Korean War Posters
U.S. Army poster depicting the breakthrough at the Battle of Chipyong-ni

Many films, books, and other media have depicted the 1950—53 Korean War. The TV series M*A*S*H is one well known example. The 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate has twice been made into films. The 1982 film Inchon about the historic battle that occurred there in September 1950 was a financial and critical failure. By 2000 Hollywood alone had produced 91 feature films on the Korean War.[1] Many films have also been produced in South Korea and other countries as well.[2]

Film

Compared to World War II, there are relatively few Western feature films depicting the Korean War.

American films

Australian films

  • Birthday Boy (2004) is a short animated film directed by Sejong Park and produced by Andrew Gregory. It depicts a young boy Manuk playing on the streets of a village in war-stricken Korea. When Manuk returns home he receives a package containing soldier's personal effects. Unable to read and too young to understand its meaning he mistakes the package for a birthday present. The film won 30 film festival awards and was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

British films

  • A Hill in Korea (1956) is a British war film. The original name was Hell in Korea, but was changed for distribution reasons, except in the U.S. It was directed by Julian Amyes[8] and the producer was Anthony Squire.

Canadian films

  • Korea: The Unfinished War (2003) is a documentary written and directed by Canadian Brian McKenna, which provides new information and adopts an objective editorial line. It interviews researches that allege that the US committed war crimes by using biological warfare on North Korean territory. The documentary provides information that certain munitions found on the battlefield point to the use of anthrax, bubonic plague and encephalitis by US forces. It also provides information that the US Army deliberately killed civilians on a large scale for fear that the communists were infiltrating them.

South Korean films

North Korean films

In North Korea the Korean War has always been a favorite subject of film, both for its dramatic appeal and its potential as propaganda. The North Korean government film industry has produced many scores of films about the war. These have portrayed war crimes by American or South Korean soldiers while glorifying members of the North Korean military as well as North Korean ideals.[11] Some of the most prominent of these films include:

Chinese films

Philippine films

  • 10th Battalion sa 38th Parallel, Korea was directed by Gerardo de León.
  • Korea (1952) was directed by Lamberto V. Avellana with screenplay by Benigno Aquino Jr.
  • Batalyon Pilipino sa Korea (1954) was directed by Carlos Vander Tolosa.
  • Lagablab sa Silangan (1956) was directed by Constancio T. Villamar.
  • The Forgotten War (2009) tells about Filipinos who fought the battle of Yultong.

Thai films

  • อารีดัง (Aridang): Thai pronunciation of Arirang, directed by Jazz Siam and started Jatupol Puuapirom (1980)

Turkish films

Literature

In South Korea novelists Pak Wansŏ and Ch’oe Yun and film director Kang Chegyu use the war experience to explore geography, time, memory, and history. Their narratives are set decades after the war ended, but emphasize long-term memories and results.[14]

  • Choi In-hun's The Square is one of the most important novels about the Korean War from the 1960s.[15]
  • Jo Jung-rae's ten-volume Taebaek Mountain Range was one of the most popular novels in the 1980s. It also covers the Korean War.[16]
  • The essay Who are the Most Beloved People? (1951) by Chinese writer Wei Wei is considered to be the most famous literary and propaganda piece produced by China during the Korean War.
  • The war-memoir novel War Trash (2004), by Ha Jin, is a drafted PVA soldier's experience of the war, combat, and captivity under the UN Command, and of the retribution Chinese POWs feared from other PVA prisoners when suspected of being unsympathetic to Communism or to the war.

Music

Singer-songwriter David Rovics sings about the Korean War in his song "Korea" on the album Song for Mahmud.

Opera

Painting

Massacre in Korea (1951), by Pablo Picasso, depicts war violence against civilians.

Sculpture

Television and newsreels

  • West German newsreels for theatrical release often carried an antiwar commentary. For example, the September 1950 issue included the following spoken text:
In Korea, however, a war is being waged without mercy. New, dangerous situations have arisen for UN forces. The North Koreans launched an unexpected general offensive. The enemies accuse each other of the cruelest war crimes. The wretchedness of mankind is brought home to us. Goodness is peace, evil is war; peace is freedom and war is violence. There is no good reason for man to go to war--anywhere in the world![18]
  • M*A*S*H (1972–83); based on the novel and film (see above), the TV series had a total of 251 episodes, lasted 11 years, and won awards. Its final episode was the most-watched program in television history.[19] Yet the sensibilities they presented were more of the 1970s than of the 1950s; the Korean War setting was an oblique and uncontroversial treatment of the then-current American war in Vietnam.[20][21]
  • Junwoo (1975–78): a South Korean series.
  • Legend of the Patriots (2010): a South Korean series.
  • In the British sitcom Fawlty Towers, Basil Fawlty is a British Korean War veteran, claiming to have killed four men; his wife Sybil then says that he was in the Army Catering Corps and poisoned them with his cooking. Basil has been described as "the most famous and mocked fictional veteran of the Korean War."[22]
  • In the HBO show Lovecraft Country (TV series)'s sixth episode, "Meet Me in Daegu", the entire story takes place in Korea during the war. The main character Atticus, is a veteran of the war.
  • In the television series ‘’Beavis and Butt-Head’’, the character Tom Anderson is a veteran of the Korean War and received a Purple Heart. The series’ tenth season features segments where Anderson tells stories of his experiences during various Korean War battles including the Battle of Inchon and the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge.

Theater

The Colombian theatrical work El monte calvo (The Barren Mount), created by Jairo Aníbal Niño, used two Colombian veterans of the Korean war, and an ex-clown named Canute to criticize militarist and warmongering views, and to show what war is and what happens to those who live through it.[23]

References

  1. Robert J. Lentz, Korean war filmography: 91 English language features through 2000 (McFarland, 2016).
  2. Andrew David Jackson, "South Korean Films About The Korean War: To The Starry Island and Spring in My Hometown." Acta Koreana 16.2 (2013): 281+
  3. "Battle Circus (1953)".
  4. "Prisoner of War (1954)". Archived from the original on 2 July 2018.
  5. "The Bamboo Prison (1954)". Archived from the original on 7 May 2018.
  6. "Factsheets : Col. Dean Hess". af.mil. Archived from the original on 6 October 2009. Retrieved 8 November 2009.
  7. "Battle Hymn (1957)". imdb.com. Retrieved 8 November 2009.
  8. "A Hill in Korea (1956)".
  9. The Hollywood Reporter The Frontline: Film Review 9 August 2011. Retrieved 14 October 2011
  10. "Operation Chromite (2016)". IMDb. Retrieved 19 July 2016.
  11. Delisle, Guy Pyongyang: A Journey Into North Korea, pp. 63, 146, 173. Drawn & Quarterly Books.
  12. "Rare showing of North Korean war film". 28 October 2010.
  13. "Order No. 027". Rotten Tomatoes.
  14. Susie Jie Young Kim, "Korea beyond and within the Armistice: Division and the Multiplicities of Time in Postwar Literature and Cinema." Journal of Korean Studies 18.2 (2013): 287-313 online.
  15. Osváth Gábor. "A mai dél-koreai elbeszélő irodalomról" (in Hungarian). Terebess Ázsia E-Tár. Retrieved 18 November 2014.
  16. K-Literature (pdf). Korean Culture and Information Service (KOCIS). December 2012. p. 52.
  17. West, Philip; Levine, Steven I.; Hiltz, Jackie (3 June 2015). United States and Asia at War: A Cultural Approach: A Cultural Approach. Routledge. ISBN 9781317452935 via Google Books.
  18. Karl Stamm, "The 'Neue Deutsche Wochenschau' (1950): West German newsreel coverage of Korea and the virtues of peace," Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television (1993) 13#1
  19. "What is M*A*S*H". Archived from the original on 17 August 2007. Retrieved 22 August 2007.
  20. David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (2008), p. 4.
  21. Carl Freedman, "History, Fiction, Film, Television, Myth: The Ideology of MASH." Southern Review 26.1 (1990): 89+.
  22. Huxford, Grace (1 July 2018). The Korean War in Britain: Citizenship, selfhood and forgetting. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9781526118967 via Google Books.
  23. "El Monte Calvo". montecalvo.blogspot.com. Retrieved 31 March 2010.

Further reading

  • Brockett, Gavin D. "The Legend of ‘The Turk’ in Korea: Popular Perceptions of the Korean War and Their Importance to a Turkish National Identity." War & Society 22.2 (2004): 109-142.
  • Chung, Hye Seung. "From Saviors to Rapists: GIs, Women, and Children in Korean War Films." Asian Cinema 12.1 (2001): 103–116.
  • Danel, Thibaud. "Bodies of War and Memory: Embodying, Framing and Staging the Korean War in the United States." Miranda. Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone/Multidisciplinary journal on the English-speaking world 15 (2017).
  • David, Joel. "Remembering the Forgotten War" Kritika Kultura 28 (2017), re: films online
  • Edwards, Paul M. A Guide to Films on the Korean War (Greenwood, 1997)
  • Fox, Levi. Not Forgotten: The Korean War in American Public Memory, 1950–2017 (Temple UP, 2018).
  • Freedman, Carl. "History, Fiction, Film, Television, Myth: The Ideology of MASH." Southern Review 26.1 (1990): 89+.
  • Herzon, Frederick D., John Kincaid, and Verne Dalton. "Personality & public opinion: The case of authoritarianism, prejudice, & support for the Korean & Vietnam wars." Polity 11.1 (1978): 92-113.
  • Hwang, Junghyun. "'I’ve Got a Hunch We’re Going Around in Circles': Exceptions to American Exceptionalism in Hollywood Korean War Films." American Studies in Scandinavia 49.1 (2017): 61–82. online
  • Jackson, Andrew David. "South Korean Films About the Korean War: To the Starry Island and Spring in My Hometown." Acta Koreana 16.2 (2013): 281+ online.
  • Keene, Judith. "Cinema and Prosthetic Memory: The Case of the Korean War." PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 7.1 (2010). online
  • Kim, Susie Jie Young. "Korea beyond and within the Armistice: Division and the Multiplicities of Time in Postwar Literature and Cinema." Journal of Korean Studies 18.2 (2013): 287-313 online.
  • Lentz, Robert J. Korean war filmography: 91 English language features through 2000 (McFarland, 2016).
  • Long, K. "The Korean War in American feature films." Education about Asia 7.3 (2002): 16–23. online; covers Steel Helmet, Retreat Hell!, Battle Hymn, Men of the Fighting Lady, and Pork Chop Hill
  • Matray, James I. "Korea's war at 60: A survey of the literature." Cold War History 11.01 (2011): 99-129.
  • Mueller, John E. "Trends in Popular Support for the Wars in Korea and Vietnam 1." American Political Science Review 65.2 (1971): 358–375.
  • Pash, Melinda L. In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War (NYU Press, 2012).
  • Peters, Richard, and Xiaobing Li. Voices from the Korean war: Personal stories of American, Korean, and Chinese soldiers (UP of Kentucky, 2014).
  • Smith, Howard. "The BBC television newsreel and the Korean War." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 8.3 (1988): 227–252.
  • Solomonovich, Nadav. "The Turkish Republic's Jihad? Religious symbols, terminology and ceremonies in Turkey during the Korean War 1950–1953." Middle Eastern Studies 54.4 (2018): 592–610. online
  • Stamm, Karl. "The `Neue Deutsche Wochenschau' (1950): West German newsreel coverage of Korea and the virtues of peace," Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television (1993) 13#1 pp. 69–73.
  • Wehrle, Edmund F. "'Syndromes' and 'Solutions': The Korean War and The Vietnam War, 1950–1973." Diplomatic History (2020).
  • Wetta, Frank Joseph, and Stephen J. Curley. Celluloid wars: a guide to film and the American experience of war (Greenwood, 1992).
  • Williams, Tony. "Beyond Fuller and MASH: Korean War Representations in Film, Genre, and Comic Strip." Asian Cinema 20.1 (2009): 1-14.
  • Young, Charles S. "Missing action: POW films, brainwashing and the Korean War, 1954–1968." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 18.1 (1998): 49–74.
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