A Study of Colonialist Consciousness in Korean Films during the Vietnam War

This study aims to shed light on certain aspects of colonialist consciousness in Korean films during the Vietnam War. In doing so, it seeks to understand Korean perceptions of the Vietnam War. The perspective of this article is that South Korea viewed the Vietnam War from a colonialist perspective. In fact, South Korea 'othered' Vietnam and attempted to use the war as an opportunity for modernization. This study views this consciousness as colonialism. This perception of the Vietnam War was reflected in Korean films during the war. Female Viet Cong No. 18, represented Korea as militaristic masculinity and Vietnam as feminine otherness, as represented by Ao Dai. In doing so, the film is simultaneously recreating Vietnam as a romanticized battlefield and incorporating it into a gendered hierarchy. The Goboi Bridge has a similar representation. Colonialist consciousness operated not only at the level of gender but also at the level of psychogeography. Over the Hill, The Outraged Man, and Singing Fair exploited Vietnam on a narrative level and not a representational level, and this cinematic strategy became a natural part of cinema at the time. However, with the defeat of the war, the colonialist consciousness became fragmented, and Scissors, Rock, and Wrap sutured this fragmentation on an ideological level. The significance of this study is that it analyzes the perception of war by focusing on films from the Vietnam War period, which have been neglected in Korean film history.