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Political Topics in South Korean Movies: History and Main Issues

Student: Ermakova Anastasia

Supervisor: Maria Baklanova

Faculty: Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs

Educational Programme: Asian Studies (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2019

Cinema is closely related to politics and economics of the country. Topics, reflected in feature movies, are created by the direct influence of the government, economical demand or civil political awareness of cinema producer, shaped by society which he is a part of. Those limiting creator’s freedom of expression factors can be clearly seen in political movies. South Korean political movies draw attention of the researchers as South Korea overcame different political regimes throughout the history, including dictatorship, and thus different combinations of control in cultural sphere can be discovered. The purpose of this study is to identify particularities in depicting politics in South Korean movies. To achieve this aim in the first chapter we explored main trends and themes in South Korean cinema in every decade from 1950 till 2000 and their peculiarities. Therefore we could identify popular trends and topics in political cinema in different time periods, which we compare with political history of the country. In the second chapter, we analyzed in detail a number of cinema sources, dividing them into three groups according to the general topics displayed: the situation on the Korean Peninsula, internal uprisings (using the example of the Gwangju incident) and the lives of political activists. For the study of films was applied scene-to-scene analysis. In conclusion, the features of the image of political subjects in the cinema were reflected, and their changes over time were also revealed. This work is a review of political plots, and therefore it may be useful for further research not only on the topic of political themes in South Korean cinema, but also in discovering the scale of interaction between feature cinema and limiting factors, such as political restrictions, economic situation and social awareness and influence.

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