Introduction

The record-breaking success of war epic The Admiral: Roaring Currents , instigated a cycle of popular films about Korean-Japanese encounters, released between 2014 and 2017. Atypically, this ‘Rising Sun’ cycle ranged across multiple genres: thriller ( The Age of Shadows ), biopic ( Anarchist From Colony ), horror ( The Wailing ) and comedy/drama ( I Can Speak ). The Rising Sun cycle also coincided with a period of rising bilateral tensions between Japan and the administration of Park Geun-hye (2013– 2017 ), an incumbency marked by artistic blacklists, political coercion, and eventual criminal conviction. This opening chapter identifies how, among these circumstances, the often successful Rising Sun films dramatise South Korean attempts to ignore, accept or, most commonly, purge the nation of its Japanese colonial legacy.