title: Political Moods: Film Melodrama and the Cold War in the Two Koreas
abstract: Melodrama films dominated the North and South Korean industries in the period between liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 and the hardening of dictatorship in the 1970s. The films of each industry are often read as direct reflections of Cold War and Korean War political ideologies and national historical experiences, and therefore as aesthetically and politically opposed. However, Political Moods develops a comparative analysis across the Cold War divide, analyzing how films in both N