The following paper formed the basis of a talk given by Hangul Celluloid at the ‘East Winds’ symposium that took place at Coventry University on March 2nd 2012:
Introduction
Within a film industry as historically censored and highly regulated as Korea’s, the emergence and depiction of adult, or sexual, content in Korean cinema has been subject to a slow and rather difficult evolutionary process. Regularly having courted major controversy, graphic adult content (both in terms of narrative and imagery) has nonetheless increased over the years and, as the nature of roles and the balance of power within relationships – as well as the place of women within society – has gradually moved onto a more equal footing, so the nature of adult content has increasingly diversified, largely morphing from simply being a depiction of wanton females out to destroy family life, or women as subservient ‘objects’, to more often serving as a reference to power struggles within relationships and society as a whole; to empowerment; or even facilitating social commentary on specific historical periods and events, while also directly leading to the eventual emergence of the so called ‘erotic film’, in any one of a number of genres.
In fact, so inextricably linked to, not only censorship, but also government constraints on society at large – not to mention specific Korean current affairs – has sexual content in Korean cinema been over the years, that any discussion of its emergence and growth can largely be seen as a history of Korea itself, and while it would clearly be utterly impossible for me to detail every instance of graphic sexuality that contributed to the eventual growth of adult content in Korean films, certainly within the constraints of a twenty minute talk, this paper will nonetheless attempt to give an overview of some of the most notable cases that together have largely served to shape the attitudes towards depictions of sex and sexuality in Korean cinema seen in Korea today.
Background
Even as far back as the period that has become known as the Golden Age of Korean cinema – in the late 50’s and 60’s – sexuality had already begun to be referenced in Korean cinema. Having only escaped from Japanese occupation in 1945 when the Japanese were defeated by Allied forces (Korean films having become little more than a heavily censored outlet for Japanese propaganda during that time), and with the majority of Korean cinema’s infrastructure, and even content, having been destroyed or lost during the Korean War, Korea set about rebuilding its film industry with the help of tax incentives and foreign aid, and having spent so long being denied the opportunity to openly promote its individual cultural identity (even Korean language films had been banned by the Japanese in 1942), Korean film output positively exploded – with narratives depicting the classic ideas of morality, purity and the importance of family values (to both individuals and society at large) becoming increasingly commonplace.
Japanese oppression no longer being a current malevolent force and the Korean War having finally come to an uneasy stalemate (even though an official peace treaty was never signed), Korean cinema instead began to focus more of its attention on the perceived threat to the stability of society in the form of subversive elements that could potentially destroy the all-important family unit, and the perfect personification of that threat came in the form of depictions of illicit sex, adultery and sexual betrayal.
The 1960s
A clear example of this can be seen in one of the most famous Korean films from the Golden Age, ‘The Housemaid’ (1960 – Directed by Kim Ki-young), which tells the story of a wanton young woman who installs herself as housemaid to a family to ensnare the happily married man and have him for herself, fully prepared to destroy both his life and his entire family should she fail to get her way.
In spite of there being no nudity or graphically sexual visual imagery in this original version of ‘The Housemaid’, it positively oozes sexuality and menace throughout, and though the sex within it is implied rather than shown, ‘The Housemaid’ nonetheless set a benchmark for narrative depictions of sex and the perils of succumbing to base instincts and desires – a benchmark that could really only ever be raised by adding further to the explicitness of representations of sexuality present within narratives and, eventually, visuals.
However, less than a year after the release of ‘The Housemaid’, General Park Chung-hee instigated a military coup in Korea and, over the next decade, citizens and Korean society as a whole faced ever growing constraints and the curtailing of freedom. It almost goes without saying that the Korean film industry was also severely affected by severe governmental dictates, with increasing censorship over political subject matter and sexual material in films, being placed on films and filmmakers alike.
Nonetheless, some directors managed to find ways to push the boundaries of sexuality and adult content in Korean cinema further during this period, in spite of the almost draconian censorship they faced, and a notable example came in 1968 with Shin Sang-ok’s film ‘Eunuch’. With scenes of miscarriage, lesbianism, castration and rape within a historical drama set in the Royal Palace, ‘Eunuch’ brought overt depictions of the sexual act to the very foreground of the silver screen.
Shin Sang-ok would later become known as the director who was abducted under the orders of Kim Jong-il, held captive for years North Korea (following the North’s kidnapping of his wife, actress Choi Eun-hee, in 1978) and forced to make a number of films for the North Korean regime before both finally managed to escape in 1986, but though that fact will always be the headline-grabbing story of his life, his importance in the shaping of adult content in South Korean Cinema cannot in any way be denied.
Once again, the sexual content in ‘Eunuch’ was presented without the inclusion of full-on nudity (strategically placed ornaments and set props were used to cover the actors’ modesty throughout), but the boundaries had been resolutely pushed, nonetheless, to the extent that the subsequent addition of graphic sexual imagery to the mix became almost a foregone conclusion.
The 1970s
Kim Ki-young stepped up to the plate on that score, in 1972, with ‘Insect Woman’ which, like ‘The Housemaid’ dealt with the dangers of succumbing to sexual desires. The film tells the story of a man who checks himself into hospital because of mental issues and there meets several men suffering from schizophrenia as a result of having extra-marital affairs. They proceed to relate the tale of an impotent married man who was killed by his concubine and the film steps back in time to detail not only his affair, which began after he raped her, but also his wife’s subsequent discovery of their sexual liaisons and her eventual decision to even pay the girl an allowance for her ‘sexual work’. Involved and fairly twisted though ‘Insect Woman’ is, the main reason I bring it up here is because as well as a deeply sexually charged and altogether groundbreaking narrative, there is also a scene featuring an early example of cinematic visual nudity: As the man and his lover have sex over a glass table, the top of her dress torn aside to reveal her naked breast and, fleeting though that moment is, with it another step along the road to Korean cinema’s sexual liberation had resolutely been taken.
As a short aside, the questions of how and why films such as this got past the heavy censorship of the period arises and while the answer is ultimately up for debate, to my mind, the context within which the sexual references and content appeared is likely to have played a part – cautionary tales and morality plays of the perils and pitfalls of illicit sex and adultery (from one perspective, at least) actually served to reinforce the importance of a stable and loving family to ultimate happiness and even wellbeing, and, in fact, it wouldn’t be until many years later, in 1996, that ‘The Adventures of Mrs Park’ (directed by Kim Tae-gyun) would finally become the first Korean film to show a positive ending to an adulterous liaison.
‘Insect woman’ was another Kim Ki-young film that came just before a further governmental censorship clampdown. In 1973 changes to the Motion Picture Law were made stipulating that all films were required to reflect the so-called ‘Revitalising Government’, and this, in one fell swoop, heralded an altogether bleak and barren period as far as worthy South Korean films were concerned, save for a number of ‘hostess’ films detailing tales of lower class women driven into prostitution.
Not only did controversial storylines and adult content dwindle to almost non-existence, but the Korean film industry quickly regressed to (once more) being little more than an outlet for government propaganda and, being one of only a very few ‘safe’ genres of film allowed by the state, melodrama became largely predominant – still being hugely prevalent, to this very day. It’ll likely come as no surprise to learn that Korean cinema audience numbers plummeted as a result and it wasn’t until a new president and government came to power in the latter part of the 1970’s that the situation had any hope whatsoever of changing.
The 1980s
Those changes, when they finally began to take place in the early 80’s, saw a relaxation of attitudes towards, and censorship of, sexual material in film, and like anything natural that is forcibly repressed and subsequently somewhat let loose, adult content; sexual narratives and imagery quickly began to appear – and with increasing frequency.
While some filmmakers were content to use adult content and imagery as a visual representation of voyeurism, lust and/or oppression (such as Koo Young-nam’s 1981 horror film ‘Suddenly at Midnight’, in which a coveted woman is repeatedly shown with voyeuristic camerawork – filming her in the bath, having the camera repeatedly focus on various parts of her anatomy and even showing a number of what can only be described as up-shirt shots), some directors had altogether far more to say and used their new-found freedom to express sexuality in their films to make social commentary on the changing face of Korean society itself.
One of the most famous examples of this (well, famous to me at least) can be seen in 1984 film ‘Between the Knees’ (Chang-Ho Lee): After the Gwangju uprising of 1980, Korea slowly began to step tentatively towards social reform (leading to a new constitution in 1988 and eventual democracy) and with the younger generation in the 80’s being increasingly influenced by the West and Western ideals (having far more access to the outside world than their parents ever did, via foreign cinema output etc.), young women, especially, were becoming far less willing to accept similar lives to those of the older generation – getting married at the first opportunity and giving themselves and their desires over entirely to their husbands and families – and they understandably felt well within their rights to demand the lives that they really wanted, lives they could see others living – with equality, a career, love and, of course, sex. ‘Between the Knees’ details this social battle, if you will, in its story of a young woman so at odds with the wishes of her puritanical mother that she can’t manage to focus on anything, save thoughts of the sex she so desires, both for pleasure and to rebel against her family, all wrapped up in a tale of knee-focused sexual imagery.
The 80’s also saw the release of Korea’s first erotic sex film in 1982: ‘Madame Aema’ (directed by Jeon In-yeop) told the story of a woman who engaged in a series of extra-marital affairs while her husband was in prison, and was by far the most sexually explicit film made in Korea up until that point, spawning a number of sequels. It’s likely that the box office success of an erotic film like ‘Madame Aema’ indirectly led to the making of Lee Doo-yong’s ‘Mulberry’ in 1986 – another erotic tale (based on a famous story by Na Do-hwang) that tells the story of a beautiful woman (during the Japanese occupation) who spends the long periods gathering mulberry leaves and having sex with the majority of the men in her village while her husband’s away from home, all the while trying to break free from the shackles of her life – the theme of a woman trying to exert her independence and individuality while desperately trying to escape her authoritarian (and implied sexually inadequate) husband and family life yet again speaking of the slowly changing place, wants and needs of women in society.
The 1990s
The new constitution of 1988, democratic reforms and further relaxation of censorship laws combined with outside investment from businesses and industry to give the Korean film industry a boost in the 90’s, and the more adult content that appeared, the more directors inevitably tried to push the boundaries of its explicitness; the more relaxed they felt about the use of sexual storylines combined with graphic imagery, the more they strived to find ever increasingly controversial situations in which to depict it. Regardless of the fact that the censors were being far less constrictive than they once were, there was clearly bound to come a time when a film would finally cross the line of what was deemed morally acceptable.
That time came when ‘Yellow Hair’ (directed by Kim Yoo-min) was put before censors prior to its intended release. The Korean Media Ratings Board rejected ‘Yellow Hair’ outright, tantamount to banning the film – describing it as having “scenes which are disgusting and totally unacceptable to our moral standards” – and an eventual release was only granted months later after certain scenes had been cut and the graphic imagery in more than one scene had been darkened and blurred.
‘Yellow Hair’ was the first film to ever be rejected by the Media Ratings Board and its treatment served to set a rather dangerous precedent, almost guaranteeing that other future films would meet the same fate.
The next incident of a film feeling the wrath of the Media Ratings Board came, unsurprisingly, sooner rather than later. Just a year after ‘Yellow Hair’, ‘Lies’ (the story of two lovers with a large age gap who get lost in a world of love motels and masochism, directed by Jang Sun-woo) was rejected not once but twice, the two rejections coming two months apart. Finally on the third attempt, after several cuts were made to scenes and explicit language, ‘Lies’ received an 18+ certificate in 2000.
However, considering the fact that ‘Happy End’ (directed by Jeong Ji-woo) was released with an 18+ certificate in the same year as ‘Yellow Hair’ and contains sexual content and graphic imagery every bit as explicit as either it or ‘Lies’, it becomes increasingly clear that the problem the Media Ratings Board had with both films it rejected was down to the context in which the sex and nudity appeared.
Both ‘Yellow Hair’ and ‘Lies’ focused on characters on the outskirts of society and, for the majority of each film, they survived and rather enjoyed life perfectly well by doing so while ‘Happy End’ centred around adultery and betrayal within an outwardly normal(ish) family unit, speaks volumes and the scene in ‘Yellow Hair’ that received the most brutal cutting by the censors being one showing a sexual threesome between the two main female characters and their male lover adds further proof to this, if more proof were needed.
That, to my mind, clearly infers that even though society, the nature of relationships and the balance of power within them was changing, it would take the powers that be a lot longer to come to terms with alternative lifestyles.
2000 and Beyond
A year after ‘Lies’ was finally released, the Media Ratings Board once again chose to reject a film, ‘Yellow Flower’ (directed by Ji-sang Lee), but as a result of the film’s distributor bringing an action against the censor, the Constitutional Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to refuse a film a rating and barred the Board from completely rejecting any cinema releases from that point on.
A true step forward for the film industry, democracy and free speech, if ever there was one.
In the subsequent years to the present day, governmental constraints affecting the Korean film industry have obviously become far less of an issue, and while censorship still rears its ugly head from time to time, it causes nowhere near the number of issues it once did.
However, as adult content in Korean cinema becomes ever more explicit, the question of where the line between art and pornography lays (if it even exists) becomes increasingly difficult to answer. On the one hand, directors who consider themselves as serious filmmakers will often claim that adult content in their films is used as a dissection of society; a critique of hypocrisy contained within moral ideas and social norms; or even as historical allegory; while on the other, you can almost guarantee detractors will allege that they considered the overall picture in coming to their conclusion on the worthiness of specific cinematic sexual content and imagery.
How much specific content is, in reality, simply used as expensive wrapping around titillation and sexual gratification is, of course, less discussed, but strip away all the rhetoric and hyperbole given by either side in the discussion and you’re left with one very simple question: Is sex still a dirty word?
Whether or not you allow your opinion on the depiction of sex in a particular film to be influenced by others, and ultimately whether you believe that governments and censors should have the right to dictate what a society should, or shouldn’t, be allowed to see, will likely be reflected in how you feel about adult content in films in general but, either way, the very least that these films deserve is to be judged on their individual merits – viewers making up their own minds on a case-by-case basis, without being clouded by pre-conceptions, hearsay and assumptions.
What to Watch
Finally, before I run over time and get physically dragged off the stage, a few recommendations of Korean films containing adult content that you really should see, if you haven’t already:
Historical
- Portrait of a Beauty and Untold Scandal: both detailing an outwardly moral historical society bubbling over with a far more salubrious underbelly, and asking what happens to true, pure love when it’s brought into direct conflict with it. And…
- The Servant – billed as an erotic rom-com, The Servant is a film with less depth than either Untold Scandal or Portrait of a Beauty but is worthy of your attention, all the same.
Contemporary
- A Good Lawyer’s Wife and Green Chair: Love and sex within affairs frowned on by society, both featuring relationships between older women and younger men.
- The Scarlet Letter: Forbidden love and longing within forbidden love and longing all wrapped up in a murder/mystery thriller.
- Summertime: A brutal and highly sexually charged dissection of love, power, adultery and betrayal serving as a metaphor for the Gwangju uprising in 1980.
- The Housemaid: A sexually explicit reworking of Kim Ki-young’s 1960 original detailing class structure and struggles in Korean society.
…and one to avoid
- Natalie: Korean’s first 3D film, Natalie attempts to bring 3 dimensions to depictions of love sex and erotica but fails miserably on every count. Badly done 3D effects (certainly the red/green 3D found on the Korean DVD) and a, frankly, dull story that lurches into forced, utterly false, and while we’re at it, unbelievable melodrama.