South Korean Radio Programs in the 1970s

In Ch’oe Inhun’s linked novel of 1965, The Voice of the Governor General, the author connects Park Chung Hee’s nationalism and the 1965 Normalization Treaty with Japan to the nationalism of the Japanese colonial period by writing in the form of a radio broadcast. Harking back to Hirohito’s infamous radio announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender and Korea’s liberation, Ch’oe suggests that postcolonial Korea had not really overcome the political and economic conditions of the colonial period. Ch’oe’s use of a radio broadcast also points to the ways the state used radio to discipline the masses into becoming responsible, dutiful citizens. This presentation will explore the interesting documentary turn that takes place in early 70s Korean radio programming, especially in radio drama or radio theater. Along with programs that retranslated and rewrote classical tales and biographies, docudramas based on recent life stories became highly popular. What was this impulse for dramatizing and documenting an