A Study on the Joint Product of Korean Film
-Focusing on the Disguised Joint Production-
AHN, TAE-GEUN
Department of Global Culture and Contents
The Graduate School
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
A joint film is a film that is plann...
A Study on the Joint Product of Korean Film
-Focusing on the Disguised Joint Production-
AHN, TAE-GEUN
Department of Global Culture and Contents
The Graduate School
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
A joint film is a film that is planned, invested and produced by more than one production company. The Korean film law confines a joint film to a film made jointly by a Korean production company and a foreign production company. The history of joint films in Korea began in the Japanese colonial period. The film <Rainbow> (1937) by director Lee Kyu-Hwan was jointly produced with a Japanese production company in order to overcome the problem of limited budget and attain a better quality of the film. In the 1940s there were joint productions by Japanese production companies and Chosun Film Production Company and they were in fact a form of a mobilization of Korean people in the production of Japanese films. This was done as a way of attaining greater publicity to the Korean people, who were the main audiences of the films. After the liberation from the Japanese occupation, the Koreans in the film industry helped American production companies by collaborating with them in the production of American films. In 1957 they made a few joint films with Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong and this marked the beginning of the development of the Korean film industry and was the first attempt to enter into the global market. The joint production of Shin Film and Shaw Brothers began with the film <The Last Woman of Shang> in 1964. Shin Film took over the copyright of the film on the condition that it arranged the Korean actors to play roles in the film and shooting the Korean scenes. After the film, the number of joint films of Shin Film and Shaw Brothers increased. It was mostly in the form of Korean actors going to Hong Kong and playing roles in the films.
After this, the Shaw Brothers films, which were not legitimate joint films, began to be introduced as the Korean-HongKongese joint films. In 1966, the film <The Monkey Goes West> received public attention when it was revealed that it was a pseudo joint film made by replacing a few scenes in which Korean actors appeared and that it was in fact a foreign film. This incident was the first incident of pseudo joint films that became an issue, and the forms of pseudo joint films increased. Regardless of the fact that it was publicly revealed, more pseudo joint films were produced in the Korean film industry, and around the 1970s there was a rapid increase in the number of joint films of Korea and Hong Kong or of Korea and Taiwan. This was not the result of real joint productions, but the result of expedients that were used in order to import Hong Kong films following the success of Hong Kong martial arts films. There was a limitation imposed on the number of imported foreign films and in particular on the number of imported Hong Kong films. The importers ed to the authorities that the films they imported were joint films.
In sum, pseudo joint films were in fact foreign films that were imported and ed as joint films. These films were screened in cinemas after a few scenes shot in Korea that would meet the requirements of the film law were added to the original film, which was then dubbed into Korean. The press of course revealed that these were low-grade violent films that do not belong to any country and constantly required rectifying the situation.
The criterion used to identify a pseudo joint film is whether there exists an original foreign film and this can be done easily by searching for a released DVD or checking the filmography of the production company. In the case of a genuine joint production, it is explicitly stated. Films that do not meet the requirements of joint films are also pseudo joint films. This is the result of the nature of the film law that was easy to circumvent. The film law required the investment of more than 30% of the budget, shootings in Korea, and the appearance of more than 3 Korean actors. Documents were fabricated and the Korean actors that appeared in the films were in fact those who had exclusive contracts with Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong. Due to the permissive law, the films by directors and actors with exclusive contracts with Show Brothers were ed as joint films and were released as such.
There are three types of joint films in Korea. The first type is a genuine joint film that was jointly produced by the two countries from the planning stage. The second type is a pseudo joint film that was in fact a foreign film imported and ed to the authorities as if it was a joint film. The third type is a Korean film that had a few foreign actors in and was released as if it was a joint film. The second and the third types were pseudo joint films that did not meet the requirements of the film law. In particular, the second type was a genuine foreign film.
Pseudo joint films are divided into three types – those that are proved to be Hong Kong films, those that are suspected to be Hong Kong films due to the lack of firm evidence, and those that were produced by a Korean production company with a few foreign actors that did not meet the requirements of the film law. All these should not be called genuine joint films.
The practice of “producing” pseudo joint films was the result of the limitation imposed on the number of imported Chinese films. For the film producers this was an easy way of importing a foreign film. They could get a premium for the imported foreign film in terms of ticket sales and they did not have to pay the import tax. Above all, they could fill the quota of the production of Korean films. In sum, they took full advantage of the practice. The practice was done without any guilt and the number of these joint films increased steadily.
These joint films are registered as Korean films in the Korean Film Archive and are introduced in the media as Korean films. The people in the film industry including those that are directly involved have been keeping silence on the matter. Talking about this publicly was regarded as the exposure of shameful parts of the Korean film history and therefore was implicitly prohibited. This dissertation deals with both genuine joint films and pseudo joint films from the Japanese colonial period to the present day. In particular, the period in which there were many cases of pseudo joint film productions, i.e. until the 1980s, is analysed in detail. Out of 204 joint films that were produced until 1990, a total of 123 pseudo joint films are identified including those that are suspected to be pseudo joint films.
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