Censorship in Korean Cinema. Desire and Death in "Hanyo"

Abstract

The Korean cinema was born and raised under the shadow of censorship through the various dictatorships that took place since the early twentieth century. In this context we approach the figure of the South Korean film director Kim Ki-young through his film Hanyo, (The Housemaid, 1960), in order to dive into the filmic devices which represent sexual attraction by using the expressive potential of his female characters. In this latter regard, the woman leaves her submissive position and plays an active role in representing social values through sexuality, whereas repressed sexuality becomes the only instrument of power that a misfit lower-class woman can make use of. The liberating element is therefore a socially unacceptable element. Such a double reading acquires a symbolic quality for the spectator who must decide their acceptance or rejection position.

This analysis will allow revealing cultural peculiarities that concern censorship in Korea, since its work is not so focused on images explicitness but on its moral attribution. Similarly, it would be necessary to understand the essential incidence of other social mechanisms of latent self-censorship in the of this emblematic director. Representing low human passions is the leitmotif of the work of Kim Kiyoung who revisits his former masterpiece on several occasions in order to offer a multifaceted view of the sexual repression dilemma. All in all the purpose of this paper is to show how the film grammar deepen human drama with surgical precision, in an intelligent exercise of bypassing censorship.