[KS] New Book: Cine-Mobility: Twentieth-Century Transformations in Korea’s Film and Transportation

Han Sang KIM visual.social at gmail.com
Wed May 4 03:14:05 EDT 2022


Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that my book, *Cine-Mobility: Twentieth-Century
Transformations in Korea’s Film and Transportation*
<https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674267978>(Harvard
University Asia Center, 280 pages, ISBN 9780674267978), has just been
published.

*Description*

In 1916, a group of Korean farmers and their children gathered to watch a
film depicting the enthronement of the Japanese emperor. For this
screening, a unit of the colonial government’s news agency brought a
projector and generator by train to their remote rural town. Before the
formation of commercial moviegoing culture for colonial audiences in rural
Korean towns, many films were sent to such towns and villages as
propaganda. The colonial authorities, as well as later South Korean
postcolonial state authorities, saw film as the most effective medium for
disseminating their political messages. In *Cine-Mobility*, Han Sang
Kim argues that the force of propaganda films in Korea was derived
primarily not from their messages but from the new mobility of the viewing
position.

>From the first film shot in Korea in 1901 through early internet screen
cultures in late 1990s South Korea, *Cine-Mobility* explores the
association between cinematic media and transportation mobility, not only
in diverse and discrete forms such as railroads, motorways, automobiles,
automation, and digital technologies, but also in connection with the newly
established rules and restrictions and the new culture of mobility,
including changes in gender dynamics, that accompanied it.

*Table of Contents*

   - Introduction: World-as-Gesture and Learning from Cinematic Experience
   - Part I: Train-Cinema Interface
   - Chapter 1. In a Loop, on the Track: Locomotive Modernity in Colonial
   Korean Cinema
   - Chapter 2. Cinematic Railway Tourism in the "New Order in East Asia"
   - Part II: Automobile-Screen Interface
   - Chapter 3. *My Car* Modernity: U.S. Army Jeeps and Private Car
   Ownership
   - Chapter 4. Birth of Happiness? The Nationalization of Automobility
   - Part III: Post-Cine-Mobility
   - Chapter 5. Imagined Geographies of the World: Television, Aviation,
   and Koreanness
   - Chapter 6. *Technopia!* The Neoliberal Utopia of Automated Mobility
   - Epilogue: Railroad Mobility in North Korea

*Review*

"Its breath of research is impressive—from Korean, American, and Japanese
original sources, the subject of the visual mobility of Korea during the
past century is groundbreaking and innovative, and the overall historical
narrative is brilliant and unique. I can’t think of another book that takes
this approach in understanding Korea during the twentieth century. I read
it from the beginning to end in about two or three sittings, and each and
every chapter read as if there were more truth to be told about the
author’s unorthodox approach at examining the history of Korean
development." — Kyung Hyun Kim, Professor of East Asian Studies and Visual
Studies, University of California, Irvine, author of Hegemonic Mimicry:
Korean Popular Culture of the 21st Century.

"Han Sang Kim’s wonderful new book offers a vivid exploration of South
Korea’s 20th century experience of modernity, focusing on technologies and
representations of mobility within a political-economic framework.
Admirably broad in scope, it covers trains, automobiles, and planes as they
appear in feature films, documentaries, and TV shows.  Kim fluidly combines
a transnational perspective with deep dives into national history, and his
exceptional knowledge of Korean visual culture enables him to trace
continuities and ruptures across the colonial divide.  Filled with nuanced
textual interpretations, this book expands our understanding of Korean
modernity immeasurably. A major contribution to the field of Korean
studies." — Christina Klein, Professor of English, Boston College, author
of Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korea Cinema

*For more information*, please visit:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674267978. *Cine-Mobility*
is available (among others) at Amazon USA
<https://www.amazon.com/Cine-Mobility-Modernity-Century-Harvard-Monographs/dp/0674267974/>,
Amazon UK
<https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cine-Mobility-Twentieth-Century-Transformations-Transportation-Monographs/dp/0674267974>,
Barnes & Noble
<https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cine-mobility-han-sang-kim/1140170692>,
Aladin <https://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=279277171>, and
the publisher's website
<https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674267978>.

Members are welcome to email me at hansangkim at ajou.ac.kr.

Thank you!

Han Sang KIM, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology
Ajou University
206 World cup-ro, Yeongtong-gu,
Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do 16499 South Korea
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