[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Mr. Sunshine" Historical Review Part 3 - American Exceptionalism

The second part of this series dealt with how "Mr. Sunshine" has an overly positive interpretation of a questionable period of American history. American Exceptionalism is the basic explanation for this. The basic premise of American Exceptionalism is that the United States has a unique position of moral superiority due to its history as a rebellious colony founded on principles of democratic freedom.

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American Exceptionalism is an ideological, rather than a materialist explanation for American culture. South Korea as a country has been geopolitically aligned with the United States for its whole existence, so it's not surprising to see such ideals expressed in a South Korean television show. What is unusual about "Mr. Sunshine" is that the drama shows these ideals as being commonly understood several decades before most Koreans had any idea what the United States even was.

This wasn't just due to Korea being a backwater. Major European powers didn't take the United States seriously either. The General Sherman Incident discussed in the first part of this series was muddled in part because Koreans didn't realize it was an American ship at all, but a French one. In day-to-day life most East Asians in the nineteenth century wouldn't be able to tell white people of different nationalities apart, simply because there weren't many meaningful differences in how they acted.

The distorted importance of the United States can also be seen in a scene where Japanese Sergeant Tsuda (played by Lee Jung-hyun-I) is excited when he mugs a little girl and discovers that she's carrying American dollars. Where he would even spend American dollars is quite unclear. American dollars weren't a fiat currency at this time. Few banks in Korea or even Japan would honor them. The reason why you can buy things all over the world with American dollars is because they're backed by the American government, not a precious metal.

Coin-based silver currency would have actually been quite practical for Americans traveling overseas at this time since it had value independent of the mint that created them. Ironically, "Mr. Sunshine" itself implies as much in another scene where our heroic Korean-American lead Lee Byung-hun and his friendly fellow officer Kyle Moore (played by David Lee McInnis) trade in a celadon vase, rather than their own dollars, for local currency. The depiction of the United States military in "Mr. Sunshine" is fraught with its own problems beyond this- the subject of the next article in this series.

Written by William Schwartz

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"Mr. Sunshine" is directed by Jang Yeong-woo, Jung Ji-hyun, Lee Eung-bok, written by Kim Eun-sook, and features Lee Byung-hun, Kim Tae-ri, Yoo Yeon-seok, Kim Min-jung, Byun Yo-han, Jo Woo-jin. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2018/07/07~2018/09/30, Fri, Sat 21:00 on Netflix, tvN.