Korean Understandings of the Occupation Through Drama: Gaksital

In this paper, I analyze the how the Korean media portray the nation’s experience during the Japanese Occupation from 1910 to 1945 in order to better understand modern Korean collective memory of the occupation. The following paper was originally part of a digital history project in which I analyzed multiple pieces of Korean media including manwha, film, and television. In this work, I dive deep into a single example of a wildly popular Korean television series called Bridal Mask to demonstrate how the Occupation is portrayed and how this impacts modern Korean’s views on the period. I approach this paper with a strong focus on the social implications of historical memory, and I specifically look for the intentional deviations from historical reality which are present throughout the series. Using a mixture of literary, social, and historical analysis, I attempt to parse how these deviations from reality contribute to the creator’s message. My goal is to illuminate modern political and economic tensions between Korea and Japan as part of a deeper social and historical rift and how nationalist media, such as Bridal Mask, contribute to the ongoing animosity.