Acting Like a 'Nation' in Colonial Korea : The Actresses in Propaganda

일제 말기 식민지 조선의 여배우들은 사치와 허영, 성적인 방종과 결부되어 온 기존의 부정적 이미지를 극복하고 총후 여성으로서 새로운 면모를 보여주도록 요구받는다. 여배우들은 영화에서는 후방의 ‘산업 전사’나 ‘군국의 어머니’, 지원병의 누이나 연인 역으로 출연해 전쟁 동원을 선전하고 , 스크린 바깥에서는 건전하게 쇄신된 총후 여성으로서 자신을 전시해야 했다 . 몇몇 스타들은 일본과 만주 여배우들 함께 ‘대동아’의 문화적 교류의 상징으로서 호명되기도 했다. 문예봉은 1930년대에 구축한 ‘정숙한 현모양처’ 이미지의 연장선상에서, 또 선전영화를 통해 스타덤에 오른 김신재는 지원병들이 지켜야 하는 ‘조선의 누이’ 이미지로서, ‘총후 여성’을 연기했다. 그들은 내선일체 이데올로기를 선전하기 위해 영화 안팎에서 ‘국민 되기’의 수행 과정을 전시해야 했다 . 바로 그러한 프로파간다의 결정판인 『그대와 나』에서 여배우들은 ‘대동아’의 친교와 유대를 과시하도록 배치되었다. 그러나 이 영화에서조차 여배우들의 ‘국민 되기’는 결코 완료될 수 없는 것, 그리하여 계속 ‘연기(演技/延期)’될 수밖에 없는 것이었다 .

This article examines how the actresses were mobilized to propagandize for Japanese Empire in the late Colonial Korea. Under the war basis, the actresses were called upon to present themselves as "Women in the rear guard" whose images were different from their existing images related to extravagance, vanity, dissolute life and so on. In propaganda films, they played an 'industrial worker', a 'mother of militant nation', and a soldier's mother, sister or love. Out of screen, they had to display that they were carrying out a radical reform of their life style, behavior, and even family life. Moreover, famous actresses were symbolized as the cultural interchange within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere(大東亞共榮圈). Especially Moon Ye-Bong(文藝峰) and Kim Shin-Jae(金信哉) made a lot of appearances in propaganda films. Moon played the role of "Madam in the rear guard(銃後婦人)" who endures whole suffering alone. That character reminded the Korean audiences of her old established image of "a wise mother and good wife(賢母良妻)". Kim acted "a lost sister" of a boy to be a soldier. Through that character, Kim could represent herself as a bright and healthy woman relevant to the New System(新體制). Although their acting could be to perform "Becoming Japanese", they could never be "Japanese". Paradoxically, their position could have a political significance only when they were dressed in Korean clothes, since the dynamics of "Becoming Japanese" discourse had been based on the difference between the colonizer and the colonized. It was necessary that their acting like a nation revealed the incomplete national identity and the contradiction of "becoming Japanese" discourse.