Re: The Korean War in Cinema

["ysk" <ysk@spiker.net>]

There are quite a few movies on the Korean War made in South Korea, North
Korea and China. The Korean movies are mostly on espionage and guerrilla
'true' stories, and Chinese movies are mostly on the sufferings of CVA
soldiers, including on on Chosin (BTW, Chosin is Japanese for Jangjin, the
actual name of the place. Americans' use of 'Chosin' is insulting to Korean
nationalists.)

"The Unsung Heroes" of North Korea deals with espionage and
counter-espionage, starring a number of white guys.  Years ago, some folks
here in America thougth they were American defectors, but they turned out to
be Russian actors.



ysk

PS: I am looking for email address of Bill Clinton and also of Miss
Albright.  BTW, this in connection with the Korean War.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet Valentine" <valent03@bellsouth.net>
To: <KOREAN-WAR-L@raven.cc.ku.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2001 5:49 AM
Subject: Re: The Korean War in Cinema


Television certainly was becoming more popular in the fifties, but I
doubt it had all that much to do with the lack of contemporary Korean
War films.  It's my understanding that sets weren't in large numbers of
houses until '52 or '53, plus there were other *very* popular films in
that period.  And no, there weren't any popular war or soldier songs
inspired by the war.  However, I suspect that lack of films and songs
resulted from a lack of popular interest and involvement in the war
rather than the other way around.  Our involvement in Korea never
required the total mobilization that WWII did, which leads us back to
the consideration that folks simply didn't **have** to pay the same sort
of attention - especially since TV news wasn't yet technologically
mature and couldn't get essentially real-time images of the war into
American homes on a nightly basis.  Also, didn't the military control
communication lines between the AOR and Japan and the States so that
while not directly censoring reports they could certainly exert control
on the character and amount of information that made it into print?
Plus, it wasn't always easy for a reporter to get to Korea.  In _Mauldin
in Korea_ the author remarks on how long it took for the government to
decide he wasn't a subversive and clear him for assignment to Korea.

ChosinMead@aol.com wrote:
>
> I have heard another theory as to why there was so little interest in
> the
> Korean War, in addition to not having a quality film, there wasn't any
> decent
> song associated with the war. Lee

--
"Well behaved women rarely make history."
                               Laurel Thatcher Ulrich