YMCA baseball team

While watching the film, ‘YMCA baseball team’ by Kim Hyunseok, I could easily recognize that the film contains the time settings (backgrounds) of 1900s. 1900s was the time before the Japanese colonial era. Seoul was known as ‘Hwang-seong’, and western cultures were newly introduced in South Korea. Also, that was the time where Western missionaries built schools in South Korea. People in those days thought they have to follow and learn western cultures that were newly introduced to them. As mentioned in the reading “Colonialist historiography suggested that because of such inherent deficiencies Japan ahd no choice but to lead Korea into the modern world… ‘Modern’ Japanese historiography emerged as a response to the Oreintalism of the West- that is, as an attempt to de-objectify Japan and Aisa” (Em, P.346, 348).

In the film, the scene when Lee Hochang tries to kick the baseball when he first saw, this portrays that baseball was never introduced in South Korea. Some people mentioned on the website that the director Kim used ‘baseball’ since it includes the western characteristics the most. Also, since there was an existence of the ‘status system’ (sinbun jaedo) in Souh Korea, the creation of the ‘baseball team’ was new and remained as one of hopes to South Koreans who wished to remove the status system. The scene where students learn the song indian boys (western song) at school and where students were learn ‘the thousand-character classics’ (chunjamoon) at Hakdang also portrayed the time period. Since the genre of the film was ‘comedy’, there were many comic scenes in this film. Especially, the moment where South Koreans awkwardly trying to adopt the baseball game rules made this film more comics. However, some people would have question about whether they (South Korean) really have to follow and learn the western cultures? Well, since following and learning about the things that one desires and/or respect is one of people’s instinct, South Korean in 1900s had desires of Western cultures. In the film, it shows that Hochang’s dream of becoming royal secret inspector; Jeongrim and Dahyun’s dream cannot be achievable due to the introductions of western cultures. However, at the end of the film, it indirectly made Hochang became royal secret inspector (where he beat by Japanese militaries). From this, one could think that maybe the director Kim would like to end up the film with the question of what was their (people in 1900s)’s dream that led them to follow the western cultures.