Korea’s Gender Relationship Comparison Between Post-War and Modern Time: Through the Housemaid and Poetry
Fianl Paper
ASTA 3920
Dr. Choo
May. 7th
Korea’s Gender Relationship Comparison Between Post-War and Modern Time: Through The Housemaid and Poetry
Introduction
The 1970s period could be regarded as a really important dividing line for Korean cinema. Changing from the Golden Age of the Korean film industry to the well-known low quality period, the films before and after 1970s have many differencies that are worthy to pay attention to. Not only for the film industry, the 1970s period is also a core transitional period in Korean society, a transition from the traditional Confucian society to the modern society. With the changes of political views and economic circumstances, South Koreans thoughts towards the society changes too. Because of the great amount of ideological changes among South Koreans, male’s dominant position starts to slightly move to another way. In the traditional Confucian society of South Korea, a man in a dominant position controls everything, integrity, honesty and more qualities is his criteria. At the same time, with the inviolability of the patriarchal, women stands in a subordinate position. In the process of the transformation towards the modern society, the status of women is gradually increasing, and for a short period of time men began to fall into the lost and confusion for the superficial phenomenon that males are losing their status, so they have difficulties in finding their directions. However, when the transformation was completed, men figure out that they are still in the dominant position, given more respect, freedom and rights to the women, men are still controllers in the real sense. All of these sociopolitical developments affecting the gender relationships among South Koreans are reflected by the movies. So in this article, I will use The Housemaid (Korean:하녀;translit:Hanyeo, directed by Kim Ki-young) and Poetry (Korean:시;translit:Shi, directed by
ASTA 3920
Dr. Choo
May. 7th
Korea’s Gender Relationship Comparison Between Post-War and Modern Time: Through The Housemaid and Poetry
Introduction
The 1970s period could be regarded as a really important dividing line for Korean cinema. Changing from the Golden Age of the Korean film industry to the well-known low quality period, the films before and after 1970s have many differencies that are worthy to pay attention to. Not only for the film industry, the 1970s period is also a core transitional period in Korean society, a transition from the traditional Confucian society to the modern society. With the changes of political views and economic circumstances, South Koreans thoughts towards the society changes too. Because of the great amount of ideological changes among South Koreans, male’s dominant position starts to slightly move to another way. In the traditional Confucian society of South Korea, a man in a dominant position controls everything, integrity, honesty and more qualities is his criteria. At the same time, with the inviolability of the patriarchal, women stands in a subordinate position. In the process of the transformation towards the modern society, the status of women is gradually increasing, and for a short period of time men began to fall into the lost and confusion for the superficial phenomenon that males are losing their status, so they have difficulties in finding their directions. However, when the transformation was completed, men figure out that they are still in the dominant position, given more respect, freedom and rights to the women, men are still controllers in the real sense. All of these sociopolitical developments affecting the gender relationships among South Koreans are reflected by the movies. So in this article, I will use The Housemaid (Korean:하녀;translit:Hanyeo, directed by Kim Ki-young) and Poetry (Korean:시;translit:Shi, directed by