ABSTRACT
Love, or more particularly the theme of impossible love, is just one of the ingredients for good filmmaking using the Korean conflict as its stage. This chapter looks at inter-Korean dimensions of the international that is constructed through North Korea, in particular South Korea's narratives of national reconciliation and unification. It describes the context of films, which mediates love, nation and division, observation occurs through how the scene of love is approached by the camera and how the images, sound, action and atmosphere captured through the camera are edited. The chapter examines that South Korean blockbusters, a phenomenon of the 2000s, call into presence 'the international', which is a form of 'gazing back' by bodies objectified by privileged subjectivities for their self-realization. It shows how gazing back is not, first, an oppositional practice, and second, is not talking back from a more authentic or moral outside.
