두 개의 전쟁과 집합적 기억의 형성- 베트남전쟁 시기 군영화산업의 전개와 활용 -

Abstract

This study analyzes the images and narratives of war produced by the Republic of Korea(ROK) Army Motion Picture Production Center(AMPPC) by examining Gukbang nyuseu(National Defense News), Wollam jeonseon (Frontlines of Vietnam), and Baedaruigisu(Flagbearer of Korea) series, whose production began around the time South Korea joined the Vietnam War. Surveying the way in which films produced by the military functioned as a tool for psychological welfare against its own people, this paper assesses the relationship between films, the formation of collective memory, and governmentality. It is possible to say that repetitive presentation of certain images and narratives in films and television shows that people are institutionally forced to watch—such as the public information programs (newsreels and propaganda films) for soldiers, news on public television, and mandatory screening programs in movie theaters—is a visible manifestation of an intention to form a “collective memory” based on the governing ideology. Therefore it is necessary to conduct an in-depth research on the films that were produced, distributed, and screened by the ROK AMPPC with strong institutional backing in the 1960s and 1970s within the context of the “intention” and “practice” of the formation of collective memory. This study shows that a series of films produced by the AMPPC during the Vietnam War carefully constructed an image of the Vietnam War by using images from the Korean War, with which the viewers were familiar. These films also aimed to justify Korea’s participation in the war by posing it as a conflict between the free allied nations and Communist forces. The National Defense News, Frontlines of Vietnam, and Flag bearers of Korea series and other educational film series complemented each other in terms of their contents and screening trends; they shared a diachronic narrative, which led from the war to the Yushin regime, and were utilized as an essential medium that helped form the memory of the masses. In this way, AMPPC’s films revived the memories of the past that Korean people had already experienced. They also functioned as a strategy to evoke a “future war” that might (or might not)occur and mobilize the whole Korean population under the facade of militaristic modernism. After the war, these military films left the battlefield and were used to wage a different war by serving the Yushin regime and promoting the Saemaul Undong (New Community Movement). The masses, who had been for a war that they were familiarized with, gradually forgot about Vietnam and turned their attention to serving the Yushin regime and participating in the Saemaul Undong. As a result, the Vietnam War became a past that had been long forgotten even in the mass culture until the 1990s, when people began to raise questions about the war.