As with all national film industries, Korean cinema functions as a medium of inventing national history and identity, and also establishing their legitimacy―in both forgetting the past and remembering history. Korean films also play a part in forging cultural collective memory. Korea as a colonised and divided nation clearly adopted different approaches to the filmic depiction of history compared to colonial powers such as Western or Japanese cinema. The Colonial Period (1910-1945) and Korean War (1950-1953) draw particular attention as they have been major topics shaping the narrative of nation in North and South Korean films.
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