Korea’s Vietnam: Popular Culture, Patriarchy, Intertextuality

Youngju, R. (2009). Korea’s Vietnam: Popular Culture, Patriarchy, Intertextuality. The Review of Korean Studies, 12(3), 101-123, https://doi.org/10.25024/review.2009.12.3.004

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Abstract

As America’s closest foreign ally during the Vietnam War, South Korea sent more than 340,000 troops to active combat in central Vietnam over a period of nearly a decade. Motivations for and the aftereffects of Korea’s military involvement have been analyzed along the dual axes of economics (developmentalism) and politics (anti communism), but South Korea’s involvement remains a matter of both shame and vainglory in popular memory today. At times reviled as no more than a species of government-authorized male prostitution and at other times celebrated as an example of Korean “toughness” and “ingenuity” on and off the battlefield, Korea’s Vietnam offers a fascinating intertext to the trauma of America’s Vietnam. This paper focuses on constructions of masculinity in representations of the Vietnam War in South Korean popular culture and identifies the latter as a site both of patriarchal alliance between the nation and the family, and of the dissolution of that alliance. Special attention will be paid to gendered revisions of Korea’s Vietnam found in two recent films, R-Point (2004) and Sunny (2008).

keywords: Vietnam War, popular culture, music, intertextuality, masculinization, nation, family, developmentalism, anti-communism, patriarchy, R-Point, Sunny

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Article Contents

Vol.12 No.3

Korea’s Vietnam: Popular Culture, Patriarchy, Intertextuality

Abstract

Reference

The Review of Korean Studies