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Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, and Politics. By HYANGJIN LEE. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000. viii, 244 pp. $74.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).
For a person who has attempted to teach Korean cinema in the West, it is tempting to say that the first book on Korean cinema in English is a worthy addition to international cinema studies. Divided into four chapters, the book considers the films of North and South Korea with equal weight, and identifies the historical formation of Korea's cultural identity through them. Several themes underpin this book. The most important, if problematic, issue revolves around ideology, which the author considers as the "recurring theme" in cinemas of both North and South. Despite its claim that it comprehensively covers the history of Korean cinema including its birth in 1903 and the films produced under the Japanese colonial period (1910-45), the book mostly concentrates on the two competing film industries after the Korean War that have separately produced works ironically mirroring the other. The common ethnic identity of Koreans has putatively endured and overcome the "anti-imperialist" and "anti-communist" sentiments, the two guiding ideological principles that have partitioned the two nation-states. The function of ideology, as the author recognizes, is neither benign nor linear, since its splitting differences have violently complicated the self-image of Koreans who have perceived their cultural heritage to be homogeneous. Although Lee acknowledges that the makings of a national cinema, especially in a complicated nation like divided Korea, are hardly defined by only monolithic forces, her thematic premise (hinging on the contradiction between the dominant ideological conditions...