Conclusion

The conclusion explores how Cold War cosmopolitanism – as a film style and a cultural formation – came to an end with the student-led April Revolution of 1960 and the military coup by Park Chung-hee in 1961. It charts how Park promoted an androcentric cultural nationalism and introduced regulations designed to industrialize the film industry. Han did not weather the transition to the new cultural order, and his career declined in the early 1960s. His position at the apex of the film industry was taken over by directors who shared Park’s masculinist and cultural nationalist orientation, including Shin Sang-ok, who had close ties to the Park regime, and Lee Man-hee who excelled at making stylish action films, war films, and thrillers.