‘65년 체제’의 시각 정치와 <총독의 딸>

Abstract

This article pays attention to the fact that the film Governor’s Daughter was produced and disapproved of exhibition in 1965, when South Korea and Japan signed a treaty. In this international love story, the colonial governor’s daughter, played by Japanese actress Kanako Michi, falls in love with a Korean nationalist man. Since it was the first time for a Japanese actress to appear in a Korean film in 20 years from liberation, the film was often praised as a signal for Japan-Korea amity and cultural exchange. Due to such characteristic, however, the film was soon placed in the center of a mixture of hopes and fears about importing Japanese films and seeking partnership with Japanese film industry, upon the signing of the Korea-Japan treaty. The Ministry of Public Information even postponed the release of Governor’s Daughter indefinitely. This incident of postponed release resulted from the Korean government’s ambiguous attitude toward Japanese culture around the time when the bilateral treaty was signed. Korean government needed to stress amity, friendship, and exchange with Japan, an alliance of “free Asia” for diplomatic purposes. This idea, however, faced opposition with concerns over possibly growing cultural dependence upon Japan and was soon cancelled. These circumstances all contributed to preventing Governor’s Daughter from being theatrically released. This article analyzes the film and the script of Governor’s Daughter, which is now in Korean Film Archive, and examines the unleased incident in the complicated context among the state power, film industry, Park Jung-hee government’s attitude towards Korean-Japan relationship, social opinion, popular sensibility and so on. Through the case of Governor’s Daughter, this article considers the contradiction that the change of Korean-Japan relationship and its domestic impact implied in the 1965 treaty regime that was being constructed crossing the colonial past, the postcolonial present, and the cold war.