Author
- Kim Il-hwan (Graduate Program in Sociology, Seoul National University)
Special Section in Yeoksa Munje Yeongu 47 (March 2022): Korean War Footage and Ideological-Psychological Warfare
Abstract
This article examines the character of U.S. military visual records and the American gaze toward prisoners of war through footage of Korean War prisoner-exchange operations such as Operation Little Switch, Operation Big Switch, and Operation Recovery. At Panmunjom, where “more cameras than guns” gathered during the exchange process, U.S. forces filmed the full course of the operation for publicity and documentation, leaving behind unedited footage films.
Military cameramen occupied a privileged position in that they could also record the “backstage” scenes inaccessible to civilian correspondents. Although the footage was shaped in part by a Cold War project that sought to represent prisoners through a particular ideological lens, it also contains many heterogeneous scenes that cannot be reduced to that intention. From a present-day perspective, this suggests that footage can serve as a medium through which the complex identities of prisoners emerge beyond Cold War binary frameworks.