Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, made in 1895 by the Lumière brothers, is recorded as the first film in human history.
- The original title is L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, meaning “the train arriving at La Ciotat station”.
- From the very first film in human history, the “train” appeared as a major icon, and the train’s movement, presence, and dynamism aligned closely with the identity of the newly born medium of cinema itself.
- In the case of Korean cinema, the train—unlike its context in the work of the Lumière brothers and in other Western films (the Western genre in particular)—tended to appear as a negative or dangerous presence, intimating partings or accidents.
- During the industrialisation of the 1970s, led by the Park Chung-hee regime, train scenes grew more frequent in the films of the period. These films deliberately incorporated the symbols of modernisation favoured by the Park regime, or the emblems of the modernisation project the regime was then pursuing.
- In A Rose with Thorns (Jung Jin-woo, 1979), the train’s symbolism of modernity functions as a fatal and dangerous instrument (in the sense that it can carry one anywhere) in relation to the female protagonist’s sexuality.
- In The March of Fools (Ha Gil-jong, 1975), the enlistment train appears as a symbol of criticism of the regime and as a metaphor for the scepticism of the age. In both cases, the train shares a common trait: it predates the train’s present-day ubiquity and is one born of “enforced modernisation”, before its full settlement as a mature technology.
- In contemporary Korean films—for example, Peppermint Candy (Lee Chang-dong, 2000) and Miracle: Letters to the President (Lee Jang-hoon, 2021)—the train tends to appear less as the menacing, potentially dangerous presence seen in earlier precedents and more as a symbol carrying the meaning of “nostalgia”; on the whole, it may be read through meanings, contexts, and historical circumstances different from those of the preceding generation.
