미국 기록영화와 한국전쟁 ― 미 육군통신대 영상을 중심으로 ―

Abstract

By taking note of the image records as the historical sources, this paper examines the imagification process of the Korean War. With the Department of Public Information in the US government, organizations in the US armed forces had produced lots of documentary films about the wars. The United States Army Signal Corps (USASC) produced video records on the Korean War in order of the outbreak, processes, and armistice negotiations. The films contain edited records related to the events of the Korean War; and these news films were showed and broadcasted. The Korean War that was triggered by the collision of two different ideologies, capitalism and communism, caused the propaganda war for aggrandizing military victories and for justifying the enter a war. The image records containing fierce battles and nonfictional truths were the significant media for legitimating the US participation in the Korean War and for persuading it to the public. Video records are the contemporary historical sources; thus image records produced in the USASC reflected the direct perspectives of the US government. Therefore, these records show accurately the intention of the US government in what way the Korean war perceived and memorized. These films explicitly demonstrate that the US government was confident as a winner of the cold war under the images that it led and protected the free world. Although the war was broken in the Korean peninsula, the group who commanded and had battles and protected the civilian was not the South Korean but US armed forces. On the other hand, the Korean people were described as the pitiable images. The films frequently exhibit that the US government decided on the fate of the Korean peninsula where the international war was outbreak beyond the civil war. This study begin with the critical mind that the visual media are also significant historical texts as with documents. Nevertheless, it is not easy work to historicize image records for conducting historical research. For this reason, this paper adopts the theory that ‘approaches’ is more appropriate term than ‘methods’ in the research field in the visual history, because it seems that the concept ‘approaches’ embraces new concerns or perspectives rather than the term ‘method’. By considering that image records contain more facts than dramatic films, the analyses on image records that are similar to historical literatures will widen the area of historical studies.