ALL3586: Cold War Cultures in Korea

In this course we will analyze the Cold War (1945-1989) not only as an era in geopolitics, but also as a historical period marked by specific cultural and artistic forms. We focus on the Korean peninsula, looking closely at the literary and film cultures of both South Korea and North Korea. We discuss how the global conflict between U.S.-centered and Soviet-centered societies affected the politics, culture, and geography of Korea between 1945 and 1989, treating the division of Korea as an exemplary case extending from the origins of the Cold War to the present. We span the Cold War divide to compare the culture and politics of the South and the North through various cultural forms, including anti-communist and socialist realist films, biography and autobiography, fiction, and political discourse. We also discuss the legacy of the Cold War in contemporary culture and in the continued existence of two states on the Korean peninsula. The primary purpose is to be able to analyze post-1945 Korean cultures in both their locality and as significant aspects of the global Cold War era.