Korean Dramas

I've been trying to get into Korean historical dramas for about the past week. Notice the trying to. I figured I would pick something related to what I am supposed to be studying, so I picked "Queen Seondeok" (선덕여왕) due to its time period (it is supposed to be set in Silla, or at least what TV producers believed Silla was like). Unfortunately this has not been working out.

First is the fact that like anything on television, it takes liberties with reality. I think I got through one episode before realizing I was too bored to pay attention long enough to what was happening. I imagine there are some cultural differences I am not picking up on in the subtitles and my year of studying Korean did not exactly equip me to notice intricacies the subtitles happened to have missed.

I guess I could switch to modern day dramas about young people falling in love and living in the city. This is if I can get passed screaming about the patriarchal heteronormativity.

I picked the two pieces of artwork on the right for their similar setup. The first is a propaganda print of the Boston Massacre where the British forces are firing on colonial civilians in Boston. The second is a piece by Picasso titled Massacre in Korea. Picasso allegedly produced this response to the Sinchon Massacre.

Yesterday I finally got to hear Bruce Cummings lecture after waiting almost a year since it had been rescheduled. It was kind of what I expected for his lecture topic of the forgotten Korean War. Cummings mostly talked about the 20th century style total war and its impact upon the Korean population.

Overall it was not anything I had not heard before. North Korea's power structure is still built around the same people who were around during the war. The US probably prolonged the war effort in an attempt to make a point to nations of the world thinking of going Communist.

The question for today however is how do we confront this ghosts of the past? There has been a large body of revisionist history that has set out as of late to examine these issues. I think Cummings made a good point however when he said that everyone needs to be able to tell their story. This has been a part of what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has done.