Framing Devices: Cold War Manga/Manwha and Popular Media in Japan and Korea

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Studies of cultural representations of Cold War tend to highlight bilateral national relationships and interactions between the hegemonic powers and their allies. This panel, however, departs from the dominant narrative mold and argues, instead, that it is crucial to examine the experiences of Cold War as parallel developments, intersections, and dialogues within Asia vis-à-vis the hegemonic superpowers. Specific attention is given to the popular media of film, TV anime, and comics because they not only paraphrase but also reconfigure views of international conflicts and divisions for wider audiences.

Michael Baskett examines representations of Asia in the 1960s children’s spy franchise "Ninja Brigade Gekko" which blended Cold War ideology with reimagined imperial Japanese rhetoric to function as a form of cultural containment. Kyu Hyun Kim discusses the process of political reconfiguration and nation-building of South Korea in the late 1960s through the 1980s, through an examination of gender, sexuality and ethnicity coding in popular Korean comics by Ko Woo-young. Hikari Hori analyzes Japanese comics "Tomorrow’s Joe", widely shared text ranging from political activists to general readers in the 1970s, which illustrates the emergence of new Asian and gendered identity. Finally, Kukhee Choo redefines the millennium in South Korea as an era of ongoing Cold War/postcolonial masculinity project in her analysis of the Korean film "Old Boy" (2003) which was based on a Japanese comic of the same name.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Hikari Hori, Columbia University

Chair

• Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Columbia University

Individual Presentations

• Conflicts of Identity in Ko Woo-young's Narrative Comics: Race-Ethnicity, Sexuality and Nationalism - Kyu Hyun Kim, University of California, Davis

• Joe’s World Atlas: Manga and the Cold War in Japan, ca. 1970 - Hikari Hori, Columbia University

• Hardcore Adaptation: Millennial Masculinity in Oldboy (2003) - Kukhee Choo, Sophia University

Discussant

• Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Columbia University