The Insignificance of Koreans During the Korean War Historicizing Hollywood War Film Representations of Koreans during the Korean War

The 1950s marked a time of uncertainty, contradiction, and anxiety in the post-World War II years as the Cold War started and the Korean War broke out. During the Korean War years (1950-1953), Hollywood war films provided entertainment as well as a medium helping the United States to construct a national identity and to redefine its relations with Korea. In particular, those films reflected interplays between Orientalism and the Cold War rhetoric. On one hand, Orientalistic gaze on Asia evolved during the Korean War, informing the ways in which those war films depicted both allies (South Korea) and enemies (North Korea). On the other hand, those Korean war films sought to educate the American public about their relationships with other nations in the Cold War with two imaginaries ¡ªone of containment and the other of integration¡ª both internal and external. The Hollywood legacy of the Korean War shows how American culture was politicized and the U.S.-Korea relations would be received in the American society during the Cold War.