[Hybrid Lecture]

Horsehair Hats and Washerwomen: The Earliest Filmed Images of Korea, 1901 – 1945.

SPEAKER: Jihoon Suk

DATE: Tuesday. July 12, 2022. 7:30-9:00PM (Seoul)
ADMISSION (Online & In-person): Free for Members; W10,000 for Non-members

* If you would like to attend online Zoom, please RSVP by clicking HERE by Monday (July 11). We will email you with the link on Tuesday.
* To attend in-person, RSVP is not required.

Abstract:
With the invention of cinema in the West in the mid-1890s, many early films contain the non-Western (i.e. Asian and African) sceneries, people, and customs that quickly became the object of curiosity, fascination, and the knowledge-making of the Western world, and Korea was no exception. With some of the earliest film footage dating to May 1901 – filmed by the legendary travel writer and lecturer Burton Holmes – , there are quite a number of pre-1945 film footage containing scenes of Korea, but often with very similar “stereotypical” images in between them, such as man in their traditional Korean horsehair hats (Gat) and women doing their laundries in the stream. Using several of these early film clips and footages as examples, this lecture not only will try to show the actual history of these early films, but also how the Western (and later Japanese) tried to “capture” and “depict” the images of Korea while creating a cultural stereotype which has been used to portray the “Korean-ness” in modern Korea.

Bio:
Jihoon Suk received his BA and MA in Korean modern history in Yonsei University. After studying in Asian Studies program at the Asian Languages and Cultures (ALC) department at University of Michigan, he is currently doing his Ph.D. in Korean modern history in Yonsei University. His primary research focuses on the role of modern (non-textual) media in the creation of the “sense” of cultural Korean-ness in the 20^th He is also an avid collector and archivist of vintage sound recordings and film, having been working with various museums and archives in Korea and around the world, including The Independence Hall Museum of Korea, The National Archives of Korea, The National Library of Korea, The Korean Film Archive, The National Gugak Center, U.S. Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, and the University of Hawaii-Manoa. This lecture is also his second lecture for the RAS-KB.