Blue Swallow

My very first thought that popped into my mind during the opening scene of Blue Swallow was that it greatly reminded me of the color scheme of Epitaph.  It began in the year 1910 in a sepia-tone scene of Japanese flags being paraded through the streets of Korea.  The only color in sight was the red of these flags.  Piggybacking on the discussion of the connotations of the word ‘modern’ we had in one of our very first first classes, this erasure of the vibrant, lively colors of the Korean town in the film and the focus of any color at all on the dominant red of the Japanese flag clearly is symbolic of the erasure of Korean culture and individuality the moment the Japanese arrived.  However, Park Kyung-Won, 11 at the time, did not view it this way.  As a woman in these times, access to education was extremely difficult and rare, especially because “the colonial government disdainfully dismissed the so-called advancements in female education” (Yoo, 60).  Park was lucky enough to have the opportunity in the Japanese Tachikawa Flight Academy, escaping the path that was the “indoctrination of the home, [which] took the form of advice manuals and books that promised to teach Korean women how to become better mothers” (Yoo, 68).

This film focuses not only on the effects that colonization and occupation have on Korean people, but more specifically, how it shaped the life of a young Korean woman in Japan during this time period.  Park fits into Yoo’s description of a “new woman,” someone who “failed to conform to accepted gender performance” (Yoo, 74).  Not only did Park’s physical appearance not conform with the ‘accepted’ norms of women of that time, seeing as she had a short haircut, she also was training to becoming a pilot, a career usually reserved for men. Park’s ultimate dream was to fly from Japan to Manchuria with a stop in Korea.  However, this was not going to be possible unless she flew a Japanese flag on the side of her plan; Japan needed to ensure her loyalty to them over her loyalty to her home country. In this instance, Park values her career and agrees to the arrangement. While many saw this as controversial, but as a modern woman who had worked her entire life to achieve her dream and after succeeding, could Park really turn that opportunity down?