Category: Entertainment

Daily Life

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

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

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

Entertainment

February/March 1943 foreign movies in Seoul theaters: 8 German films, 1 French film, 1 French-German film, with Kora Terry and Wunschkonzert especially promoted by Imperial Japanese authorities

2023-03-13

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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

Imperial Army general describes crowded movie theaters and cafes in Myeong-dong where Japanese and Korean ‘young people in flashy overcoats would flow into coffee shops, chatting with their friends using exaggerated American gestures’ in his January 1943 essays about daily life in Seoul

2023-01-23

I found these four ‘slice-of-life’ personal essays written by an Imperial Army general in the Imperial Army press department describing

Daily Life

In January 1943, Hollywood films were banned in Korea, but 2 French films and 6 German films were showing in Seoul movie theaters: only ‘working women’ could watch Wunschkonzert, a Nazi propaganda drama, and only ‘industrial warriors’ could watch Kora Terry, a German spy thriller

2023-01-20

In January 1943, exactly eighty years ago, Imperial Japan was at war, but some Seoul residents still had time to

Daily Life

Hollywood movies and Western cosmetic brands were so popular in pre-WWII Korea that the colonial regime feared that young Koreans were being ‘intoxicated with frivolous Americanism’ by the ‘Jewish devil’ to ‘hold hands in a Western-style manner’ and to ‘advocate the supremacy of romantic love’

2022-12-22

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This article from December 1942, which particularly stands out for its especially anti-Semitic and anti-American messaging, was written to commemorate