Black-and-White as an Authoritarian Color: The Politics of Colorization in Taiwan’s Cinema and South Korea’s Television

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 14. East Asian Cinema & Visual Politics

Abstract

This paper explores the technological and political trajectories of colorization in Taiwan’s film and South Korea’s television industries under authoritarian rule, demonstrating how media technologies were strategically appropriated as tools of governance. Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) government leveraged the transition to color film to suppress Taiwanese-language cinema and reinforce Mandarin as the dominant cultural and political language. Conversely, South Korea’s Park Chung-hee administration delayed television colorization to shield domestic manufacturers, discipline chaebols toward export-driven growth, and prevent the exacerbation of class tensions. While Taiwan’s authoritarian regime emphasized cultural hierarchies to consolidate its legitimacy, Korea’s regime sought to obscure socioeconomic differences to maintain political stability. These cases challenge conventional narratives that treat technological progress as apolitical and inevitable, instead highlighting how the shift to color reflected the ethnic divides in Taiwan and the socioeconomic priorities of Korea.

This study underscores the centrality of material foundations in shaping audiovisual industries. The supply of film stock and the development of film processing techniques in cinema, alongside the assembly of television sets and the production of cathode ray tubes (CRT) in television, played pivotal roles in enabling or constraining these technological transitions. By examining these material dimensions, the paper reveals the critical but often overlooked contributions of East Asian countries, including Taiwan and Korea, to the global audiovisual landscape. Furthermore, Taiwan and Korea’s struggles during the transition to color technology provide a lens for rethinking the history of technological applications in latecomer countries, illustrating how political and economic imperatives shaped their divergent paths within global media systems.

Author

• Chihheng Su, National Taiwan University