This article problematizes the general approach that regards film materials from US archives as ‘evidence of victimization,’ focusing on the Korean Broadcasting System’s timely release of a recently discovered film footage from the US National Archives amid the heated controversy over the victim-survivor Lee Yong-soo’s whistle-blowing press conference in May 2020. The discourse that confronts Pak Yong-sim’s girly image in the footage with Lee Yong-soo who is understood by many as ‘politically polluted’ is particularly problematic in that the discursive structure makes the victim-survivor’s life ‘after victimization’ invisible and spectacularizes the state of being victimized. This article attempts to read the ‘impact of imperialism’ in the flow of knowledge from the archives of former empires, including US archives, to the former colony’s knowledge sphere in the lasting knowledge regime of the Cold War, and investigates the issues of archives, such as the admissibility of archival photographic image materials as scientific evidence and the accessibility to foreign film archives that costs much of expenses. Beyond the obsolete divide between a ‘protective’ patriarchal nation-state and a ‘protected’ young, immature woman, this article seeks to examine the potentialities of ‘constructive power’ and ‘awakening’ in the gestures of both media figures, Pak Yong-sim and Lee Yong-soo, who live in presence in the cinematic/post-cinematic experience.
