YMCA bba-ssuball team

Not only was the movie YMCA baseball team one of the first Korean movies to discuss about baseball, but the YMCA baseball team itself was also an actual first ever baseball team in Korea, when baseball was first introduced to Korea as a tool to spread Christianity by American missionaries. At first, the sport was only an extremely foreign game that entertained the Koreans, however, soon this bba-ssuball game became another representation of patriotism where the Koreans, originally from different social classes(status distinction was abolished around this time) became unified and strove to win every game against the Japanese. Although winning in the games would not bring their country back, it was a form of speech where they indirectly yelled for and wanted freedom. While Shinjint’ae argues “minjok” may have did exist due to Korea’s quintessential character of court-centred, aristocratic states, the term minjok is a fairly modern term in which the concept of national identity was less intensified until the colonization of Japan. Thus, these social events such as baseball games allowed to strengthen “minjok” or the concept of national identity. Although baseball was first introduced to Japan in 1872 and to Korea in 1905, more than thirty years after Japan, and the Koreans lacked the equipments and skills in order to play well, the Korean baseball players did an exceptional job at the games, perhaps due to their desire for freedom(as well as their talent in the sport). While the Japanese imperial power was portrayed in a pejorative way, the western modernization and influence was depicted rather positively in the film. They had introduced a game, which eventually served as a form to represent patriotism of the people. Furthermore, instead of wearing hanbok, which Korean women have been wearing for eons until the introduction of westernization, Jeong lim wears western female dress attire, which implies her representation as a new woman. Thus, the coexistence of hanbok (traditional Korean attire) and western attire depicts the era in which westernization was occurring. The movie YMCA baseball was an entertaining movie in which it discerned a robust historical verification, and depicted the actual historical occurrence with the use of comic genre.

Ps. I found it quite interesting how SongKangho stares at the camera in both the endings in the movies “Memories of Murder” and “YMCA baseball team”. Actors rarely look into cameras in movies. What were the directors trying to imply? Did they have the same intentions?