The New Zombie Apocalypse and Social Crisis in South Korean Cinema (translation into Russian)

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.

Contemporary Re-Interpretations of the Colonial Past Through the Biopics of Two Koreans: Park Kyŏng-Wŏn and Kim Sin-Rak

In the past few years, the South Korean film industry has released a growing number of Korean movies set in the colonial period. This essay focuses on how these films deal with the painful memory of occupation. More specifically, the analysis will be centered on two biopics with narratives that differ from what could be argued to be the mainstream portrayals of the colonial period, which tend to depict the struggle of Korean freedom-fighters under Japanese rule. Moreover, this essay reflects on the meaning of reinterpreting the past through cinema.

Different Cinematic Interpretations of Ch’unhyangjŏn: The Same Korean Identity

The article examines the classic Korean folklore fable, 춘향전 (春香傳), Ch’unhyangjŏn (The Fragrance of Spring), The Tale of Ch’unhyang, through the lens of three different successful movie adaptations produced in North and South Korea. Respectively, Yu Wŏn-chun and Yun Ryong-gyu portrayed The Tale of Ch’unhyang (1980) in its modest “Juche realist” North Korean film style, whereas Im Kwŏn-t’aek depicted his work, Ch’unhyang (2000), in a contemporary liberally and daringly revised version, while the romantic portrayal produced in North Korea by the South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok, in Love, Love, My Love (1984), is performed from a human-oriented and entertaining perspective filled with musical ingredients and brave images of love. The study aims to demonstrate how the story is diversely interpreted through the two divided film cultures by highlighting differences between collectivism and individualism, noting also that all three interpretations emerge from similar roots of cultural and national identity.