Korean Film and Culture: The Appeal of Korean Film

This introductory course offers an overview of Korean film production from its colonial beginnings to the present, linking film with major historical, political and cultural events or shifts over the past century. Topically organized, the course will explore issues of cultural identity in the ways that the domestic movie industry has interacted with the foreign filmic audience. Focusing on how film narratives can influence (rather than reflect) social reality, we will analyze the imagination and construction of national identity and cultural tradition (and its critique) across these films.