유현목 감독의 반공 영화 연구

Abstract

Yu Hyun-mok(1925~2009) is the representative director of Korea. His film Aimless Bullet (1961) is still considered as a masterpiece. He is regarded as a director who expressed the propound themes, such as the division of the Korean peninsula, religious faith, and human destiny with artistic images even in the 1960s when a melodramatic film as a tear-jerker was rampant in Korea. This paper analyzes Yu Hyun-Mok’s films which dealt with anti-communism. When a director Lee Man-hee was arrested for violating the Anti-communist Law, Yu Hyun-mok insisted that it is able to enlighten the people by making high-quality anti-communist films even though anti-communism is not taken as a national policy. Based on this idea, he had made several anti-communist films that led to accuse the oppressiveness of the communist regime by starring an intellectual protagonist. This tendency is based on existentialism. Yu's films began with the tense confrontation, that is, critical realism in the early 1960s, then moved toward anti-communism in the late 1960, and finally fixed on it in the 1970s. This is deeply related to the internal confession of a Christian who defected from the North Korea. In the end, Yu's idea was deeply involved with conservative nationalism, which eventually led him to direct a documentary celebrating the former president Park Chunghee.