[Radio Days] Korean radio stations

The film, Radio Days, talks about the first radio station in Seoul during the colonial period.  It says in the reading that the radio was another aspect of the extensive information control system that served Japan’s propaganda and cultural assimilation programs. (52, Robinson). Radio was indeed one of the communications that helped Korea become modernized by introducing Western classical music and jazz, but it was hard for Korean radio to express Korean traditional culture under the tight central control of Japan. When Kyoungseong station in the film attempts to produce a live serial radio play, “Flames of Love,” the Japanese authority does not give them freedom to produce it but firmly instructs them what to play and what not to play. As the play becomes increasingly popular again, they again interrupt and try to completely shut the Korean radio off because they knew the potential of broadcasting. What the Japanese authority wanted was to spread Japanese cultural values through all communications. However, even under this strict censorship, Korean radio created new forms of dramatic arts, like what the team of “Flames of Love” have achieved in the film, and this served as a vehicle for standardizing the Korean vernacular. I was truly amazed to see the determination of Korean people who used a radio in subverting Japanese cultural hegemony and their ultimate goals of Japanese cultural assimilation. The last two films we have watched, “Blue Swallow” and “YMCA,” share some common traits in the sense that they showed the incompetence of Korea during the time and the Korean activists’ struggle for freedom.  There were only a few people trying to fight for independence in those films, whereas there were a great number of people who showed a sense of resistance by flaming the fire in Radio Days. The hundreds of people made their voice heard in that last moment. 

Radio Dayz

        This reflection centers on the element of Japan’s occupation of Korea during the colonial era. I feel that the film was excellent in terms of explaining factors surrounding the Japanese occupation of Korea, and the strategies that were used to achieve such occupation. This is closely related to class readings that entail an emphasis of these events. It relates to events  raised in class concerning effective utilization of film aspects to contextualize a particular event in the simplest manner possible. For instance, I liked the way the film brought out the matter of colonial occupation in Korea using imitations of some of the participating leaders such as Bae Yong-Joong. Different characters were able to imitate leaders that were present during the colonial occupation hence making the entire movie more understandable among readers. Additionally, I loved the way the film employed melodrama to bring out the matter of Japanese colonial occupation clearer to readers (Ryang 32). I enjoyed watching the interaction of ragtag groups of misfits in the movement toward freedom in Korea. The element of Japanese colonial occupation in Korea has been brought out systematically hence making it more understandable and easy to follow. Admittedly, this element was clearly brought out in the film hence making it easily understandable and realistic among its readers.

Overall, the film is interesting especially with its focus on factors surrounding Japan’s occupation of Korea during the colonial era. The clear discussion of this element can be relied on when trying to understand the real events that took place during this time. I believe that the film can be highly helpful in understanding the history of Japanese colonization. In line with the class readings, the movie has taught me how to contextualize historical events, and make them simpler to understand in the contemporary world. The film exhibits a high sense of historical accuracy in explaining this matter.

Radio Dayz and the Importance of Culture

“While still tightly controlled by Ministry of Communications officials, all-Korean radio created a unique cultural space through the diverse informational, educational, economic, and pure entertainment programming it sent over the public airwaves.” (Robinson, p. 53) As described by Michael Robinson, Korean radio during the colonial period stimulated a “revival of traditional music genres, created new forms of dramatic arts, introduced Western classical music and jazz, and fed its audience’s insatiable appetite for modern.” (Robinson, P. 53) This was the general setting of the movie Radio Dayz; the first radio broadcasting JODK evolved from delivering news to giving jazz performances by the famous singer Marie and giving a series of romantic drama.

As shown in the movie, radio broadcasting did in fact construct a culture which resisted Japan by “creating and maintaining Korean art forms with strong emotives ties to Koreans of all classes.” (Robinson, p. 54)  During the story line of the romantic drama ‘The Flame of Love’, a love-line was drawn between the male protagonist and a female woman who was portrayed as a very traditional woman – as opposed to her rival who was a modern woman. The Koreans unanimously yearned for the traditional woman to be the one chosen instead of the modern woman.

During the last few minutes of the film, Korean people wearing traditional clothes were shown, supporting the traditional Korean women. Even though the city itself had modernized buildings and many Japanese wearing kimonos, the last scene was portrayed as a cultural “unification” of the native Koreans. The preservation of the Korean culture during the colonization period was an important element in shaping who Koreans are today.

Radio Dayz in 1930s.

The film “Radio Dayz”, by Ha Ki-Ho, depicts the story of a radio station in Kyung Sung (Seoul) during Japanese colonial period. Radio was the only powerful tool to communicate with others or to announce updates to people easily in this time. During colonial period, I think that Japan used Radio as “the extensive information control system that served Japan’s propaganda and cultural assimilation programs” (Robinson, 52) because they “recognized immediately the potential of broadcasting to further the long-range goals of spreading Japanese language use and Japanese cultural values.” (Robinson, 52). For instance in the movie, the boss of Kyung Sung Radio Station asks Lloyd to make a drama, emphasizing that the it must contain the greatness of Japanese emperor and the high status of Japanese Empire. Also, before Lloyd and the writer produces the final episode, the boss tells them to finish with Japanese nationalism. I think that this is the reason why Japan tried to indoctrinate Japanese nationalism to Koreans who listened to this radio shows.

On the other hand, the boss of Taegukdang “K” is a secret agent who works on independence movement against Japanese imperialism. He also finds a letter from America that Americans can hear Kyung Sung broadcasting in the United States, and K thinks that he can use a radio to send the signal to all the independence fighters to start to move for their independence fight. K succeeds to intercept the wave, but he gets fired by Japanese wave inspector. However, Lloyd succeeds to make signals when he broadcasts the last episode of a voice drama series called “The flame of love.” Since people easily gather up in front of the radio to hear the voice drama, I thought that radio could bring people to gather up and make them to participate in the independence movement if they tell them that they need more people in their fight.

Overall, on the Japanese perspective, the radio was the one of the most powerful tools to interrupt the independence movement and to propagate Japanese culture and their language to indoctrinate their grandiose Japanese imperialism to Koreans who listened to the radio. Furthermore, the movie shows that the independence fighters also used the radio as their signals to other fighters who are in Manchuria.

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.