President is the country: Two Korean Films on the Park Chung Hee Era

The purpose of this article is to examine how The President’s Barber (Im Chan Sang, 2004) and The President’s Last Bang (Im Sang Soo, 2005) represent the Park Chung Hee era. Before these two films were produced, some Korean films had dealt with the 1970s. They can be categorized into two groups by mode of representation. First, the nostalgic films deal with this era through the form of coming-of-age films or a first love story in which the main characters are high school students. Second, the retrospective films examine the brutality or absurdness of this era. The improvement of Korean democratization enables these films to be produced, and the economic crisis of 1997-1998 contributes to the production of these films — films that respond to the right wing’s reaction, the Park Chung Hee syndrome, and the economic crisis.