Between music and cinema. Arirang as an historical source for the study of the Korean resistance during the first years of Japanese colonialism

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to know the past of the Korean people from the first years of the Japanese colonial period. Thus, the content of the movie Arirang (1926), directed by Kim Ki-duk, was analyzed, as well as the traditional song with the same name. The applied methodology is underpinned with historiographical analysis and the marxist stance of Eric Hobsbawm.

Two dissimilar, and yet very interlinked, sources are analzyed: music and cinema, which are usually underrecognized in historical science. This aspect provides the movie a role as a first hand historical source that gives it validity to be taken into account in its diverse constitution fields to the construction and revalorization of the past of the Korean Peninsula. This work allows to conclude that the study of historical science through music and cinema amplify the possibilities of analysis, because it is not the progressive development of processes, but the analysis, understanding and interpretation of the source.