Radio Dayz

Radio dayz (2008) by Ha Gi-Ho is the film based on the Korea’s first radio station JDOK in 1933. The radio station was under the Japanese’ control, where occupy the country. Llyod was ordered to create the radio show that called, ‘The flames of love’. In the beginning of the show, staffs made many mistakes however; it became popular to the people in 1930s. “Korean radio did have a role in cultural maintenance, and it also represented a locus of cultural construction that neither nationalist ideologues nor GGK officials could control”  (P. 69). Even though the background of this film was 1930s, under the Japanese control, people who listened to the radio do not seemed placid and benign in this film while they were listening to the radio. It was interesting to listen to the plot of the show ‘The Flame of Love’ which indirectly satires the Korean popular drama. The drama ‘love in heaven’ (ha neul e si yeo) is known as one of the ‘mak-jang drama’ in South Korea, which includes the story of ‘unachievable love’. At the end of the film, on the way to deliver the mails, Lloyd and the author talks talk about the ending of the show; what Lloyd suggested for the ending was the actual ending of the ‘love in heaven’, and also the author actually commented ‘ha neul e si yeo’ which was interesting.

Also, the editing with the symbol in the film was interesting. I found that the bridge was used as a tool that abled people to communicate each other. In the scene when the screen shows on boy’s way to bring the script to the radio station, the screen used full shot and showed the surroundings. I found that before the boy cross the bridge (left side) shows the Japanese culture (where people were wearing kimono, signboards in Japanese), and the screen shows the surroundings of Korean cultures (where people were wearing han-bok) after he cross the bridge. As the radio was one of the tools to communicate in this film, the director Ha also used the bridge, bicycle, and the letters that symbolize the way of the communications. Moreover, at the end of the show ‘The Flame of Love’, one could see that the Mari (who played the girl studied in Japan in the radio show) stay on the left side of the bridge and MyeonWol (who played the traditional Korean girl in the radio show) stay on the right side of the bridge.

Fictionality of art and history

The most interesting part of Radio Dayz, to most, could be the spontaneity of fabricating “The Flame of Love” – voice actors deliberately omitted, distorted and altered the story lines, following their own agendas. And that’s not the funny part - what became funny was the reaction of the listeners, so involved, so mesmerized – emotions totally directed by the plot (which was manipulated by the actors). They vexed and they wept. Cheers and sneers.

On the surface it could be a teasing finger for the modern fans – the waiting crowd was just too familiar. But I want to venture further, of the possibility of media as a genre easily being controlled and mutated by the interested party, just like history.

In the film we could see “The Flame of Love” was contorted with the most unreasonable, careless cause – to the point of joking. But isn’t history the same? It is not even a matter of being neutral and objective – as modern scholars contest it – but the pointlessness of being too involved. However the academia, the mass or the government wants it to be objective, the supposedly multi-foci history they receive is still based on other people’s stories, meaning history, at this point, becomes the action of processing, fabricating and broadcasting the narratives that one receives from another who has repeated the same process himself. No matter how many books, from how many angles we read on, we still won’t be able to re-actualize what really happened – as each historian inevitably would add his personal stance when recounting what he believes is true. It’s like making meatball pasta after eating another guy’s pasta, multiplied by a thousand times. We might get very close, but not the original.

It doesn't mean that history is not worth studying, it is – and could be potentially the most essential element for constructing and reflecting human civilizations. But I just want to point out that it might be ridiculous, to be too involved, too led by history – believing that is the truth, and the only truth. I have studied the history of three countries concerned (Korea, Japan and China) at different stages of my life – even though I still want to know what happened, but the blind nationalism, violence and hatred I witnessed adjust me to be more cautious and taking it less seriously and personally. Just as Michael Robinson and Gi-Wook Shin in their book repetitively emphasize: “not all such narratives got transmitted, and even those that were, were invariably translated (reinvented) for use in the present.”

Here I want to borrow a concept from anti-mimesis:” Life imitates art far from art imitates life.” Media (film, literature, history etc) becomes an art of story telling – the aesthetic product and moral implication merely shift to be increasingly independent and irrelevant to Life itself. What happened will still be happening – the only criterion of such art, such history then would be its pervasiveness onto the mindset, the momentum.

I shudder when I think of the dead historians saying somehow, somewhere: “those dumbheads, do they really think we meant that?”

Efficient Japanese Propaganda or Maybe Not?

Radio, as part of modernization, started a new type of entertainment promoting modern music, and western adaptations of radio dramas (overall, a new popular culture). As Michael Robinson mentions, this was often seen as vulgar or offensive to conservatory people because it did not fit the traditional Korean culture. They thought this was actually a degradation of their morals, and in order to avoid this, more scholarly programs should be broadcasted. However, this was not entirely possible, especially during the early period when there was only one radio station in Korea (mostly dominated by programs in Japanese). 

Another issue that appeared with the introduction of radio in Korea, was the Japanese control for promoting Imperial ideas. M. Robinson starts his article my mentioning that the “Japanese officials recognized immediately the potential of broadcasting to further the language goals of spreading Japanese-language use and Japanese culture values”. However, I don’t completely agree with this. From the author’s description of how the radio developed in Korea, we can see that all the Japanese officials tried to do was to censor and control what was broadcasted to the Koreans. They tried to take as much Korean content as possible and replace it with something Japanese. In my opinion this rather shows that the Japanese noticed the potential of the radio in spreading Korean culture (and probably nationalistic ideas) so they tried to stop that by replacing a great deal of it with Japanese shows. If the Japanese really wanted to spread Japanese culture they should have tried to increase the number of Korean listeners and after that to make Japanese values appealing to the Koreans. This could have been achieved in various. For example the movie Radio Dayz shows one way: make a show which Koreans would enjoy and introduce some subliminal messages (of course this didn’t work out as planned in the movie, but in real life it could have been done). 

Another point that makes me believe that Robinson’s idea is not correct is the statistics he presents. The number of Koreans that were initially listening to the radio was around 13%-15%, and assuming that those numbers were taken at that time (to be accurate), than the Japanese must have been aware of this as well. Moreover, if you want to send a propaganda message you must make sure that the message reaches the target audience. Therefore, since the Japanese officials were fine with the low number of Korean listeners, I must only guess that their purpose was to deny to the Koreans the possibility of using the radio to send nationalistic messages. 

Moreover, if their true intention was to send a propaganda message to the Koreans they should have made radio more available (and affordable); maybe they could sponsor it and make sure that the average Korean has access to it. Since they chose a noncommercial radio, and since they didn’t try to help the station when it had financial problems I can only assume that they were not aware of the potential power that radio can have in spreading Japanese culture among the Koreans. The number of Korean listeners started to increase only after they released a second station with more Korean programs and this time not because the Japanese wanted more Korean listeners to listen to their message, but because the first station needed more listeners in order to avoid bankruptcy. 

Overall, the author says that the Japanese used the radio well in manipulating the masses, but I think this is not true, or at least not during the first or second decade of radio use.  

The Cultural Rule During the Japanese Occupation

2008 film “Radio Dayz” by Ha Ki-ho is a movie that shows the establishment of the broadcasting station in Seoul during the colonial period; in addition, it’s a fiction about the first Korean radio series. The telecommunication of Korea in the early 1930s is important because Kyungseong (Seoul) Broadcasting System was first established in 1927 following the establishment of the Japanese broadcasting in 1926 (Robinson 54). The movie quite accurately depicts the radio broadcasting in Korea during the Japanese occupation. KBC has the bilingual broadcasting system in Korean and Japanese as it is shown in the movie. In the movie, the Japanese official mentions that it is time for the Korean language broadcasting. The historical context is important in this film because it was a transitioning period from the Japanese military rule to the cultural rule (Robinson 54). This is actually obvious when the Japanese Bureau Chief of the Broadcasting in the movie mentions that the listeners should naturally be indoctrinated to understand the Japanese imperialism and the grandiose Japanese emperorship by listening to radio shows. Also, the film depicts that the Japanese practices a censorship over the broadcasting. At the very end, Lloyd, the director of the radio series is told to finish the final episode that contains the Japanese nationalist propaganda. If not, the transmitter will be shut down. Though the fight between the Korean broadcasting staff and the Japanese soldiers was comically filmed, yet it is merely a satirical element to criticize the Japanese cultural assimilation.

On the other hand, another interesting aspect of the movie is the transformation of the Korean nationalists from extreme to moderate. As previously mentioned, the Japanese decided to shift from the policy of the military rule to the cultural rule; the Korean nationalists also shifted their strategy from extreme to moderate. The Korean nationalists started to consider taking advantage of mass communication such as newspapers or broadcasting so they could share the notion of Korean independence. It was almost as if it is a parallel confrontation between Japan and Korea. In the film, K’s character change is worth noting because he changes from the extremist nationalist to the moderate nationalist. Though at the end, the character evokes his old identity as the extremist, yet how he perceives the radio changes rapidly from the beginning to the end of the movie.

Tradition vs Modernity

The Korean comedy film YMCA Baseball Team, directed by Kim Hyun-seok, has many instances and scenes that portray modernity in a positive light.  One thing to note firsthand is that the modernization that is featured in this film starkly contrasts to the film screened the past weeks.  The past two films had a strong Japanese presence pertaining to the notion of modernity but in this film, the American presence stood out more not to mention baseball being a western sport.  While the Japanese presence remained as an antagonist throughout the film, the American influence was more subtle than I expected.  Their overall contribution to modernization could be almost described as analogous to the clockmaker’s theory where they just keep a backseat position throughout film despite being the main cause of the baseball team.  There is a more welcoming atmosphere to change despite the resistance of modernizing under the pretense of Japanese presence at the time.  The question arises whether modernization is analogous to westernization in this context and what the impact of that is.      

The second thing to note is how the genre of comedy plays out to present the conflict between modernization and maintaining traditional values.  Yi Ho-chang, the protagonist of the film, is the son of a scholar and his pursuit of baseball puts him in a parallax position where he is not “primitive” or completely “modernized”.  In an early scene where Yi Ho-chang discovers baseball, humour is promoted through Yi Ho-chang’s awkward introduction to the sport where an American gentleman kindly instructs him to not kick but to throw the ball.  Yi Ho-chang is portrayed as more primitive or bestial in contrast to the American gentleman in this particular humorous scene so one could ponder whether it is something completely safe to simply laugh off.  One could also say that the genre helps promote a better image of modernity to the audience in a more lighthearted manner that was not seen in the past two films. 

Lenin Amaya

Parallel between YMCA Baseball Team and Korean Minjok/Minjong Nationalism

The comedy film, YMCA Baseball Team, is one of those “feel-good” movies that makes your day better, especially better if you do love Korea and her people from the bottom of your heart and you dream of one unified Korea. I can surely watch the scene of Korean minjok/minjung victory in the rematch against Japanese colonial officers over and over. United Koreans, at the end, overcome a foreign influence of colonialism. Koreans are unified!

In the film, during the critical moment of Korean history and destiny, when Korea becomes the protectorate of Japan after the signing of the Eulsa Treaty in 1905, a diverse group of Koreans from yangban to chonmin backgrounds discovers baseball, a new Western sport, and joins the first baseball team in Korea called YMCA Baseball Team.

The creation of YMCA Baseball Team, organized by Min Jong-rim, a female coach educated in the West, parallels the development of Korean nationalism, minjok, a modern construct (337). According to Carter Eckert, before the late 19^th century, “there was little, if any, feeling of loyalty toward the abstract concept of “Korea” as a nation state, or toward fellow inhabitants of the peninsula as “Koreans” and Korean people did have stronger  “attachments to their village or region, and above all to their clan, lineage, and immediate and extended family” (338). However because of Japanese colonialism at bay, Korean political activists and intellectuals from the independence movements desired and envisioned Korea’s collective identity in terms of a “deep, horizontal comradeship” regardless of the actual divisions and inequalities that prevailed in Korean society (339). Furthermore, Korean nationalists started to view Koreans as a unique ethnic group not as yangban, commoners, and base people (342).

In the movie, baseball is the source of unity and “One Korea.” It brings people from different hierarchies of the Choson Dyansty and transforms them into one Korean Team. Lee Ho-chang , the main character, is a son of a yangban scholar. Oh Dae-hyeon and Min are from Korean elites educated outside of Korea; they are nationalists and members of the Anti-Eulsa League, an organization formed in protest of the Five Eulsa Traitors. Ryu Kwang-tae, is a son of the Choson official whose father is part of the Five Eulsa Traitors. Ma Seong-han is a former servant of the chonmin background while Lee-Eun is an artisan, a commoner. Without the introduction of baseball and the desire to win the rematch against Japan (Korean nationalism), these characters would not be part of a cohesive group, but would continue living their own separate traditional lifestyles.  In addition, the team spirit of baseball (force of nationalism) left me speechless because even though Oh and Ryu became enemies because Oh tried to assassinate Ryu’s father, in the rematch, they apologized, forgave each other, and worked as a team in order to defeat the Japanese.

Just as film characters became one team through baseball, descendants of yangban, commoners, and chonmin became today’s Korean ethnic group under the banner of Korean nationalism. But a series of questions that came to my mind is “Are modern Koreans really a single, unified, “homogenous” group in the Korean nation state? Isn’t there a still strong regionalism in South Korea where names of political leaders such as Park Chung-hee and Kim Dae Jung ignite such political controversies and different emotional responses for people of different regions? Do Korean nationalists consider overseas Koreans, mixed people such as children of American GIs and South Asian wives, and North Korean defectors, part of their “KOREAN MINJOK/MINJONG”?

Japanese Occupation in Korea

Japanese occupation in Korea was characterized by the interest in maintaining control in Korea and their attempts to prohibit any possibility of uprising or resistance by the Korean people. Japanese subverted Korean youths and women to prefer foreign and more modern sentiments (as it is shown in YMCA Baseball Team and Yoo’s study) with the help of pro-Japanese collaborators. All the authors deal with the issue of struggle between traditional Korean values and culture and the new influences on them.

YMCA Baseball Team, a semi-historical film, comically interprets the historical events of the first Korean baseball team in 1905. The events taking place prior to the movie indicate how Japan has occupied Korea and influenced youths. Many Koreans went to study in Tokyo as it is represented by the few characters of the film. YMCA Western missionaries collude with the Japanese in order to replace traditional Korean values by Japanese values and customs through indoctrination of Korean youths.

In his study “The “New Woman” and the Politics of Love, Marriage, and Divorce in Colonial Korea,” Yoo examines the way of radical transformation of “Korean woman” concept during the years of Japanese occupation. Not all Korean women supported the dictates of colonial Japan; some of them distinguished between the definition of “modern” (for instance, Western outfits) as legitimate and “Japanese” as illegitimate. Thus, the experience of these Korean women can be seen as unique due to the dual confrontation with colonial power of Japan and modernity itself.

In his study “Form of Existence and Structural Character of Pro-Japanese Collaborators in Korean History,” Seo examines the history of modern Korea through the lenses of nationalism.  The chapter critically questios the political abuses and uses of nationalism by Korean ruling elites. The author does not blame those Koreans who held positive views about Japan; he states that pro-Japanese collaborators were those who “engaged in anti-national activities” (Seo, p. 90) and thus abused national interests.

Seo, Yoo and Kim Hyun-seok deal with the issue of struggle between traditional Korean values and culture and the new influences on them. Korean youths, women and elite has changed under the impact of Japanese and Western cultures. As a result, the face of Korea has become different.