Diary: Chun Doo Hwan's "Three S Policy" and Ours

Koreanologist Andrei Lankov on the film that "hit the theaters in 1982 as the most explicit of all Korean movies ever made" and the "tidal wave of erotic movies" that followed ─ Dictating Sex.

This was part of the "sex, screen, and sport" policy of Chun Doo Hwan's military government, which dictated that "[m]ass entertainment should distract the people from politics." Mr. Lankov notes the two happy endings to this story: (1) "this emphasis on the 'pleasures for the masses' did not save the military government" and (2) "[t]he erotic video boom did not outlive the military regime which was largely responsible for it."

The genius of the American system is that its "three s policy" is not promulgated directly by the State but by its collaborators in Hollywood and the Mob or whoever it is that runs professional sports, all under the billing of "give the people what they want." Both Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 - 1859) and José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1956) would have a lot to say about this.