ABSTRACT
With the success of Dr. No and Goldfinger in Asia, film industries in Asia recognized the market potential of spy movies and began churning out their own James Bond–mimetic espionage films in the late 1960s. In the US-driven Cold War sphere, developmental states in the region, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, adopted an anti-communist doctrine to guard and uphold their militant dictatorships. Under this political atmosphere in the regional sphere, cultural sectors in each nation-state—including cinema—voluntarily or compulsorily served as an apparatus to strengthen the state’s ideological principles. This chapter casts a critical eye on the South Korea–initiated inter-Asian coproduction of espionage films produced in this period, with particular reference to SOS Hong Kong (1966) and Special Agent X-7 (1966).
