South Korean Cinema Research Articles

From Oldboy to Burning: Han in South Korean films

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.

Зарождение «новой волны» южнокорейского кинематографа в 1980–1990-е гг.

This study describes the film industry of the Republic of Korea, where the features of its interaction with the state policy and the process of transformation of South Korean cinema in the 1980s and 1990s are reviewed. The author attempts to analyze how the way of weakening the state control (to revise «Motion Picture Law»), the democratization process (pro-democratic movements and the Sixth Republic Constitution of 1987), the emergence of independent cinematographers, investments of large companies (chaebols) and the need to compete with foreign films have influenced the film industry modernization. The film industry of the Republic of Korea Is considered with focus on state policy. The paper analyzes approaches to film production, which have had a great impact on further development of Korean cinema and the formation of a new generation of young South Korean directors (Park Kwang Soo, Lee Myeong Se, Jang Sun Woo and Chung Ji Young). Their work is called the «New Wave» of South Korean cinema and it has resulted in the combined influence of political transformations, the collaboration of chaebols and cinematographers, competition with foreign films and the struggle between the old and new systems of film industry organization in the country.

Shamans and nativism: postcolonial trauma in Spirits’ Homecoming (2016) and Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (2013)

ABSTRACTThis article examines the figure of the shaman in contemporary South Korean cinema. By taking a close look at Cho Jung-rae (Jo Jeong-rae)’s feature Spirits’ Homecoming (Gwihyang, 2016) and Park Chan-kyong (Park Chan-gyeong)’s documentary Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (Mansin, 2013), the article argues that the figure of the shaman is deployed in such a way as to articulate South Korean postcolonial anxiety in two diverging ways. Whilst the former film draws on shamanism and nostalgizes the Korean past in relation to the issue of the ‘comfort women’ (military sex slaves) in contemporary South Korean politics, the latter eschews a coherent historical national narrative in favour of a more fragmented and interrogative account of not only South Korean shamanism but the country’s troubled relationship with the Korean War and the post-war modernization project. The article argues that where Cho Jung-rae’s film employs ethnocentrism as the primary lens for a nostalgic memory, Park Chan-kyong’s documentary disarticulates the historical trajectory of nationalist invocations of a shamanist past, as it aligns the nativist tradition with the wider pro-democracy minjung movement.

Особливості розвитку сучасного мистецтва і кінематографу у Китаї, Кореї та Японії

The article analyzes the conditions and factors that influenced the formation of contemporary art and cinema in China, South Korea and Japan. We can determine the peculiarities of the development of Chinese contemporary art, such as the desire of the first artists, after the Cultural Revolution, to reflect its flux and effects as much as possible. Further, artistic tendencies become diverse: the commercial component and a certain element of the state of affairs are viewed in the works of art by Chinese authors, but the desire for self-expression in different ways testify to the progressive phenomena characteristic of art. Modern Korean art proves that the scientific and technological revolution and the dominant avant-garde component of mass culture in general cannot supplant the ultimate traditional artistic creativity. One of the characteristic features of contemporary Korean art is a demonstration of belonging to the culture of the country. First of all, this is the influence of the traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, along with the painful memories of war and long-term colonization by Japan. One can note the simplicity, orderliness, harmony of colors and shapes as an inalienable feature of Korean contemporary art, but modern tendencies show the striving for the discovery of individuality of the artist, which manifests itself in non-standard artistic forms. Japanese visual art combines the works of autochthonous traditions and European artistic principles. Considerable attention is paid to the issue of the relationship between nature and man, reflected in the work of adherents of the synthesis of Japanese traditions and Western variety of forms. Particular attention is paid to contemporary artists in Japan with the latest technology – video art, 3D painting, interactive installations and installations-hybrids. Chinese cinema with the generation of directors, known as the Fifth Generation, reveals new trends. These artists initially sought to convey events and tragedies during the Cultural Revolution, but over time they turned to other themes and genres. Directors of the "Sixth Generation" paid special attention to social problems, the place of action in their films is unknown China – small settlements or cities. Modern Korean cinema covers two large areas: cinema for women – melodrama, and for men – adventure. Today the adventure genre is oriented mainly to teens, and the melodrama genre has been transformed from the problems of the middle-aged women's interest towards the youth audience, therefore, it is more likely to come closer to the romantic comedy. The tragedy of Korea, which is split up into two parts, worries the movie-makers. In recent years there have been changes in South Korean position in exposing North Korean residents. If the previous decades in South Korean cinema was cultivating the image of the enemy: North Korean could be either a spy or killer, but now the inhabitants of North Korea are perceived and presented in films differently, not embodying exclusively negative features. In Japanese cinema, the emphasis is on the visual array, which allows you to bring forward contemplation and the deep meaning is transmitted by artistic images typical of the oriental art in general. In films, much attention is paid to the smallest details; certain asceticism along with the aesthetization of the frame is a reflection of purely Japanese features – minimalism as the meaning of existence. Familiarity with the peculiarities of the development of contemporary art and cinema in China, Korea and Japan is a necessary component for further dialogue between the cultures of East and West in terms of balanced interaction and artistic transformations of the modern world.

Showing the Complexity of the Simple – The Art-puzzle of Hong Sang-soo

Renowned South Korean film director, Hong Sang-soo, has shown deep interest in complex (or some might say: confusing) storytelling throughout his entire career. Since modernist art cinema has an affinity with unconventional narrative structures, it is not surprising that an auteur like Hong is attracted to complexity. What is interesting here is that Hong’s (often black and white) films are a kind of analogue answer to the challenges of digital culture, a modernist art cinema version of puzzle films and database narratives. The article analyses the very Hongian strategy of producing auteurist puzzle films by creating confusion on a perceptive and narrative level.
 Firstly, the article summarises how Hong’s unique film making practice not only provides significant (economic, artistic) independence and freedom to the author, but at the same time proves to be a structure that delivers high complexity at a low production cost. Secondly, the article analyses the puzzling techniques used by Hong that work on a perceptual level, and often turn his films into high level memory tests; and how these structures play a part in the “perceptual reeducation” of viewers while also serving as commentaries on cinematic representation. And finally, the article concludes with an analysis of the narrative techniques used by Hong to tell extremely simple stories about the eternal topic of “men want women” in a complex, confusing and compelling way.

The Image of the North Korean in Contemporary South Korean Cinema

Confidential Assignment (Kongjo, Kim Sung-hoon), released on January 18, 2017 between DPRK nuclear tests, tells a story of two special agents. One is from North Korea and the other one from South Korea, and they unite to fight against a common enemy. Extraordinarily, the North Korean agent is portrayed as more formidable than his South Korean counterpart who is unable to match him in every field. Also, the North Korean agent is portrayed by a Korean super star, Hyun-Bin. In this paper, I analyze two other similarly themed movies: The Net (Kŭmul, Kim Ki-Duk) and Steel Rain (Kangch’ŏlbi, Yang Wooseok). All of them were released recently and were huge commercial successes in South Korea. The aim of the following paper is to show and analyze the evolution of the image of North Korean characters in South Korean cinema. During the analysis, the question of how the change from villain to super hero was possible is answered. The way in which the movies talk about inter-Korean relations and how they portray both countries is particularly important to understand the current political sentiments in the Peninsula and how it can affect the Moon Jae-in presidency.

Social ecology and ecological knowledge in South Korean ecocinema

Through an engagement with interactions between human cognition and social and natural ecologies, recent South Korean films critique perceived deficiencies in Korean cultural forms and practices. The two eco-themed films that are the main focus of this article, Daeho (The Tiger) and Syupeomaenieotteon Sanai (A Man Who Was Superman), thematize an implicit acquiescence to the environmental status quo within South Korea’s inward-looking culture. A Man Who Was Superman, in particular, articulates nested social structures with the effect that social ecology affords a meta-level for a range of social and ecological issues. The foregrounding of these issues is achieved by disrupting the narrative expectations associated with a particular genre – that is, by modal shifts into magical realism and CGI, by evocations of transcendence and by uses of point-of-view shots that present many scenes from a non-human perspective. In each film, viewer interaction with embodied simulation of affect and emotion produces a response which is simultaneously cognitive, empathic and potentially ethical.

Южнокорейское кино на северокорейскую тему: возможности социальных трансформаций художественными средствами

Южнокорейское кино на северокорейскую тему: возможности социальных трансформаций художественными средствами

한국 영화 속의 동양 미학적 의미 연구 - 〈신과 함께-죄와 벌〉을 중심으로 -

한국 영화는 섬세한 서사, 함축적인 감정 표현, 아름다운 장면으로 동양 미학 독특적인 묘미를 보여준다. 본 연구는 영화 서사학 이론을 활용하여 한국 영화 〈신과 함께 -죄와 벌〉에서 나타난 동양 미학적 의미를 분석하고자 한다. 이 영화는 가족애를 주제로 한 판타지 영화이다. 아시아에서 많이 알리는 불교의 인과응보와 환생륜회를 영화의 틀로 하며 가족애를 영화의 핵심으로 하였다. 그리고 놀라운 시각 효과로 지옥의 세계를 그려졌는데 스릴러의 메인라인에서 가족애를 표현했다.

Screening Colonial Modernity: Cinematic Re-Imaginations of Colonial Korea in the 2000s

In a 2006 interview with the New York Times Magazine, director Park Chan-wook made a telling comment on the remarkably diverse content of contemporary (South) Korean films.1 According to this trans...

In Liberation Village: the production of cinematic space for early North Korean refugees

ABSTRACTThe Golden Age of South Korean cinema was served a healthy dose of social realism soon after the April Revolution of 1960 with such outstanding films as Kang Dae-jin’s Mr. Park and A Coachman, Yu Hyun-mok’s Aimless Bullet, and Kim Su-yong’s Kinship. They not only shared the realistic portrayals of the poor and working class, but also the particular locale, Haebangchon (Liberation Village). Haebangchon was a wretched slum of Seoul where the early refugee population from North Korea (wollammin) had been concentrated since Liberation, hence the name. Relying on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of social production of space, I explain why this refugee space was such a focus of cinematic attention during the brief period of social realism. While wollammin became assimilated into mainstream South Korean society and the old Haebangchon shantytown mostly disappeared, the wollammin theme subsisted. Anticommunist films of the 1970s celebrated North Korean refugee vigilantes as national heroes, whereas the critical realism of the 1980s took pity on the wollammin experiences of poverty and discrimination. As the new century arrived, Haebangchon made a couple of brief, unexpected returns to Korean cinema, exposing an ongoing spatial transition that might possibly lead to a new kind of refugee space.

영화 〈궁합〉에 나타난 한국의 전통문화에 대한 표현

영화 〈궁합〉에 나타난 한국의 전통문화에 대한 표현

남북한 정치체제와 이념에 의해 굴절된 고전 서사-1980년대 『홍길동전』 원작 남북한 영화의 성격

남북한 정치체제와 이념에 의해 굴절된 고전 서사-1980년대 『홍길동전』 원작 남북한 영화의 성격

Characteristics of Chinese Online Movie Reviews and Opinion Leadership Identification

ABSTRACTThis article uses a case study of the reception of popular South Korean films in China to investigate aspects of proactive participation in the Chinese social mediasphere. Based on the big data collected from the popular Douban online review platform, the authors provide an in-depth investigation of the characteristics of online opinion leaders and leadership. First, we statistically analyze user-generated content-related features for both leader and non-leader groups. In addition, we employ a Bayesian optimization-based imbalanced learning algorithm to identify characteristics of the minority opinion leaders. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is evaluated based on 17,786 reviews collected from 35 popular films covering a variety of genres, and the proposed algorithm is shown to perform accurately by identifying opinion leaders, compared to other state-of-the-art approaches. Our study also reveals some major features associated with opinion leaders, such as vocabulary, viewing habits, and friendship networks. Finally, we show how these elements are contributing to new understandings of the rapidly transforming digital domain of Chinese social media and the roles of such platforms.

The South Korean film industry and the Chinese film market

On 26 August 2016, the South Korea–Thailand–China co-production P'ainŏl Reship'i//Final Recipe (Gina Kim, 2014) opened on 3200 screens across the People’s Republic of China. The film was the first South Korean-directed feature to be granted a wide release in China following the 2014 South Korea–China Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Final Recipe featured the Malaysian Michelle Yeoh, the Singaporean Chin Han and the K-pop superstar Henry Lau (a Taiwanese American), and was shot in Bangkok, Seoul and Shanghai. The film tells the story of a high-school student (Lau) who enters a MasterChef-type cooking competition and finds his long-lost father along the way. Final Recipe is one of many attempts made by the South Korean media giant CJ E&M (hereafter CJ) to break into the global film market. Led by the company’s US-born executive Miky Lee (Yi Mi-kyŏng), CJ’s ‘global project’ has an ambitious vision of broadening the horizons of international co-productions and using English-language scripts and transnational casts to increase its films’ global appeal. Following this strategy, CJ planned to target the company’s emerging markets in Southeast Asia and China with Final Recipe’s ‘all English-speaking’ Asian cast.1 Given the popularity of food-related films in Asia, Final Recipe’s box-office forecast in the Chinese market was positive. Hallyu, the Korean pop culture wave, has triggered numerous trends across Asia, and China has become the biggest market for the hallyu industry. The culmination of this wave was the South Korean television drama T'aeyang ŭi huye/Descendants of the Sun (2016), broadcast simultaneously in South Korea and China only months before the release of Final Recipe in China. The last episode of Descendants of the Sun was viewed a record-breaking 2.4 billion times on the online video platform iQiYi in April 2016.2

Korean Men in Western film festival: The representation of filmic masculinity in five South Korean award – winning films

Masculinity is volatile, subject to representation. It is both personal and collective, interchanging with historical and cultural dynamics. This essay holds a focus on Korean masculinities represented in five award-winning South Korean films. In both diachronic and international perspectives, it differentiates between ideal, real and filmic masculinities, illuminating that ancient and modern Korean masculinities do not purely stick to a fixed, expected and shared ideology. There are variations in response to personal intention, nationhood and cultural globalization. The main argument of this essay is that conventional regulation is not the sole source to influence masculinity representation. Even violation of idealized manhood could deliver a sense of masculinity. Extending this argument to the concern with international film marketing, this essay questions about whether diversification of gender features would blur Korean masculinity and create new gender identification.

Keeping Distance from Pathos and Turning Rational Trade into Emotions—The Change of Genres and the Reorganization of Emotions in the South Korean Films in the 1990s

Keeping Distance from Pathos and Turning Rational Trade into Emotions—The Change of Genres and the Reorganization of Emotions in the South Korean Films in the 1990s

The New Zombie Apocalypse and Social Crisis in South Korean Cinema.

The popular culture version of the zombie, developed over the latter half of the twentieth century, made only sporadic appearances in South Korean film, which may in part be attributed to the restrictions on the distribution of American and Japanese films before 1988. Thus the first zombie film Monstrous Corpse (Goeshi 1980, directed by Gang Beom-Gu), was a loose remake of the Spanish-Italian Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti (1974). Monstrous Corpse was largely forgotten until given a screening by KBS in 2011. Zombies don’t appear again for a quarter of a century. This article examines four zombie films released between 2012 and 2018: “Ambulance”, the fourth film in Horror Stories (2012), a popular horror portmanteau film; Train to Busan (2016) (directed by Yeon Sang-Ho), the first South Korean blockbuster film in the “zombie apocalypse” sub-genre; Seoul Station (2016), an animation prequel to Train to Busan (also directed by Yeon Sang-Ho); and Rampant (2018, directed by Kim Seong-Hun ), a costume drama set in Korea’s Joseon era. Based on a cognitive studies approach, this article examines two conceptual metaphors which underlie these films: the very common metaphor, LIFE IS A JOURNEY, and the endemically Korean metaphor THE NATION IS A FAMILY.

Questioning Authenticity: On the Documentary Film Reclaiming Our Names

Questioning Authenticity:On the Documentary Film Reclaiming Our Names So Hye Kim (bio) The South Korean documentary film Reclaiming Our Names (Ponmyŏng sŏnŏn, 1998) is, to date, the first and only South Korean documentary that attends to the moments of ethnic "coming out" of Koreans in Japan, commonly known as Zainichi. Made by the renowned independent filmmaker Hong Hyŏng-suk (b. 1962), the film centers around the biannual ritual of honmyō sengen (lit. "declaration of one's original name") that was enacted at Amagasaki High School in Osaka, Japan, in the late 1990s. During honmyō sengen, Zainichi students publically declare their "Korean" names as their true names, rather than the Japanese tsūmei (lit. "passing name") by which they had previously been known. Reclaiming Our Names depicts the real and psychic challenges Zainichi students face when torn between their two names, as well as the personal and social meanings attached to each. Toward the end of the film, a Zainichi student speaks to the audience in South Korea via an interview with the director. This student had chosen to render his ethnic identity visible by declaring his honmyō ("original name"; Korean name) as Pak Sŏng-yong in front of his Japanese classmates. Yet what he says in front of the camera is not a statement about the predicaments he faces in Japan as Zainichi, but a sincere request for Koreans to recognize Zainichi issues with empathy. He goes on to mention [End Page 335] that one of his Zainichi friends experienced ethnic discrimination during her visit to South Korea, suggesting that Zainichi Koreans are still invisible in their "homeland" even after and despite having endured the arduous and intense experience of reclaiming Korean identity. Looking at the camera, he appeals to the South Korean audience to recognize the existence of Zainichi. Within Zainichi communities, issues surrounding ethnic identity have long been considered serious social, political, legal, and psychological concerns. However, as Sŏng-yong's remark poignantly reveals, in the wake of such moments of choice between dichotomous paths of identity, there is an enduring experience of grief that has remained all but invisible in South Korea. Compared with the relative visibility in recent years of Zainichi students within the Korean ethnic education system, representations of the complicated ethnic identity of Zainichi and the related issues of their passing in Japanese society are rarely found in South Korean films. Reclaiming Our Names focuses primarily on portraying, in sentimental terms, the moment when Zainichi students stand before their Japanese classmates and declare themselves ethnically Korean. Yet, on screen, this ritual appears more as a performance of authentic identity than a confirmation of it. Such ambivalences thus call our attention to the many implications of a practice that equates the choice between names with the choice to pass or to "come out." Given that most Zainichi students have lived with their Japanese names their whole lives, to what extent can we regard the Korean name as "original" and the Japanese name as "fake" or "a disguise"? If Zainichi students do "choose" to use their honmyō, to what extent does this claiming of identity give closure to questions of authenticity? If the ritual of "reclaiming our names" actually ends up perpetuating a crisis of identity, in what ways do educational institutions shape this act of self-displacement into one of ethnic redemption? Not only are these questions left unresolved in Reclaiming Our Names, but the film itself has raised overlapping concerns [End Page 336] about authenticity that exceed the boundaries of textuality. About ten minutes of footage that appears in Reclaiming Our Names was not actually shot by Hong Hyŏng-suk but by the Zainichi filmmaker Yang Yonghi (b. 1964) as part of Yang's short documentary The Swaying Spirit (Yureru kokoro, 1996). A few days after Hong's film premiered at the 3rd Busan International Film Festival (hereafter BIFF), Yang sent a message regarding the unauthorized use of her film in Reclaiming Our Names to several newspapers and film magazines in South Korea. In the latter half of 1998, the dispute over these two documentaries developed into one of the most polarizing controversies to sweep the...

Commemorating ‘Half a Century of Korean Cinema’ ― Focusing on South Korean Cinema’s Memorial Project in the 1960s

Commemorating ‘Half a Century of Korean Cinema’ ― Focusing on South Korean Cinema’s Memorial Project in the 1960s