In Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema, Christina Klein offers a brilliant study of the cultural history of 1950s South Korea through close readings of films by Han Hyung-mo (1917–99), a leading director, cinematographer, and editor of the postwar golden age of South Korean cinema; a native modernizer of Korea's film industry; a successful commercial filmmaker; and an advocate of the modern lifestyle. Klein convincingly demonstrates that the 1950s, widely regarded by historians as a forgotten decade in South Korea, constituted a distinct phase marked by a dynamic form of cosmopolitan modernity that differed significantly from Japanese colonialism (1910–45) and the developmental modernization that followed Park Chung-hee's military coup in 1961. Klein's sophisticated analysis of Han's commercially successful films shows effectively that this was a decade of transnational flows of resources, consumer goods, technologies, cultural forms, and ideas, during which South Korean society experienced a postwar, postcolonial modern nation building intersected with Cold War integration into the noncommunist free Asia and free world dominated by American hegemony.

Central to Klein's transnational cultural history of South Korea is the concept of Cold War cosmopolitanism. Her use of the term “cosmopolitanism” departs from its traditional definition as a universalist political philosophy or ethical commitment, which, at its worst, eliminates the very cultural specificities that form the foundation of a cosmopolitan political solidarity. Instead, Klein looks at the “range of cosmopolitan practices that have actually existed in history” (p. 5), as she quotes from Sheldon Pollock. Her investigation of cosmopolitan practices foregrounds the particular cultural features of postwar Korea while exploring sites of contacts and connections not based on the universalist claim of any single ideology. Defining 1950s South Korea as a Cold War cosmopolitan society entails two interconnected considerations: to envision a modern society that is open to embracing new ideas and values of democracy, individualism, and modernization while being ready to contribute to world culture with its own tradition; and to integrate the newly independent state into the Cold War network of free world alliance and to form relationships with other members of noncommunist Asia, Western Europe, and Latin America to resist communist aggression.

In investigating the transpacific cultural imaginations of a modern Asia, Cold War Cosmopolitanism can be read as a sequel to Klein's first monograph, Cold War Orientalism.Footnote ¹ Cold War Orientalism considers how American middlebrow culture, during the early Cold War years, presented Asia to the American public to establish cultural connections that would bolster political alliances between postwar America and noncommunist Asia and create an “imaginary of integration” alongside the dominant anticommunist containment. In Cold War Cosmopolitanism, Klein inspects cultural productions in postwar Asia, particularly South Korea, to examine American cultural impacts manifested in fashion, music, dance, film industry, and cinematic imaginations in a South Korean society in the process of postwar rebuilding and modernization. Han Hyung-mo's films, which excel at portraying women as active agents in the emergent modern public life in postwar Korea, provide the best example of the intricate intersection of Cold War cosmopolitanism and local cultural tradition. The glamourous, cosmopolitan style of South Korean cinema à la Han Hyung-mo ended abruptly in the early 1960s with heavy attacks under the Park Chung-hee military government, which endorsed cultural nationalism and postcolonial traditionalism.

The book is divided into two parts, “Period” and “Style.” The first part consists of three chapters aimed at delineating the specific historical era of the 1950s from political, social, and cultural angles. The second part, which contains four chapters, delves into the study of Han's distinctive film style, particularly his 1956 film Madame Freedom.

By scrutinizing Han's directorial and cinematic style in relation to social history, Klein seeks to nuance our understanding of postwar Korean life. Chapter 1 registers the development of Cold War cosmopolitanism as “a body of material practices and institutional ties” (p. 24) by discussing the endeavors of the Asian Foundation, a camouflaged institution of the Central Intelligence Agency, to integrate postwar Korea into the Cold War free world. Among the Asian Foundation's many cultural programs was the promotion of the Asian Film Festival, which forged ties among Asia's noncommunist film industries as an efficient form of cultural diplomacy.

Through a close reading of Han's film A Jealousy (1960), which features controversial narratives about lesbian desire, independent feminine consciousness, and the assertion of patriarchal authority, chapter 2 traces how the Cold War cosmopolitan worldview affected the formation of Korean feminist ideas and the practices of women's emancipation, exploring what Klein calls a “Cold War cosmopolitan feminism.” Instead of overstating that the ideal of Cold War cosmopolitan feminism facilitated the ultimate liberation of Korean women from the constraints of patriarchal social hierarchy, her reading foregrounds the intricacies of Han's film narrative, which unveil rather than ignore the tension between the advocacy for liberal autonomous womanhood and a postcolonial male-centered nationalist discourse.

Chapter 3 looks at the booming public cultures in 1950s South Korea resulting from vibrant Cold War cosmopolitan forces, particularly the rise of a commercial film industry and the development of the premier women's magazine Yŏwŏn (Woman's garden), which promoted a figure of woman-in-public as a visual icon of modernity.

In part two, in chapters 4–7, Klein elaborates on Han's film oeuvre by examining the formal aspects of character and plot, setting, cinematography, sound, editing, mise-en-scène, and film spectacles. She considers these film elements both as expressive components used to construct meaning within the films and as historical evidence revealing a diverse spectrum of postwar Korean modernization experiences. As historical evidence, these cinematic works lay bare the flows of ideas, images, and commodities with regard to modern womanhood, film vocabulary and techniques, music, fashion, daily objects and consumer goods, and people (cultural performers, producers, entrepreneurs, diplomats, etc.) across the transnational network of the Cold War free world in which South Korea was situated during the 1950s. Klein explores Han's film style through the lens of poaching, which she describes as the key mode of cultural production in 1950s South Korea. Drawing on the writings of Michel de Certeau, Miriam Hansen, Henry Jenkins, and Homi K. Bhabha, Klein uses poaching to address a series of cultural activities of borrowing, appropriating, transforming, and reinventing by Korean filmmakers and other cultural producers when dealing with the repertoires of a tradition with much greater political or cultural power. Poaching not only enabled them to tap into the cultural materials and resources of the United States and other members of the free world made available by the waging of the Cold War, but also opened up new possibilities to represent modern sensibilities and experiences and render Korean cultural legacy visible on a world stage.

In a refined reading of the movie Madame Freedom, Klein charts Han's poaching experiments to make use of two cinematic traditions, Japanese and Hollywood. He creatively appropriates their film languages and techniques, such as spatial setting and composition from the Japanese filmmaker Ozu Yasujiro's 1952 film The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952) and mobile, fluent cinematography from Hollywood cinema (Alfredo Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho is one example), to convey the emotional, sensuous experiences of modernity for postwar women such as Mme Oh, a group of cosmopolitan après girls gliding audaciously into the emergent public sphere, diverting themselves away from the submissive, virtuous “wise mother, good wife” prescribed by Korea's traditional Confucian heritage. On the other hand, Klein is careful to observe that Han's films were not accurate depictions of typical postwar Korean life, but a projected cinematic vision of a modern lifestyle that would become possible decades later. In recognizing its ability to create a cinematic pastiche marked by agencies and innovations, Cold War Cosmopolitanism defines the 1950s golden age of South Korean filmmaking as budae jjigae cinema to fathom a vital cultural space of “cooperation and contestation with a much more powerful partner/rival” (p. 177).

Alongside analyzing Han's films, Klein considers a range of material and social institutions, such as the postwar Korean black market, US military bases, and military post exchanges, which fueled the integration of South Korea into the Cold War free world. She enriches this cultural history with carefully crafted depictions of the lives and ideas of a number of prominent contemporary public figures in South Korea, including Korea's first female university president, Helen Kim (Kim Hwallan, 1899–1970), president of Ewha Woman's University; Korea's first female lawyer, Lee Tai-young (1914–98); and Nora Noh (1928–), Korea's first fashion designer, to advance a deeper understanding of the dynamic modernization process in a cosmopolitan Korean society during the 1950s.

Although the book touches upon the relationship of South Korean cinema to postwar Japanese and Hong Kong cinemas, mainly regarding their portrayal of après girls in a cosmopolitan urban setting, readers would hope for more discussions of intra-Asian cultural exchanges, collaborations, and interactions, particularly in the film industries of Cold War free Asia that were burgeoning in various linguistic and cultural traditions, such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines, all under different degrees of influence of the so-called Seventh Fleet culture of the United States.

Cold War Cosmopolitanism is a timely, important, and stimulating contribution to the growing scholarship on the cultural Cold War in Asia, postwar South Korean cinema, and transnational cultural studies exploring how the flows of people, ideas, and cultural forms across different parts of the world shaped a cosmopolitan world culture. The book will be an essential, illuminating read for anyone who is interested in Cold War studies, transnational cultural history, cultural studies, film studies, and Asian studies.