Korea

Abstract

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Confucianism greatly influenced the people of Korea and Japan. This philosophy led to women being confined to private space and men dominating the public sphere — and basically prevented women from working in any industry culturally considered a male career. The Japanese began to pull the Korean Joeson dynasty out of isolation in the mid 1800s; it was put under the protection of Emperor Meiji in the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1876. Three years before the turn of the twentieth century, the Joeson dynasty proclaimed itself the Korean Empire, bringing forth Korea’s industrial revolution. According to the London Times, it was during October of 1897 that actuality films¹ from France’s Pathé Pictures screened in Jingogae, Bukchon (2001: 20). The first Korean theatre, Dongdaemun Motion Picture Studio, opened in 1903 and the Dansung-sa Theatre opened in Seoul during November of 1907. Actuality films continued to play until the audience’s insatiable demands for the medium led to the import of films from the United States and Europe. The Russo-Japanese War in 1904 deflected control of Korea away from Russia, and Japan annexed Korea under the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty in 1910. Hollywood fiction films continued to be imported during the annexation. Kino-dramas, which imitated the shinpa² melodramas of Japan, were being produced in Korea in the late teens of the twentieth century, leading to the production of narrative features in the early 1920s. Women were not allowed to appear onscreen until 1923; the first onscreen actress was Lee Wol-hwa, she appears in The Vow Made Below the Moon.