Korea Lecture Series – The A-semiotics and the A-history of Dictatorship: Examining Two Recent South Korean Films about the Park Chung Hee era (1961-1979)

Korea Lecture Series -- The A-semiotics and the A-history of Dictatorship: Examining Two Recent South Korean Films about the Park Chung Hee era (1961-1979)

Kyung Hyun Kim - Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of California-Irvine

Wednesday, September 7, 2005 - 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Room 312, Hall of Graduate Studies (HGS) See map
320 York Street
New Haven, CT 6511

This paper seeks to analyze two recent South Korean films, The President’s Barber (Hyojadong Ibalsa, 2004) and The President’s Last Bang (Kuttae ku saramdul, 2005) that depict the historical period during which Park Chung Hee ruled as a dictator. It considers how the particular kinds of post-realist, multiplex-driven contemporary Korean cinema produce simulations of history where the coherent unity of the sign constantly is undermined. The paper’s ultimate aim is to evaluate narrative cinema’s effectiveness in its dealing with public memory, fascism, and self-referential modernist agenda.

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