Abstract
Korean culture has been shaped by the traumatic colonial past (1910–1945), which in part facilitated the rise of the historical-cultural han concept in the 1920s onward, often interpreted as rancor, grief, or resentment due to a real or alleged undeserved experience of the Korean people but also beautiful artistic expressions. Scholars have applied han to, for example, Korean music genres like pansori and even Korean American popular culture. The current article critically examines expressions of implicit han in relation to four contemporary South Korean films. The analysis suggests that han is expressed in a plethora of ways, depending on for instance the main characters’ constitution and the specific cultural-ideological framework presented in each text, and must always be understood in relation to such macro variables rather than as an isolated expression of a particular concept.
Highlights
According to Kim (2017), han has its roots in an essentialist and biologist notion which— having longer Sino origins—gained “renewed” traction during the Japanese colonial period in the 1920s, especially within the works of the Japanese writer Muneyoshi Yanagi
“As a national phenomenon or Korean characteristic, han did not exist in ancient Korea but was an idea anachronistically imposed on Koreans during the Japanese colonial period” (Kim, p. 258)
The study is based on a close reading of four relatively representative South Korean films, Oldboy (2003), Train to Busan (2016), The Wailing (2016), and Burning (2018), and a literature review
Summary
According to Kim (2017), han has its roots in an essentialist and biologist notion which— having longer Sino origins—gained “renewed” traction during the Japanese colonial period in the 1920s, especially within the works of the Japanese writer Muneyoshi Yanagi. “As a national phenomenon or Korean characteristic, han did not exist in ancient Korea but was an idea anachronistically imposed on Koreans during the Japanese colonial period” As Kim (2017) stresses, han does often constitute an essentialist and at least partially biologist idea, implying that only people of Korean origin may understand its profound meaning and distinctive psychological expressions 256) notes, han is not an exclusively negative phenomenon: Despite the deeply negative and destructive quality of han, it is not a one-dimensional “bad” affect. It historically has been characterized as creating complex beauty. Han has an important place in culture because it has become associated with what makes Korean cultural productions— such as visual art, folk music, traditional ceramics, literature, and film, among others—uniquely and beautifully Korean
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