vast majority of Hollywood films submittedwere approved with minor, if any, censorshipchanges, suggesting that the Government-G e n e r a l o f K o r e a a n d H o l l y w o o drepresentatives maintained good relationshipsat this period.6 In terms of the total footage ofall foreign films submitted, less than one-tenthof 1 percent was censored on the basis of beinga threat to public morals.7

With access to an increasing number of foreignfilms, Koreans had the opportunity to escapefrom their colonial realities. In 1934,

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screenings of Hollywood films approved by thecensor included I Am a Fugitive from a ChainGang (1932), Frisco Jenny (1932), Tiger Shark(1932), Winner Take All (1932), FootlightParade (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933),Captured (1933), 42nd Street (1933) and LittleGiant (1933).8 These exciting and entertainingfilms appealed to people of all ages and literacyskills, as their narratives relied little onknowledge of English. Common themes foundin these and other films mentioned in thisarticle – too numerous to discuss in detail –included modernity, capitalism, justice andurban lifestyles, among a host of ‘American’themes.9

Hollywood’s fortunes began to take a dive in1935 when Governor-General Ugaki mandatedthat one-third of all screenings had to be ofdomestic films (defined as Japanese or Korean),thus increasing the barriers for foreign moviesand precipitating a temporary boom in locallyproduced talkie films (Yecies 2008). Then, fromthe late 1930s, every scrap of film and everyfilmmaker in Korea was harnessed for Japan’swar-time film production project, which createda small number of feature-length propagandafilms to coalesce public support for Japan’swar-time agenda, largely aimed at culturalassimilation. Representative Korean-Japaneseco-produced films include Military Train(1938), Volunteer (1941), You and I (1941) andThe Straits of Chosun (1943).10

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor inDecember 1941, strict censorship guidelinesprevented Korea’s 120 cinemas from screeningfilms from the U.S. and other Allied countries.Naturally, Hollywood distributors lookedforward to the time when they could regain themarket dominance in Korea that they hadenjoyed during the middle years of theJapanese colonial period. The U.S. occupationof Korea was the solution – particularly withthe re-opening of Hollywood distribution officesthroughout the country from 1945.

Hollywood Rejuvenation

Following the end of the Pacific War, theUnited States and the Soviet Union dividedKorea at the 38th Parallel: the southern andnorthern parts of Korea to be temporarilygoverned by the US and USSR respectively inorder to facilitate the establishment of orderlygovernment. The US interim governmentproclaimed its intention to transform thesouthern part of the Korean Peninsula into a‘self-governing’, ‘independent’ and ‘democratic’nation.11

During this time, four pivotal US playerscontributed to the re-invigoration of cinemaculture in Korea: the Office of War Information(hereafter OWI),12 the Motion Picture ExportAssociation of America (hereafter MPEA),13 theCentral Motion Picture Exchange (hereafterCMPE)14 and the USAMGIK’s Motion PictureSect ion in the Department of Publ icInformation (hereafter DPI). The chief role ofthe DPI was to monitor and improve publicopinion towards the US and to democracy ingeneral in Korea.

Before the end of the war, and before the OWIwas incorporated into the US Department ofState (hereafter US-DOS) in September 1945,the OWI’s Bureau of Motion Pictures haddevised plans to continue ‘fighting withinformation’ in the post-war period (Barnes,1943, p. 34). It established key CMPE outpostsin Japan and the southern part of Korea,through which the U.S. government attemptedto facilitate democracy and stability in theregion. In addition to generating profits bydistributing American feature entertainmentfilms, the CMPE also distributed cultural andeducational documentaries and newsreels,while the USAMGIK’s DPI promulgated filmpolicy and initially oversaw film censorshipduring the US occupation.15 In US-controlledKorea, the Motion Picture Section wasestablished in 1945 under the PublicInformation Bureau of the DPI. It had the clear

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objective of “disseminating informationconcerning American aims and policies, thenature and extent of American aid to Korea,and concerning American history, institutions,culture, and way of life.”16 OWI governmentinformation manuals make it clear that movieswere viewed as ammunition for winning thewar for democracy.

Figure 1. left: cover of the Movies at War,Vol. 1 pamphlet published by the WarActivities Committee, Motion PictureIndustry, New York City, 1942. The

phrase ‘Cannon and Camera!’ appearsabove the bottom right image (p. 3). Thephrase ‘Films Fight for Freedom' appearsbelow the top right image (p. 6). Images

courtesy of Special Collections,University of Iowa Library.17

Hollywood films became a key vehicle forindoctrinating Koreans along these lines. InGermany, the US launched a similar project oftransforming its former enemy into ademocratic country through motion pictures. Inshort , Hol lywood f i lms were seen asquintessential vehicles for disseminating‘American’ ideology as ‘democratic products’(Fay, 2008, p. xix).

During the immediate post-war period, theUSAMGIK’s propaganda operation in Koreawas anchored by the dissemination of a flood ofglamorous Hollywood ‘spectacle’ films across arange of genres, filling a noticeable voidhitherto left empty by American, Korean,Japanese and other European films. As localfilm critics noted at the time, the sheerspectacle and extreme ‘foreignness’ of theHollywood films on show enabled audiences toforget about the political turmoil going onaround them (Lee, 1946, p. 4). The portrayaland promotion of modern Western city life inthe films discussed in this article was animportant facet of this process.

While the criteria used to select the Americanfilms distributed and exhibited in southernKorea appear somewhat random, many wereAcademy Award-winning (or nominated) filmssuch as In Old Chicago (1937), Boy's Town(1938), You Can’t Take it With You (1938),Suspicion (1941), The Sea Wolf (1941), RandomHarvest (1942), Casablanca (1942) andRhapsody in Blue (1945). In addition to havingachieved popularity in the United States, thesefilms presented well-dressed people scurryingalong the skyscraper-lined, car-filled streets ofManhattan, Paris and other modern cities.Heterosexual coupling was depicted as a moralnorm: lovers embraced openly on larger-than-life studio sets and natural locations alike.While many films contained strong moralthemes affirming the final victory of justice andthe importance of hope, others affirmedwomen’s (equal) rights, Christianity (religion)and patriotism. However, these themes wereoften expressed using less lofty motifs such asviolence, vigilantism, public disorder,deception, desperation, suicide, theft, murder,killings, adultery and corruption.

Through the importation of Hollywood filmsfrom the mid-1940s, Korean audiences wereexposed to large-scale, continuous visual andthematic representations that were totallyforeign to their own cultural traditions. And, if

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the advertisements published in Korean in localnewspapers are any indication, Koreanaudiences were the primary targets of thesefilms. Generally speaking, Koreans had hadlong-standing Confucian traditions thatrequired physical separation betweennoblemen and commoners on the one hand, andmen and women on the o ther hand .Confucianism provided the foundational social,moral and legal guidelines and customsbetween people of all ages. Not only didcinema-going in this era enable all walks of lifeto mingle together in ways that were differentfrom traditional Korean moral values, but theimages, themes and motifs presented in theonslaught of spectacle Hollywood films, whichwas not a new phenomenon, did continuallypresent ‘American’ situations that shook theroots of traditions and worried traditionalists.

Films such as Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take itWith You, exhibited in April 1947, offeredKorean audiences the opportunity to considernew ideas and social relations. In fact,Americans at home were told that the newlyliberated countries of East Asia were ‘seeing,with awe and envy, the homes and clothes andmotor cars of the world’s most prosperous andleast-suffering people’ (Missoulian, 13 March1945). In You Can’t Take it With You, an inter-class couple is presented as free to pursue anintimate relationship, resulting in a ‘happyending’ that portrays wealthy people sacrificingtheir personal gains and championingcommunity and family values. This was oneHollywood film among many that embracedthemes of social mobility and change throughmarriage in the face of seemingly incompatibleclass relations, pitting ambition and wealthagainst happiness and social acceptance.Heterosexual coupling and marrying withoutparental or family consent was linked to thedesire for social mobility through acquiringmaterial wealth in a modern society.

However, seeing is a culturally constructedprocess, and Korean audiences saw more than

they were perhaps intending to. In about half ofall the American feature films exhibited at thistime (and foreign films generally), what wasseen on the screen was often at odds with thewholesome values ostensibly being promoted –these movies offered Koreans a mixed view ofWestern culture where open expressions ofimmoral behavior sat alongside purporteddemocratic ideals. Property theft, fraudulentactivities, malicious intent, crimes againstindividuals and authority figures and sexualcontact of a kind eschewed in Confuciantradition filled local screens.

Fox’s In Old Chicago, produced by studiomogul Darryl F. Zanuck for almost $2 millionand released in Korea in Apri l 1946,exemplified the mixed messages received byKorean audiences from Hollywood. This filmshowcased major stars Tyrone Power, AliceFaye and Don Ameche, who deliver a dramaticmessage about overcoming poverty andfighting corruption. The film was inspired bythe Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and showedhow the city was rebuilt through determinationand perseverance. In Old Chicago portrays anIrish family in the second half of the 19 th

century struggling to survive in a ‘modern’society at a time when rough frontier townswere full of opportunity and the wealthy keptAfrican-American house-servants. In the first 5minutes of the film, as the family is travellingfrom the country to Chicago in their horse-drawn covered wagon, the father is killed whilechasing a passing steam train – a sleek symbolof modernity. In the next scene, the followingtext appears onscreen: “Chicago – 1854. A Cityof easy money, easy ways, ugly, dirty, opennight and day to newcomers from all parts ofthe world… a fighting, laughing, aggressiveAmerican city.”

The film is jam-packed with a wide range ofpositive and negative behaviors, includingchivalrous men helping well-dressed womenacross muddy streets, unmarried coupleskissing and hugging, fist fights and police raids

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in saloons, dancing girls in revealing clothes,and breaking and entering into private homes.Yet, as an overriding coda, In Old Chicago endswith the optimistic sentiment: ‘Out of the firewill be coming steel’—underlining the film’sprojection of themes of righteousness,corruption and manifest destiny in the contextof industrialization and American expansion.While the physical setting of the story perhapsshares some of the gritty feel of post-liberationKorean society, Asian audiences must have haddifficultly finding the democratic message in astory where ‘moral turpitude’ is so openly andabundantly on display.

Ironically, although it was a hit on Koreanscreens, In Old Chicago was suppressed by theUS Occupation authority’s Civil CensorshipDetachment in Japan – not because of flagrantimmorality, but because of its overt portrayal ofpolitical corruption.18 Hence, not all filmsbound for Korea via US distribution offices inJ a p a n e n j o y e d p u b l i c s c r e e n i n g s ,demonstrating differences in U.S. strategy inKorea and Japan. The difference reflectsdivergent objectives of the interim USgovernments in Korea and Japan. In Japan, theUS had spent seven years creating andmaintaining political stability in its formerenemy. The process of ‘democratizing’ Koreawas seen as a simpler task, achievable in justthree short years and requiring less politicalvigilance.

In fact, USAMGIK was well aware of thecriticism directed at the undesirable nature ofmany of these films. According to one reportfrom mid-1947 submitted to the US-DOS, acommittee of American educators that hadconducted a formal survey of local attitudes inKorea was disappointed at the CMPE’s failureto of fer appropriate f i lms to Koreanaudiences. 1 9

Hollywood Rollout

In February 1946, MPEA representatives, along

with a local liaison officer who had previouslyworked for Paramount, one of the most activeAmerican distributors in colonial Korea, openedCMPE’s Korean branch in Seoul. From theoutset, CMPE collected film rental fees from allexhibitors and documented daily box-officereceipts and monthly attendance figures; it alsomonitored audience reactions to US films aswell as those from other countries.20 Exhibitorswere required to pay CMPE at least 50 percentof all box office revenues as part of thedistribution deal, an arrangement whichKorean exhibitors severely criticised.21

Despite sophisticated market analysis,USAMGIK did not immediately gain the upperhand in Korean cinemas.22 After liberation, andbefore cinemas could be renamed fromJapanese to Korean names, a ‘black market’emerged for the unofficial distribution andexhibition of Hollywood and Soviet films andthose of other countries. Entrepreneurs andothers interested in intellectual social debate,including communism, began exhibiting soi-d isant i l lega l f i lms . To assert the irindependence, and to make a quick profitduring the exhibition vacuum left behind by thecolonial regime, these entrepreneurs screenedfilms such as Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill,Jr. (1928), The New Adventures of Tarzan(1935), and B-grade science fiction, gangsterand action-adventure films such as UnderseaKingdom (1936), What Price Crime? (1935),Sea Devils (1937), and The Ware Case (1938).Political films such as Leni Riefenstahl’sOlympia (1936) and the Italian fascistpropaganda film Lo Squadrone Bianco (1936)and the romantic drama Eravamo sette sorelle(1939) were also screened for the generalpublic. Movies from France, such as JulienDuvivier’s monster film Le Golem (1936) andhis gangster film Pépé le Moko (1937), andfilms from Argentina and China, were alsoexhibited.23

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Figure 2. Advertisements. top: ‘TheWhite Squadron’, New Corea Times 21December 1945, p. 2; bottom: ‘PuertaCerrada’, Hansung Daily 14 December

1946, p. 2; side: ‘Pépé le Moko’, HansungDaily 27 October 1946, p. 3.

Leftist entrepreneurs also stepped in the fill thegap in control of the film scene. BeforeUSAMGIK had begun in earnest to assist theUS film industry to spread ‘American’ views ofso-called democracy and modernity via theexhibit ion of Hol lywood f i lms, otherorganizations such as the left-wing ChosunFilm Federation (hereafter CFU) began holdingscreenings of Soviet feature films. In the earlypost-war period, CFU had stimulated debate insouthern Korea about Korea’s political andsocial future by screenings films, such asSergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944), aswell as Soviet newsreels (Armstrong 2003).They too were interested in developing newcultural ideas and attitudes that could helpKorea move away from the militaristic ideologyo f t h e f o r m e r J a p a n e s e c o l o n i a lgovernment.24 Yet, their activities were stronglyopposed by the USAMGIK authorities –particularly given the proximity of Soviet forcesin the northern part of Korea.25

USAMGIK eventually purged the marketplaceof these ‘unwanted’ films under Ordinance No.

68, ‘Regulation of the Motion Pictures,’promulgated in mid-April 1946. In October1946, US Occupation forces also enactedOrdinance No. 115, which regulated thelicensing of all commercial as well aseducational and cultural films.26 On paper,these ordinances abolished most colonial filmlaws, such as the Peace Preservation Law of1925, which has been referred to as Japan’s‘domination over the soul’ (Lee 1999, p. 42).The Peace Preservation Law was a social policyinstrument that rigorously detailed the culturalvalues and submissive behavior that imperialsubjects were expected to show. Yet, inactuality, the two USAMGIK ordinancesmaintained the spirit of Japanese colonialcensorship edicts, thus restricting Koreanautonomy in the film industry.27

In April 1946, the month the first USAMGIKordinance came into force, the first batch ofauthorized Hollywood films arrived in Seoul.Ironically, and seemingly haphazardly, theyarrived with Japanese subtitles via CMPE-Japan(Christian Science Monitor 12 April 1946,p.19). A rueful prologue produced by the DPI’sMotion Picture Section appeared at the start ofeach of film, explaining the presence of thesesubtitles.28 In order to connect with localaudiences, well-known Korean byeonsa (livenarrators) were recruited to introduce eachfilm and to explain how subsequent officiallydistributed films would contain either Koreansubtitles or part-Korean dialogue.29

Almost immediately, these first Hollywood filmsmade a splash in the marketplace as audienceslapped them up with enthusiasm, whether ofnot they understood them or appreciated thecultural values they contained (U.S. Embassy,Seoul 1950). According to the SupremeCommander of the Allied Powers (hereafterSCAP) reports on USAMGIK activities in Korea,between 15 April and 31 May 1946, nearly400,000 tickets to US feature films were sold,generating a turnover of Y4,000,000 (theequivalent of about $266,666). Subsequently,

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DPI’s Motion Picture Section stimulated a burstof censorship activity by approving 328applications to screen American and othercountries' f i lms, including a few fromKorea.30 By June 1946 about 100 feature, short,documentary and newsreel films had beenshown in southern Korean cinemas under thenew regulations, leveling off thereafter to amonthly total of about 50 films, a flow thatenabled CMPE to harmonize its activities withthe politics of the occupation.

Police confiscated at least a dozen unapprovedfilms from Korea, Germany, France and Italy inMay 1946, and 9 cinemas across Seoul wereshut down pending the arrival of approvedfilms to exhibit (Donga Daily 5 May 1946, p. 2).The confiscation of unauthorized films removedcompetition and restored the kind of marketdominance that Hollywood distributors hadenjoyed in the colonial period between 1926and 1936 (Yecies 2005). It also solidifiedMPEA’s growing footprint in post-war Asia.Prints that had not been approved by DPI weretreated as black-market goods, and confiscatedby USAMGIK police. Not only were pro-colonialand communist-oriented films, which violatedthe ideological spirit of the US Occupation,confiscated, but also any other films that mightinterfere with the monopoly that CMPE wasattempting to build on behalf of the Americanfilm industry. Thus the decision to confiscatesuch films was based on both economic andcultural factors.

Dawn of Re-orientation

The documentaries and newsreels distributedby CMPE arrived in Korea along with a largenumber of US feature films which, like theformer, were intended to serve the USAMGIK’sreorientation program. The larger list of filmsscreened in April 1946 included QueenChristina (1933), Barbary Coast (1935), TheDevil Doll (1936), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town(1936), Romeo and Juliet (1936), San Francisco(1936), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), The

Buccaneer (1938), The Rains Came (1939),Golden Boy (1939), Honolulu (1939), TheUnder Pup (1939) and Abe Lincoln in Illinois(1940). These were ‘prestige pictures’ in thesense that they were ‘injected with plenty ofstar power, glamorous and elegant trappings,and elaborate special effects’ (Balio 1995, p.180) – attractive packaging for presenting someof the core democratic reform values that theUS government wanted for Korea.31

Figure 3. Advertisement. Top:‘Honolulu’, Hansung Daily 14 July 1946,

p. 4; bottom: ‘The Buccaneer’, TheKorean Free Press, 13 May 1946, p. 2.

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Figure 4. Advertisements. left: ‘I WantedWings’ (1941), Jayu Shinmoon 4 May

1948, p. 2; middle: ‘Laura’(1944), Daidong News 8 June 1948, p. 2.

right: ‘Boom Town’ (1940), JayuShinmoon 27 August 1948, p. 2.

Based on advertisements in Korean thatappeared regularly in major local newspapers,a majority of the films screened at this timewere talkies produced between the mid-1930sand early 1940s. Action-adventure andhistorical bio-pics were prevalent, followed bymelodramas, screwball comedies, musicals,westerns, crime/detective thrillers, science-fiction and animated cartoons.3 2 Theseadvertisements attempted to lure audienceswith arousing drawings and silhouettes of filmstars, action scenes and exotic locations,promoting all the glamour of American culture.They depicted dashing portraits of leadingHollywood stars including Robert Montgomery,Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, George Raft,Eleanor Powell, Richard Dix, Clark Gable(about to kiss Claudette Colbert in Figure 4below) and Jean Arthur as a feisty cowgirl inArizona (1940).

Often, the images in these advertisementsrevealed little about the themes treated in thefilm concerned. In contrast to the happyromantic image featured in the advertisementfor MGM’s Boom Town reproduced below(Figure 5), the film portrays themes of frontier

exploration and desire for material wealth, aswell as jealousy and rivalry over women, andsocial mobility. These are all themes that wouldhave appeared in striking contrast to thecolonial ideology of the Japanese occupation,let alone the pre-colonial values to whichKorean audiences were accustomed. At thesame time, the graphic imagery of theadvertisements attracted non-Korean-speakingUS troops as well – a welcome secondaryaudience.

Figure 5. Advertisements. top: ‘UnionPacific’ (1939),Jayu Shinmoon 5 July

1948, p. 3; middle: ‘The Flame of NewOrleans’, Jayu Shinmoon 5 July 1948, p.

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3; bottom: ‘The Great VictorHerbert’, Jayu Shinmoon 14 July 1948, p.

3.

As these advertisements show, many of thesef i l m s c a r r i e d t h e ‘ h e a v y s c e n t o f“Americanism”’ (Yoshimi 2003, p. 434),portraying the United States as an exoticizedand ‘glamorous elsewhere’. Ads for Westernsdisplayed men in ten-gallon hats eitherembracing a pretty woman or pointing a gun atthe reader. Those for romantic dramas andmusicals, such as Romeo and Juliet (1936,exhibited in July, September and December1946 and in October 1947), I Wanted Wingsand Honolulu showed scantily-dressed womenand couples in passionate embraces. These andother films portraying ‘modern life’ showcased‘film stars, dance crazes, general oddities andglamorous strangeness’ (Vieth 2002, pp.23-24), and the newspaper ads faithfullyreflected this. Although exhibitors promotedprograms that mixed features with shorts andlive musical and/or theatrical performances, asurfeit of Hollywood films left little room forthe exhibition of films from Korea andelsewhere: movies which might have offeredalternative views of ‘America’ – and modernity,for that matter.

The USAMGIK Legacy

The question remains how successfullyAmerican films distributed and exhibited in thesouthern half of the Korean Peninsula meshedwith USAMGIK’s occupation strategy. The filmsselected originated from a variety of sources,including film distributors in Shanghai and U.S. film distributors' vaults in colonial Koreathat were impounded by the Japaneseauthorities after Pearl Harbor. Yet, regardlessof the origins of these prints, the US filmindustry was able to profit from the exhibitionof older and recycled films while at the sametime exploiting them for their cultural contents.In fact, before appearing in Korea, most if not

all these feature films would have undergonethe self-censorship process implicit inHollywood’s Motion Picture Production Code.This industry initiative attempted to ensurethat stories and scenes contained appropriatecontent for domestic viewers. USAMGIK wouldno doubt have been confident that these star-driven films – often in the running for Oscars –upheld the kind of moral values and accurateportrayals of (American) society that would notoffend Korean audiences.

However, as we have seen, while many CMPEfilms approximated this model, an equalnumber offered a different view of America:one that depicted opulence, feisty andindependent female characters, unrestrainedlove-making, violent themes and an exoticcultural milieu that was both thrilling anddangerous – as newspaper advertisementscontaining guns attest. This suggests thatCMPE was keen to select sensational films thatwould bring both locals and Occupation troopsto the cinemas in droves, without carefullydistinguishing between these two audiences.

The portrayal of gender themes especially waspotentially problematic. Otto Preminger’s film-noir mystery-romance Laura portrays thefemale protagonist as a successful and savvyadvertising executive. Her traits and abilitiesare continually questioned in the context of the‘proper’ conduct of women and classboundaries. 3 3

We have no way of knowing whether thepopularity of the films discussed in this articleequated with their success in implantingAmerican ideologies of democracy and genderequality in Korean audiences. DPI officials mayhave been preoccupied with larger issues orlacked sufficient motivation to gain a deeperunderstanding of Korean culture and theaspects of American movies that would appealto Korean audiences. On the face of it, it shouldnot have been too diff icult for the USauthorities to select for general release films

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with a predominantly positive message whilewinnowing out their less edifying counterparts.Films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington(1939), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Mr.Deeds Goes to Town, Penny Serenade (1941),The Rains Came and Random Harvest werebetter vehicles for showcasing democratic andother ‘wholesome’ ideals and values thatrepresented the best of what ‘America’ had tooffer. However, an equal number of filmsevidently catered to US troops rather thanKoreans.

Clearly, however, there was a limit to what theUSAMGIK and CMPE could achieve in the shorttime at their disposal. Nor were CMPE and theUS film industry the only parties at fault. Otherforeign films such as the French gangster filmPépé le Moko (1937) and the musical comedyAvec Le Sourire (1936), Monte Carlo Madness(1932), Burgtheater (1936) and the sex andhorror film Alraune (1928) from Germany, aswell as Puerta Cerrada (1939) from Argentina,titillated audiences with provocative imagesb o t h o n s c r e e n a n d i n n e w s p a p e radvertisements. DPI fai led to censorobjectionable or obscene content from theseforeign films as it was more concerned withblocking films with communist sympathies andany Hollywood films obtained throughunofficial – that is, non-CMPE/MPEA –channels. As a result, audiences were freelyexposed to films like Pépé le Moko, set inAlgiers’ seedy casbah underworld wheregunfights are common, and a melting pot ofgypsies, Slavs, blacks, Arabs, homeless people,Sicilians, Spaniards, prostitutes and corruptofficials stands in stark contrast with the(apparently civilized) French colonialauthorities. The film’s negative ending depictsthe protagonist’s suicide after losing thechance to develop love and trust with hisgirlfriend (who betrays him), and thus, toredeem himself.

Hence, as we have already suggested, USinvolvement in developing a new age of cinema

culture in liberated Korea was more complexthan previous studies have indicated. WhereasAmerican films received a warm reception inJapan into the early 1960s (MPEAA 1961), inKorea they experienced tougher marketrestrictions after President Rhee took office in1948. Although the general public wasenthusiastic about Hollywood ‘spectacle films’,intellectuals and the Korean government sawAmerican films (and USAMGIK film policy) as athreat to Korean culture and tradition, and ahindrance to developing a local industry.Despite their entertainment value, Americanfilms that promoted themes of violent and anti-social behavior, and frequently portrayedWestern notions of ‘gender equality’, hadunintended consequences in Korea.

Political turmoil on the ground posed difficultchallenges for US occupation forces and forUSAMGIK’s attempts to execute a highlyorganized cultural re-orientation campaign. Asa result, US occupation authorities likelymisunders tood l oca l concerns andunderestimated the impact that thirty-fiveyears of Japanese colonialism had had onKorea. Nevertheless, USAMGIK’s aim ofreorientating Koreans away from the legaciesof the former Japanese colonial regime wasachieved with surprising ease by allowinghundreds of Hollywood spectacle films backinto the region. Their contents could not havediffered more from the propaganda andcultural films that the Korean ColonialGovernment had obliged audiences to watch(and Korean filmmakers to make) between1937 and 1945. In pursuing this course,USAMGIK had indeed disarmed Japan’s‘cannons’ with Hollywood’s cameras.

However, both domestic audiences and USOccupation forces were too distracted by thepolitical situation for a comprehensiveHollywood re-orientation project – combinedwith other US-controlled media such as radioand print propaganda – to generate newcultural ideas and ideals. Ultimately, the

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procession of glamorous images and stirringstories in films and other media kept the post-liberation euphoria flowing until USAMGIKcould stabilize the southern half of the KoreanPeninsula. While CMPE’s films may not havehad the immediate and solid effect on Koreansfor which USAMGIK had hoped , theentertainment and exoticism associated with‘America’ certainly lingered in the minds ofKorean audiences.

At the same time, although USAMGIK saw allits activities as contributing to the growth ofdemocracy, it hardly needed to work asdiligently as it did to generate ‘American’attitudes among Koreans because Hollywoodfilms (and therefore, American culture) hadonly been suppressed for 7 or 8 years before1945. In addition, traditional Korean culturehad never been completely suppressed, despitethe colonial authority’s efforts to implementJapanese language into everyday learning andcommunication.

Eventually, a steady diet of Hollywoodproductions – regardless of whether theirnarrative styles fell outside the Motion PictureProduction Code guidelines – proved too muchfor Korean audiences including president-in-waiting Syngman Rhee. According to ananonymous article in the right-wing newspaperChung Ang Shinmoon (31 March 1948),American pictures seduced Koreans with the‘thrill of murder and gangsterism, with fickleand promiscuous love, with frenzied jazz, andwith the pleasures of life in foreign countries’,thus seriously affronting Korean culturalnorms.34 Other critics were concerned thatKoreans were mindlessly consuming theeroticism, glamour and fantasy depicted inAmerican films without considering the massivegulf between everyday life and culture in theUS and in Korea (Lee, Kyunghyang Daily 30October 1946, p. 4). The open expressions ofsexuality and boisterous behavior portrayed inthese films were seen by American educationspecialists (on a formal fact-finding visit to

Korea) as culturally insensitive and potentiallyinjurious to Korea’s Confucian traditions andnational pride (USAMGIK 1947).

By March 1949, only six months after the endof the USAMGIK period and establishment ofthe Republic of Korea, Hollywood’s economicstronghold in the southern part of Korea wasalready slipping. President Syngman Rhee wasdeveloping regulations to limit the number ofimported American films – partly to assist therebirth of a domestic film industry and partly tolimit the public’s exposure to what was seen asobjectionable content (US Embassy, Seoul1949).35

The proponents of such views were moreinterested in seeing and producing films withmore appropriate and edifying themes tocounter those embedded in the militarypropaganda films produced during the last fewyears of the Japanese colonial period and theperceived vulgarity and objectionable contentof Hollywood films. After years of suppressionby the Japanese colonial authorities, workers inthe Korean film industry were genuinelylooking forward to the stimulation of thedomestic industry that USAMGIK was supposedto have offered after liberation. However, thereality of CMPE’s market dominance quicklytarnished these hopes. As one newspapereditor summed up the issue early on: “TheCMPE’s coming to Korea was not to fertilizeKorean cinema, but to plant a strong tree of theAmerican cinema over the top of the sproutingKorean cinema” (Seoul Newspaper 26 May1946, p. 4).

Nonetheless, the domestic industry revived aslocal filmmakers consolidated their productionskills and re-used equipment formerly ownedby the consolidated Chosun Film Productionand Distribution Co. that the ColonialGovernment created between 1941 and 1942. Itwas also happy to answer USAMGIK’s call forthe production of Liberation News shorts and asmall number of ‘Liberation’ feature films. As a

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result of these and other factors, thefoundations of a national film industry werelaid.

Although progress was disrupted by the civilwar, the Korean film industry blossomed bothin terms of its size and of the quality andnumber of films made in the mid-1950s,starting with the release of Lee Kyu-hwan's TheTale of Chunhyang (1955) and Kim Ki-young’sYang san Province (1955). Invitations tointernational fi lm festivals increasedproportionately. The 111 films made in 1959constituted a dramatic increase over the mere15 films made in 1955 (KMPPC, 1976, p. 47).

Although the full impact of USAMGIK’s re-orientation film programme on Korea is likelyto remain unknown, a deeper understanding ofits policy underpinnings, execution and pitfallsprovides new insights into how this culturalproject contributed, at least in theory, to the‘Americanizing’ of the region. Ironically, SouthKorea’s love affair with Hollywood feature filmsrevived during the 1950s and 1960s, a processwell-documented in McHugh and Abelmann(2005). The continuing popularity of Hollywoodgenre conventions, iconography and the starsystem, conspicuous in many Golden Ageclassics from Madame Freedom (1956) toBarefoot Youth (1964), suggests that theHollywood films distributed during theUSAMGIK period may have had a longer-termcultural impact than can be gleaned fromdistribution and exhibition statistics alone.

Brian Yecies is Senior Lecturer in Media andCultural Studies and the Co-convenor of theBachelor of Communication and Media Studiesdegree at the University of Wollongong. Hisresearch focuses on film policy, the history ofcinema, and the digital wave in Korea. He is apast recipient of research grants from the AsiaResearch Fund, Korea Foundation andAustralia-Korea Foundation. His book Korea’sOccupied Cinemas, 1893-1948 (with Ae-Gyung

Shim), which is supported by the Academy ofKorean Studies, is forthcoming in theRoutledge Advances in Film Studies series.

Ae-Gyung Shim teaches part-time in theBachelor of Communication and Media Studiesdegree program at the Univers i ty ofWollongong, and is an avid cook. Her PhDthesis, written while studying in the School ofEnglish, Media and Performing Arts at theUniversity of New South Wales, focuses on thetransformation of film production, direction,genre and policy in South Korea during the1960s golden age.

Recommended citation: Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim, "Disarming Japan’s Cannons withHollywood’s Cameras: Cinema in Korea UnderU.S. Occupation, 1945-1948," The Asia-PacificJournal, 44-3-10, November 1, 2010.

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Farhi, P 1988, ‘Seoul’s Movie Theaters: RealSnake Pits?’, The Washington Post (17September): 14.

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Hicks, OH 1947, ‘American Films Abroad’,Journal of the Society of Motion PictureEngineers 49:4, October, pp. 298-299.

Hirano, K 1992, Mr Smith Goes to Tokyo:Japanese Cinema Under the AmericanOccupation, 1945-1952, Smithsonian InstitutePress, Washington D.C.

Iwasaki, A 1939, ‘The Korean Film’, CinemaYear Book of Japan 1939. International CinemaAssociation of Japan and the Society forInternational Cultural Relations, Tokyo, pp.64-65.

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Lee, TW 1946, ‘How are we going to watch USfilms’, Kyunghyang Daily, 31 October, p. 4.

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Yi, HI 2003, ‘The Korean Film Community andFilm Movements During the Post-liberationEra’, Traces of Korean Cinema From 1945 to1959, Korean Film Archive, Seoul, pp. 11-89.

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Notes

1 The authors acknowledge the generousresearch support from the Academy of KoreanStudies, Asia Research Fund, and KoreaFoundation. Invaluable guidance was providedby librarians and archivists at the University ofMaryland-College Park (Gordon W. PrangeCollection), National Archives (NARAII, CollegePark), University of Wisconsin-Madison, UnitedArtists Collection State Historical Society ofWisconsin, Special Collections in the Universityof Iowa Library (Papers of the VictorAnimatograph Corp.), Cinema/TelevisionLibrary, Korean Heritage/East Asian Libraryand Warner Bros. Archives at USC, Arts SpecialCollections at UCLA, and the Margaret HerrickLibrary-Academy of Motion Picture Arts and

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Sciences in Los Angeles. Special thanks goes toMark McLelland, Mark Caprio, Mark Morris,and Hiroshi Kitamura for valuable commentson earlier drafts.

2 An insightful article about USAMGIK by Lt.General Hodge appears as “With the U. S.Army in Korea”, National GeographicMagazine, June 1947, pp. 829-840.

3 The comprehensive Korean Cinema: FromOrigins to Renaissance (2007), by the KoreanFilm Council, has grossly underestimatedHollywood’s activities in colonial Korea and itslong-term links to the US film industry’sstronghold in the Asian region.

4 Censorship statistics cited in this article comefrom: “Table of Censored Motion Picture Films,1 August 1926 to 31 March 1935” (Katsudōshashin [firumu] ken’etsu tōkeihyō, Taishōjūgonen hachigatsu tsuitachi kara Shōwa jūnensangatsu sanjūichinichi made), Sixty-ninthI m p e r i a l P a r l i a m e n t D o c u m e n t(Dairokujūkyūkai Teikoku Gikai Setsumeishiryō), Library Section of the Bureau of PoliceAffairs, Korean Colonial Government (ChōsenSōtokufu Keimukyoku Toshōkan Teikoku GikaiSetsumei shiryō), Serial# CJA0002448, File#101-7 -1 -2 , Min is t ry o f GovernmentAdministration and Home Affairs, GovernmentArchives and Records Service, Daejon, Korea(hereafter cited as Archives and RecordsService); and “Table of Censored MotionPicture Films, 1 April 1935 to 31 March 1936”(Katsudō shashin [firumu] ken’etsu tōkeihyō,Shōwa jūnen shigatsu tsuitachi kara Shōwajūichinen sangatsu sanjūichinichi made), Sixty-ninth Imperial Parl iament Document(Dairokujūkyūkai Teikoku Gikai Setsumeishiryō), Library Section of the Bureau of PoliceAffairs, Government-General of Chōsen, File#CJA0002471, Archives and Records Service

5 One of the primary aims of the Library Sectionwas to suppress material regarded aspromoting such subversive themes, in

particular Korean independence andcommunism – rather than block foreign filmsoutright.

6 Although during this decade minor cuts weremade to Universal, Fox and Paramount films(75, 63, and 51 cuts respectively) for allegedlyviolating public peace and safety, only 10 (outof a total 3599) individual reels fromParamount were completely rejected by thecensors, while Universal and Fox suffered norejected reels.

7 Between 1926 and 1935, two-thirds of allUniversal films submitted for censorshipapproval to the Library Section of the Bureau ofPolice Affairs were handled by Koreandistributors/importers, and two-thirds of all Foxfilms were represented by Japanese. Nearly allParamount films from this decade wererepresented by Koreans.

8 United Artists collection, Series 1F Box 5-5,State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

9 In 1932 alone, around one in every threeKoreans (of all ages) was watching moviesmainly made in America and Japan, but alsoincluding films from other countries (Langdon1934).

10 During this time, and through the narrativesin these films, the Korean Colonial Governmentintensified its encouragement for Koreans tosupport Japan’s colonial (and nationalistic)agenda, which was formalized in 1938 underthe naisen ittai (naeseon ilche in Korean), or‘Japan and Korea as One Body’ assimilationistpolicy (Eckert, 1991, p. 236).

11 Records of the US Department of Staterelating to the internal affairs of Korea,1945-1949, Department of State, Decimal File895, Reel 5, ‘US role in Korea’, NationalArchives at College Park, Maryland (hereaftercited as NARAII).

12 The OWI had been developed in the United

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States in mid-1942 to coordinate the massdiffusion of media and information at home andabroad through multiple governmentdepartments. To remain as close to theAmerican film industry as possible, OWIoperated a branch office in Hollywood. Itpublished government information manualsthat advised industry representatives abouthow ‘the motion picture should be the bestmedium for bringing to life the democraticidea’ – that is, American notions of ‘freedom’.

13 MPEA was formed in June 1945 under theWebb-Pomerene Act in order to support the USeconomy and to promote world peace. Theorganization developed influential tradestrategies that successfully overcame foreignmarket barriers and increased distributionprofits for its member companies.

14 In early 1946 OWI and MPEA formallycoalesced under the name of the CentralMotion Picture Exchange. Among other roles,CMPE was charged with controlling thedistribution rights for MPEA members’ filmsthroughout Asia.

1 5 See ‘Operational Guidelines for theDistribution of O.W.I. Documentaries andIndustry Films in the Far East’, 22 December1944, Records of the OWI, Records of theHistorian Relating to the Overseas Branch,1942-1945, RG 208, Box 2, Entry 6B, NARAII.

16 Department of State Decimal File 1945-1949,RG59, BOX 7398, ‘Report of the Educationaland Informational Survey Mission to Korea’,Seoul, Korea 20 June 1947, p30. NARAII.

17 This material is also contained in: Records ofthe OWI, Records of the Historian Relating tothe Domestic Branch, 1942-1945, RG 208, Box1, Entry 6A, NARAII.

18 “A Manual for Censors of the Motion PictureDepartment”, RG331, Box 8603, Folder 7,SCAP Records, NARAII.

19 In its report, the committee stated: “The onlyAmerican films generally available to Koreansare old feature films distributed by the Koreanbranch of the Motion Picture ExportAssociation. These are of inferior quality andare completely inappropriate vehicles forpresenting American culture in Korea. As inother oriental countries, motion pictures areenthusiastically received by the Korean public.”See Repor t o f the Educa t i ona l andInformational Survey Mission to Korea, 20 July1947, pp 35-36. US-DOS, Decimal File 1945-49,RG59, Box 7398. NARAII

20 See ‘Memorandum’, from M. Bergher to theChief of the C. I. & E., 12 April 1946. RG331,Box 5062, Folder 15, ‘Motion Pictures, Sep1946 – Dec 1947’, and Box 1020, Folder 9,‘Central Motion Picture Exchange’, SCAPRecords, NARAII.

21 According to the former manager of theChosun Film Company, profit-sharingarrangements had been better for Koreanexhibitors under Japanese rule, when they hadbeen only 35-40 percent. For older filmindustry operatives in Korea, the CMPE’shigher fees were an unwelcomed challenge(Joongoi Daily 19 April 1946, p. 4).

22 Systematic market intelligence was suppliedto the Chief Film Officer of DPI, whichforwarded it to the OWI Motion Picture Bureauin New York for discussion among film industryexecutives. The CMPE’s data collectionprocesses helped them cultivate Korean andJapanese markets for future MPEA domination.

23 It is important to list these titles herebecause their screenings demonstrate a senseof initiative among Koreans that USAMGIKeventually blocked. Their exhibition alsoreveals a greater diversity in the nationalcinema scene in the earliest stages of the USoccupation than was the case with Japan, asdiscussed in Hirano (1992) and Kitamura(2007; 2010).

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2 4 Caprio (2009) suggests that Japan’sassimilation project failed because there wasno real intention on the Japanese side to allowKoreans to be fully assimilated into Japaneseculture. Nevertheless, it seems the colonialauthorities were at least successful in creatinga fantasy world where Koreans could act morelike their fellow Japanese as a result of theirindoctrination in Japanese language, education,customs and culture.

25 Before it was silenced, and before restrictivefilm regulations were enacted, CFU ran articlesin the daily press criticizing CMPE for its closeties to USAMGIK and its monopoly of the localexhibition market. Other groups attempted toscreen colonial-era films such as Crossroads ofYouth (1934) and the propaganda film MilitaryTrain (1938). However, USAMGIK forcesquickly confiscated these and all other films notapproved by DPI in advance of their publicexhibition.

26 General Headquarters, SCAP, Commander inChief, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, 1946,‘Monthly Summation No. 8’, US Army MilitaryGovernment Activities in Korea, Tokyo, May, p.88; and 1946, ‘Monthly Summation No. 13’,October, p. 81.

27 The USAMGIK’s new powers soon becameapparent. Its censorship process required 3copies of every screenplay in English to bedelivered to it, regardless of the languagespoken in the film in question. All films,including those already in Korea, were subjectto censorship approval, a rule which attractedimmediate complaints from Korean filmmakersand other industry businesspeople that foundtranslation costs prohibitive (Seoul Newspaper5 May 1946, p. 5; Jayu Newspaper 5 May 1946,p. 3.)

28 RG331, Box 5062, Folder 15C “MotionPictures, Sep 1946-Dec 1947”, SCAP Records,NARAII.

29 Shipping this first batch of prints to Korea

was no doubt seen as efficient and economical,suggesting that the US authorities had sentwhatever prints were available – probably stockabandoned by US distributors during the war.This implies a limited effort with limitedresources to control the film market in Korea –in contrast to the situation in Japan discussedelsewhere by Kitamura (2007; 2010).

30 General Headquarters, SCAP, Commander inChief, US Army Forces, Pacific, 1946, ‘MonthlySummation No. 9’ , US Army Mil i taryGovernment Activities in Korea, Tokyo, June, p.79; and 1946, ‘Monthly Summation No. 11’,August, p. 88. Our understanding is that theexchange rate between USD and Japanese Yen(in Japan) was set at Y15 per $1 in the wake ofwar in September 1945, and the inflation of theearly postwar economy led to a rate change toY50 per $1 in 1947. Eventually, this wascapped at Y360 per $1 in 1949.

31 Whether or not these big-budget spectaclefilms successfully embodied or transmitteddemocratic ideology and other ‘American’ideals to Koreans, they were regularly screenedover the course of the USAMGIK period – eachabout once every six months (for several daysat a time).

32 These and other films distributed by CMPEhad little competition in the entertainmentfield, apart from frequent live theatrical andmusical performances and a few screenings ofolder Korean films such as Ahn Seok-young’s1937 talkie feature The Story of Shim Cheong,Na Un-gyu’s silent classic Arirang (1926), andChoi In-gyu’s colonial propaganda film Angelson the Streets (1941). The evidence suggeststhat the exhibition of a small number of Koreanfilms was allowed by USAMGIK to placatedomestic criticism of CMPE’s ‘anti-democratic’practices. Arirang was screened multiple times,including at the Jeil Cinema (Segye Daily 9April 1947, p. 2) and on 28 July 1948 at theChosun Geukjang (Jayu Shinmun 28 July 1948).

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33 And on the subject of portrayals of alternativefemale sexuality, one may ask how a pre-Codefilm with a lesbian subtext such as QueenChristina could be seen as exemplifyingAmerican moral and cultural values.

34 This quote, an English translation of theoriginal article, is contained in: ‘Dispatch No.

80: Korean Opposition to American MotionPictures’, 7 April 1948. Records of the US-DOSrelating to the internal affairs of Korea,1945-1949, microfilm reel #7, Decimal File895. NARAII.

35 US film industry representatives wereanticipating a maximum of only seventeen filmsallowed into Korea per year.