KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study compares and analyzes <When a Woman Ascend the Stairs> filmed by Mikio Naruse and its imitation <When the Night Comes to Myongdong> by Lee, Hyung Pyo . The main focus is analyzing the social background, the context of film history, and the mental substance lurking under this plagiarism. Although South Korea of the 1960's had been constantly switched from under cultural influence of Japan to that of America since its independence, it was not fully able to be independent from Japan's cultural domination due to the long colonization. In spite of the prohibition on import of Japanese films to Korea by diplomatic break, Japanese film industry enjoyed their golden age. Korean film makers were trying to learn from Japanese films in order to sufficiently produce movie contents in a short time to catch up the young but brisk film industry. In a negative aspect, the root of Korean motion pictures is not purely restrained to Korea, but beyond that, stretching to Japan and even the West. Bound by these non-film factors, Korean films looked toward the films of Japan and the West to find a solution in depicting their lives. As for <When the Night Comes to Myongdong>, the film practiced plagiarism than simply setting a model, relying on the severance of diplomatic relations which acted as a psychological safeguard, thus portraying oneself and the society through othernization. The consequence, as we can perceive in chapter three, was that <When the Night Comes to Myongdong> could not describe the tension aroused by the chasm between the material and the mental modernization adequately enough compared to how it was expressed in <When a Woman Ascend the Stairs>. In brief, othernization held substantial responsibility in wearing off the original work's motif. To illustrate, Keiko's attitude to live an independent life in the original piece is rather smothered by the disordered amusement street scenes in the imitation film, <When the Night Comes to Myongdong>. Chapter four investigated both failed and successful marriage between topic and style of four each representative scenes to show the faults of straying motifs in mimicries not only occurring in narratives but also in style. It is expected to contribute to the research on Korean film history through the comparison and analysis of this study. Furthermore, by revealing what should have been shown already during Korea and Japan's cultural interchange, it is sincerely hoped for this study to play a role in enabling our country to overcome its cultural solicitude.

Mikio Naruse, Lee, Hyung Pyo, <When a Woman Ascend the Stairs>, <When the Night Comes to Myongdong>, Comparison of Korean Film with Japanese Film, Othernization of Self, Material Modernism