Wednesday, February 13, 2013

1940s newsreels about Korea

I was looking around at archive.org and found some interesting videos taken at the time of Korea's liberation from Japan in 1945 and in the years following. Click the links to go to the page at the site and download the video.

The first is a newsreel of Korea's liberation by U.S. troops and the surrender of the Japanese in 'Yongsan, the capital of Korea.' Other than that mistake, it's got some interesting footage (jump to 2:10):



This video is raw, silent footage of U.S. soldiers disarming Japanese soldiers and marching through Seoul, along with other streets scenes and shots of Koreans. And in the screenshot we see below, is the man on the left with the camera dok1 (who's second from right in this photo, and who took this set of photos in Korea at that time)?



Next is this video of raw, silent footage of people in front of a train station in Seoul and shots of a train. I'm not sure if it's Seoul station or Yongsan or some other station. There are some disturbing shots of fly-covered children who are (one hopes) sleeping on the ground in front of the station.



Here is the first reel of a narrated 20 minute newsreel made in 1948 (but which uses footage from the above videos. There's some fascinating footage here on American aid to Korea, along with a dose of propaganda and falsehood.



Part 2 of this newsreel has an elementary school English class (outdoors) and scenes of a baseball game, as well as the training of police and nurses.



This video appears to be staged footage of the Korean War by, presumably, North Korea.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those videos are amazing. Awesome find.

Sperwer said...

Nice find