Department of Comparative Literature

Shaping South Korea and its Ties with Hong Kong in Film Co-productions during the Height of the Cold War, 1950s-1970s

Speaker:

Jing Peng, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, HKU

Respondent:

Sangjoon Lee, Associate Professor and Head, Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries (DA+CI), Lingnan University

Moderator:

Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Friday, April 28, 2023

Time: 6:00-7:30 pm Hong Kong Time

Venue: Room 1069, 10/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, and on Zoom

All are welcome. Registration is required.

https://bit.ly/CSGC28April2023

As the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953, the Korean peninsula was doomed to the most confrontational years of the Cold War, and the divided Korea cast eyes abroad respectively to culturally define and show a promising Korea vis-à-vis the foredoomed other. Hong Kong, a site of coexistent but opposing ideologies on the one hand, and an influential pioneer in the Asian film industry on the other, became a “silver battlefield” of the cultural Cold War between the two Koreas.

This talk is an introduction to my chapter on South Korea-Hong Kong film co-production, which is part of my bigger thesis focusing on the ideological battle between North Korea and South Korea through the Hong Kong film industry during the height of the cultural Cold War. It will first introduce the brief history of South Korea-Hong Kong film co-production, then discuss the Hong Kong film industry as the “Hollywood of the East”, and finally politicize the favored pattern of both storytelling and casting in these co-productions that I originally term as “한남홍녀 / 韓男港女 / South Korean Man, Hong Kong Woman.”

Jing Peng is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are broadly on Korean and Hong Kong cinema during the Cold War.

Enquiries: Georgina Challen – gchallen@hku.hk

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