How has this course influenced your understanding of Korean history as you look through films of the time compared to academic and historical learning?

Apart from the obvious fact that the movies are much more entertaining and captivating for most people, including me, to learn about Korean history, there are many other things that I find interesting. The movies show how quickly history can turn into legend. Many events are decorated and exaggerated compared to their historical reports. There are many details added that we don’t have in historical accounts to make the stories more poetic and cohesive when in reality, original accounts are comparatively more chaotic.

What are some discrepancies that you noticed as you watched the films compared to historical accounts?

There are multiple discrepancies, and sometimes outright contradictions between the academic sources and the films. All of it comes down to the producers of the films and the historical accounts. For example, if it is a movie about the Japanese colonial period in Korea, the message and purpose of the movie will depend on who produced the film. Films made for Korean people give a sense of nationalism, adding and subtracting many details as the producers see fit, and vice versa for films made for the Japanese.

What aspects of modern Korean society do you believe are effectively highlighted in this course and the films that you watched?

The movies in the course, although modern and contemporary, are still many decades old. As such, only vague societal concepts can be effectively highlighted. Some things that I have been able to understand and relate to the current stances of the Korean government and society can be ideologies such as Confucianism, their political treaties with foreign countries, and hints at how much Korea was moving towards a civil war.

(Anonymous, School of Computing)