• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.9-40
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• 2019

This study presents an investigation into South Korean films in the 1990s in the aspects of genre change and emotional reorganization. The 1990s witnessed a change of genres and a paradigm shift in the history of Korean films according to the revolutionary changes of the film industry structure and media environment. Believing that these changes had something to do with emotional changes driven by global capitalization symbolized by democratization in 1987 and the foreign currency crisis in 1998, the investigator analyzed the phenomena in film texts and examined the opportunities and context behind them. Unlike previous researches, this study made an approach to the history of Korean films in the 1990s with three points: first, this study focused on why the romantic comedy genre emerged in the 1990s and what stages its formation underwent since there had been no profound discussions about them; secondly, this study analyzed the biggest hits during the transitional period from 1987~1999 to figure out the mainstream genres and emotions during that period since these hits would provide texts to show the genre domain and public taste in a symbolic way; and finally, this study grew out of the separate investigation approach between melodramas and romantic comedies and looked into an emotional structure to encompass both genres to make a more broad and dynamic approach to South Korean films in the 1990s. History flows continuously without severance from previous times. When there is attention paid to inflection points and opportunities in the continuum, it can show the dynamics and structures of changes. This research led to the following conclusions: the mainstream genre of South Korean films had been melodramas until the 1980s. The old convention had been kept to offset or suture contradictions and excessive elements deviant from the structural consistency. Here, the structural consistency refers to no compliance to rational regulations or trade. The process of genre reorganization in the 1990s happened while securing some distance from the convention of making the structural consistency a sacrifice. The direction was to reinforce control through reasonable rationalism and logic of capital. It developed into romance, which would start with comedy to keep distance from the objects through laughter, heighten the level of remarks, and expand criticality, symbolize emotions with taste items, and build through the logic of mutual consensus and practical trade. In the 1990s, the South Korean films thus developed in a direction of moving away from the narrative of urgent pathos based on unconditional familism. It was on the same track as the entry of the South Korean society into the upgraded orbits of democracy and capitalism as the twins of modern rationalism since the latter part of the 1980s.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.604-613
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• 2013

Advanced research has often discussed that the melodrama genre reproduces typical female image more than any other genre in setting up female image. However, the advanced research is not based on quantitative methods, so it is hard to say that it has verified the conservativeness or typicality of the melodrama genre. This study applies quantitative research methods for the typicality of female image in the TV melodrama genre and intends to prove it through comparative analysis with the overall genre female image. According to the study result, the TV melodrama genre's shows less change than the overall genre female image. About their appearance, the overall genre female image indicates increase of non-femininity and activeness in their relationship with others; however, in the melodrama genre, women with typical feminine appearance and passive female image have been maintained from 1992 till 2012. In the system in which women shared men's capital in their lover or wife's status, their feminine and beautiful appearance was used as women's physical capital that enhances their possibility to be selected by men. Even in the present that women's economic power has been elevated, however, the melodrama genre still maintains typical female image distinctively. Typicality of such female image shown in the melodrama genre of which major viewers are women seems to represent contemporary women's ambivalent and contradictory desire.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.9
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• pp.126-135
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• 2012

This study is the subsequent full-scale research of a TV drama writer who has been out of scholarly pursuits as it explores Su-Hyeon Kim's underlying consciousness with focusing on her heroines, the and . The author Su-Hyeon Kim clearly distinguishes a TV melodrama from a TV home-drama by her own self-control, which is a rare case in TV drama genres, therefore, her consciousness lights up at her melodrama. This study applies Lacanian theory to the author's melodramas for examining the author's under-lying thought. For Lacan the subject is an 'alienated', 'privative', 'fractured' 'being' as an imperfect language, the symbolic order, forms the subject through its signification. The subject desires the other's desire, and wants to become an object for the other's desire. The desire constantly demands an integral world, a perfect love, the wholly harmonious imaginary order. And it lasts up as it refuses the symbolic order's imperfection while it works its unconscious fantasy. Lacan states that only the 'traversing the fantasy', 'separation' would give birth to the real, liberated subject. Despite a 20-years of rift within two works, the and have an identical conflict core, that is a subject's constitutive, fundamental privation and desire of a human being. Su-Hyeon Kim's underlying consciousness complies with her continued theses of an inquiry into the subject's real liberation and freedom when desire of the rings produces the subject's alienation, privation, and the pursuit of a impossible perfect love.