Early North Korean Cinema <Naegohyang> and <Yonggwangro>

The North Korean cinema after Liberation was substantially influenced by the Soviet cinema of the time, especially films of Stalin���s regime; it generally took on what the Soviet cinema mainly comprised, such as the clear narrative structure of discerning good from evil, the creation of heroic image, the mobilization and indoctrination of the populace in association with national policies, and the cult of personality. For the establishment of the North Korean state and consolidation of its political power, the inevitably necessary subsequence was the consolidation of communist ideology, propaganda, and indoctrination of the populace. In order to make propaganda films providing idealized and heroic images of their political leader, the political narrative devices of the Soviet cinema were so dominantly employed into North Korea films of the formative period. This consequently led to the formation of the cinematic characteristics of early North Korean cinema. and are typical of the early North Korean cinema; they all draw on the simple narrative structure, the character stereotype, and the incorporation of landscape shots into narratives that dominantly shaped the early North Korean cinema. And the absolute leader Kim Jeong-Il was the centre at which all these cinematic devices converged. The leader was described as a hero of Liberation and established as the embodiment of the Korean nation itself in the early films. This paper examines the cinematic devices employed in the two typical films that later became dominant in the politics of North Korean cinema