A United States Information Service production, Korean Cultural Goodwill Mission to Southeast Asia (1958) was part of an effort to build mutual understanding among "free people of Asia" and showcase American empire with Korea as second-in-command. Saigon, Manila, Hong Kong...
And here's Taipei, the capital of Free China. Han Sang Kim writes: Korean "self-awareness as second-in-command and their sense of superiority over Southeast Asian people are both cinematically exercised." But it's also USIS "showing off its power to see and visualize."
"...[T]he governmentality of Cold War Asia was
formed through a process of inheriting the basic structure established in colonial regimes of knowledge and redetermining the relationship between the newly independent states and the U.S. in the new world order."
formed through a process of inheriting the basic structure established in colonial regimes of knowledge and redetermining the relationship between the newly independent states and the U.S. in the new world order."
That's from "Who Views Whom through Whose Lenses? The Gazes in USIS Film Propaganda in South Korea." But anyways, the fragility of the situation is more clear when you know how it turns out. Syngman Rhee didn't have much time, and neither did Diem, who we see here.
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