Female warrior imagery in the North Korean film A Partisan Maiden (1954) and the Soviet film Zoya (1944)

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the creation of the female partisan mythos during and after WWII and the Korean War through a discussion of the Soviet film Zoya (dir. Lev Arnshtam, 1944), which is set against the backdrop of the German-Russian conflict on the Eastern Front, and the North Korean film A Partisan Maiden (Ppalchisan cheonyeo, dir. Yun Yong-gyu, 1954), which tells the story of heroic women who battle against barbaric American troops during the Korean War. The films Zoya and A Partisan Maiden dramatize the life and death of two historic female partisans whose images were resurrected to serve as propaganda for the authoritarian regimes under which they lived. The popularization of Zoya’s story in the Soviet Union became a reference point for North Korean filmmakers and storytellers, who borrowed strategies from the Soviet example when constructing images of North Korean partisan Jo Ok-hui. By analyzing these historical contingencies, this paper explores how the mythos of the female partisan was formed and propagated in post-war Soviet and North Korean cinema.