Category: Entertainment

Inside the 1943 Seoul Crackdown on ‘Demonic Music’: Imperial Japan’s Campaign to Purge American and British Records, From Hawaiian Jazz to Dvořák, but German music (Beethoven, Mozart, Bach) and Italian music (Verdi) were allowed

2025-11-20

This article from 1943 offers a rare glimpse into one aspect of the severe censorship regime that Imperial Japan imposed

Food

April 1945 Seoul dining: the public endured price-gouging and scraps, while privileged Japanese and Korean collaborator elites drank and feasted behind closed doors

2025-09-06

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As Imperial Japan’s war effort was collapsing in spring 1945, life in colonial Seoul grew increasingly desperate. Ordinary Koreans were

Business

Imperial Japanese and Korean collaborator elite partied in brothels and luxury restaurants while ordinary Koreans starved in wartime Seoul, early 1945

2025-07-08

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Below is a translation of an Imperial Japanese news article from the Keijō Nippo (京城日報), dated March 5, 1945, reporting

Entertainment

The film that tried to make Koreans see Imperial Japan as their “Omoni” (Mother): Inside the 1945 propaganda movie “Love and Vows” (愛と誓ひ, 사랑과맹세)

2025-06-24

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This is my review and analysis of a deeply unsettling Imperial Japanese propaganda film, Love and Vows (愛と誓ひ), which was

Entertainment

Imperial Japan shamed Koreans for going to theaters instead of preparing for invasion (March 1945)

2025-05-07

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As Imperial Japan’s war effort crumbled in early 1945, its propaganda turned increasingly desperate and moralistic. This article, published in

Entertainment

A look into the foreign films showing in Seoul movie theaters in June to Dec. 1943: Ohm Krüger (1941) was heavily promoted to foment anti-British sentiment

2023-12-20

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This post will be a continuation of my exploration into the kinds of foreign movies that Seoul residents might have

Entertainment

August 28, 1945: Colonial regime announces a peaceful transition of power to the new incoming Korean government, reopens comfort women services, department stores, cafés in Seoul as popular uprising subsides, plans orderly repatriation of Japanese residents

2023-12-06

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This is another fascinating historical article that I stumbled upon during my visit to the National Library of Korea a

Entertainment

“The New Age Has Arrived”: Imperial Japanese Propaganda Manga from Occupied China, 1942

2023-07-04

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Just sharing a fascinating piece of historical artifact – a comic strip, or more accurately, a manga, published in the

Entertainment

A look into the foreign films showing in Korean movie theaters in April/May 1943: L’antenato (1936), Capriccio (1938), Ein Lied für dich (1933), Fahrendes Volk (1938), Le Bal (1931), Heimat (1938), Un soir de rafle (1931)

2023-05-19

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This post will be a continuation of my exploration into the kinds of foreign movies that Seoul residents might have

Entertainment

Korean director of Straits of Chosun (1943) muted the war propaganda of this Imperial Japanese film to make it a humanistic story about young Korean man from wealthy family who enlists with a heavy heart to win his father’s acceptance of his lower-class wife, rather than from blind patriotism

2023-04-24

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The following is my thorough transcription, translation, and in-depth analysis/review of an intriguing piece of classic Korean cinematography, which is