9 October 12 – Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
2010 postal stamp commemorating the film Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War.
This module we return to films and memory with a focus on Korean War blockbusters and on cultural nostalgia. The four class sessions will help prepare you for the group project and will be capped by the second short essay, in which you will connect one of the films assigned for this module to the historical and social context.
For Monday’s homework and Tuesday’s class we will focusing on the 2004 Korean War blockbuster, Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War. “Tae Guk Gi” is the name of the South Korean national flag.
Note: The film has a lot of graphic violence. If watching representations of blood and gore is problematic for you, write me an email (before Monday night!) and I will give you an alternative film to watch.
I’m also assigning a brief article by Hyeonseon Lee that provides an overview of notable 2000s films about national division and the war. This overview will be useful for the group project because it will help you build your knowledge of the body of films on this topic.
In addition, I’m assigning four South Korean newspaper articles/opinion pieces that represent liberal, progressive, and conservative ways of remembering the war in public discourse. You can use them to understand the nature of the memory that is conveyed in Tae Guk Gi. Keep in mind that this film was made after 1980s democratization. The field of public discourse was significantly more open than it had been in the 1960s-1980s. Most Korean War films from the pre-democratization era had to contain at least some anticommunist elements; however, this began to change in the 1990s and the 2000s. It was during those years that numerous films put forth memories of the war that fit outside the Cold War anticommunist viewpoint. Tae Guk Gi is one such film. The four articles provide glimpses into the different ways of remembering the war. Think about the position of Tae Guk Gi in relation to conservative and liberal-progressive memories of the war.
- Conservative: “The True Meaning of the Korean War,” Donga-ilbo, June 25, 2010 (60th anniversary of the war’s outbreak)
- Conservative: “Who Won the Korean War?,” Chosun ilbo, July 30, 2013
- Progressive: “Over 5,000 Jeju Massacre victims’ remains have yet to be found,” Hankyoreh, April 5, 2020
- Liberal: “Seventy Years of the Korean War Amidst Inter-Korean Confrontation: Time to Strengthen Our Will for a New Start Toward Peace,” Kyunghyang Shinmin, June 25, 2020 (70th anniversary of the war’s outbreak)
The materials for our September 30 session, The Other Korean War, provide good context to the film. If you haven’t already, read Heonik Kwon’s laying out of the multiple dimensions of the war (only 8 pages) and view my VoiceThread, which also delves into the impact of war violence on ordinary civilians.