• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.138-148
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• 2021

In this paper, the basic narrative of The Sweet Home is the story that the residents of the apartment fight and survive the monsters in the isolated circumstances from the outside. This paper analysed the narrative and revealed the characteristics of the NETFLIX drama, The Sweet Home, and dealt with the ethics of contagion, core issue of the drama. Firstly, in the drama Sweet Home, the boundary between the men and the monsters collapses from the contagion. The drama shows the aspects of the apocalyptical world through the optical images, and reveals the main contagion cause is the desire and fury of the human to dominate the others. In the drama, we can see the duality that the characters sometimes stand in solidarity with, and often abuse the others. This story reflects the times after 2000s that the boundary between the man and the monster eclipses. Secondly, the drama shows that the ethics of the others popping up after the contagion is violent and thus can go to the totalitarianism. When the residents are shot by the troopers of the nation, the governmental authority shows its brutality. In this situation, the residents recognize their past behaviors and embrace the others. However, in the point that the characters' selfless behaviors could cover up the complaints and the fury of young generations after 2000s, The Sweet Home is a problematic drama.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.39-85
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• 2020

This paper examines the aspects of disaster narrative, which makes the most of the concept of 'masterplot' as a narrative simulation to solve problems. By analyzing and comparing the remnants of 'masterplots' operating in the disaster narratives of Korea, the United States, and Japan, the differences between each country and social community problem recognition and resolution will be discussed. Disaster narrative is the most suitable genre for applying the 'masterplot' toward community problem solving in today's global risk society, and the problem-solving method has cognitive differences for each community. First, in the case of American disaster narratives, civilian experts' response to natural disasters tracks the changes of heroes in today's 'Marvel Comic Universe' (MCU). Compared to the past, the close relationship between heroism and nationalism has been reduced, but the state remains functional even if it is bolstered by the heroes' voluntary cooperation and reflection ability. On the other hand, in Korea's disaster narratives, the disappearance of the country and paralysis of the function are foregrounded. In order to fill the void, a new family narrative occurs, consisting of a righteous army or people abandoned by the state. Korea's disaster narratives are sensitive to changes after the disaster, and the nation's recovery never returns to normal after the disaster. Finally, Japan's disaster narratives are defensive and neurotic. A fully state-led bureaucratic system depicts an obsessive nationalism that seeks to control all disasters, or even counteracts anti-heroic individuals who reject voluntary sacrifices and even abandon disaster conditions This paper was able to diagnose the impact and value of a 'masterplot' today by comparing a series of 'masterplots' and their variations and uses. In a time when the understanding and utilization of 'masterplots' are becoming more and more important in today's world where Over-the top(OTT) services are being provided worldwide, this paper attempt could be a fragmentary model for the distribution and sharing of global stories.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.48
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• pp.51-84
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• 2012

In Korea, historical plays took an epoch-making turn from the previous historical plays in terms of approaches to topic and material and methods of rewriting history in the 1990s. Historical plays became dehistoricized with individual, everyday life, and faction emerging as major codes of historical plays according to mistrust in history and grand narrative as the original and disappearance of trust in the growth and totality of history. A new trend became dominant of presenting fictionality prominent instead of reproduction of history and freely playing with history outside the context. While modern historical plays were subject to the content of history, post-modern historical plays sought after new history writing to tell a new story on history within a framework of fiction. Focusing on some of the trends in post-modern historical plays since the 1990s, which include play with history, daily life-style history writing, and reproduction patterns of colonial modernity, this study examined the goals, representations, and text strategies of new history writing in three historical plays, Generation After Generation(2000) by Park Geunhyung, The Mercenaries(2000) by Park Sujin, and Chosun Detective Hong Yunshik(2007) by Sung Giwoong. In Generation After Generation, the author adopts a plot of starting with the present and tracing back to the past, breaking down the myth of racially homogeneous nation. At the same time, he discloses that the colonial history is not just by the oppressive force of Japan but also by the voluntary cooperation of Korean people. That is, we are also accountable for the colonial history of the nation. The Mercenaries contrasts the independence movement during the colonial period against the modern history developed after Liberation, thus highlighting the still continuing coloniality, namely post-colonial present. The past is presented as the "phantom of history" making its appearance according to the request of the present hoping for salvation. The author politicizes history and grants political wishes to history by summoning the history by personal memories such as fictional diaries and letters with Messiah-like images opposed to the present of collapse and catastrophe. In Chosun Detective Hong Yunshik, the author makes an attempt at the microscopic reproduction of daily life by approaching the 1930s as the modern period when capitalist daily life started to take root. The lists of signs comprising daily life in colonial Gyeongseong are divided between civilization and savagery and between modern and premodern. With the progress of narrative, however, they become mixed together and reversed in the representation system in which the latter overwhelms the former.

• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.155-180
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• 2011

This paper aims at comparing the metanarrative and East Timor's local narrative in Indonesia during the Suharto's regime. Although these history writings have different political goals, the patterns of writings are ironically similar. Both of the history writings show strong nationalistic history writing patterns. Yet, in the writings, these histories place different interpretations on the historical events. In the metanarrative, local dynamics are seen through the diagrams of the nation and nationhood. This narrative finds the roots of the "ethnie" from some kingdoms in Java and Sumatra. These kingdoms, which throve based on the Hindu-Buddhist culture, achieved a territorial unity to a degree, covering some parts of Java and Sumatra. The glorious past disappeared with the advent of the colonial rule. The metanarrative then emphasizes the unity of the ethnic groups in the archipelago, which fiercely resisted against the colonial exploitation and oppression. By this, these ethnic groups were defined as "the masses," the collective identity, which had a same goal to achieve the national independence. In addition, some local histories, which took positive attitudes toward the European forces, were simply left out from the metanarrative. All the separatist movements taking place in the republic were also described as the anti-unifying forces. On the other hand, the goal of the history-writing in East Timor was to enhance the sense of nationalism and create the perception of the "East Timorese." The fundamental aim was the separation from Indonesia. In the narrative, the nationalist politicians overcame the problem of the non-existence of any memories of the glorious past with the awakening of the idea of "the imagined gloriousness of the past if there was no colonial rule." In addition, the narrative overemphasizes the memory of the colonial rule for 450 years under the Portuguese rule in order to stress the fact that it was the colony of Portugal, not of the Netherlands. Finally, the narrative shows how the East Timorese collectively fell to the status of slaves. By this, the political leaders of East Timor evoked the notion that it was recolonized by Indonesia, under which the East Timorese were demoted to the status of slaves. This notion of "slave-master" relationship then became the motives for the independence struggles in East Timor.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.813-838
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• 2011

Toni Morrison's ninth novel A Mercy delves into the colonial American history of the seventeenth century when Europeans began to migrate to the New World and when the first slaves were brought to Virginia. Morrison presents a diverse group of people such as white Europeans, an American Indian, a free black man, indentured servants, and slaves from Africa in order to explore the subjects of ownership, freedom and racism. She emphasizes the fact that most of the Europeans who came to America in the early seventeenth century were the people who were thrown out from the society such as felons, prostitutes, servants and children. By portraying how these castaways tried to settle in a new environment surrounded by unknown dangers and challenges, Morrison demystifies and reconstructs the myth of the birth of America as a nation state. In continuation of Morrison's writings about love and the betrayal of love, her novel A Mercy explores the subjects of trauma, memory and subjectivity by choosing the topic of motherly love and its betrayal which she dealt with poignantly in Beloved. The female protagonist, Florens, is given away by her mother in partial payment of debt incurred by the owner of Florens's mother. The traumatic memory of Florens's separation from her mother shapes Florence's character. She has to revisit the site of the original traumatic experiences of being given up by her mother in order to reconstruct her fragmented memory and past. The recurring dream of the traumatic incident that takes hold of Florens can be explained by the trauma theory of Freud, Cathy Caruth, Suzette Henke, and Judith Herman. The paper explores the self journey of Florens in which she faces the traumatic past and comprehends its meaning which enables her to construct her subjectivity by understanding the true meaning of being free and of owning oneself. In particular, it demonstrates how the process of writing a confession, a story about one's history, enables one to reclaim the traumatic experience and to locate it in the narrative memory.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.189-219
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• 2020

This study is an analysis of Handol Heung-Gun Lee's Tarae, which is a coinage combining the Korean words for "playing an instrument" and "song", in terms of narrative and aesthetics. The components for analysis are the phenomena and nature of binary oppositions between nature and human beings, between alienation and interest, between division and unification, and between diaspora and people of the national community. Tarae in the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s described the experience of pain and loss from non-resistance and disobedience in protest against social problems that emerged during the era of miliary dictatorship, such as industrialization, urbanization, reckless development, Westernization, university-oriented education, the gap between rich and poor, human alienation, and the conflicts arising from the division of the nation. After Handol overcame the lack of creative motivation with self-reflection and effort, Tarae took the form of a diaspora epic meta-narratives integrating the "sound of nature and his true nature" and "the awareness of diaspora and the spirit of the Korean people". The epics of the homeland, the national soil and the people, which began with "Teo", became more intense in terms of a sense of diaspora as they shifted their focus from an origin to a path with "Hanmoejulghi" as the turning point. Handol seeks inspiration in the source of narrative rather than in music. His Tarae focuses on "adding rhythm for lyrics". For this reason, the semiotic features of Tarae have a limitation in that its extrinsic phonology is simple even if its intrinsic meaning (i.e., emotion of sadness) is profound and subtle. In order to elicit sympathy from the audience and impress them, it is necessary to strike a balance between the implicit (semantic) part and the explicit (phonological) part. To share the emotion of sadness with more people, it is necessary to strengthen phonological elements. Sympathy for sadness and deep impression on the audience are more often induced by the mood of similar sentiments than by the stories of the same experience. The aesthetics of sadness in Tarae began with the narratives of past experience which were expressed in the contexts of loss, loneliness, and poverty that Handol had experienced since childhood. However, the aesthetics of sadness, deepened over the period of a long hiatus in Handol's career as a composer, formed the narratives of ultimate salvation, embodying even the diaspora experience of others (e.g., displaced people, overseas adoptees, ethnic Koreans in Russia, victims of Japanese military sexual slavery, etc.). This gave Tarae the potential to go beyond the limits of the ethnic group of Korea. Tarae, as a "dispersed sound", can benefit from the appeal of deep sadness at the point of contact with other forms of world music. It may form a global diaspora discourse because Tarae is oriented towards interculturalism rather than anti-multiculturalism. The future challenge and goal of Handol's Tarae would be to continue to find areas of sympathy and broaden the horizon of awareness as diaspora music.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.123-153
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• 2020

As the importance of documented fact has weakened in historical dramas, the combination with other genres has become prominent. By reviewing the way romance is dealt with in historical dramas, this research examines how the properties of historical events adopted by historical dramas are related to the motif of love, and how the narrative of love and romance contributes to the historical effects, with a focus on the television drama Mr. Sunshine. Mr. Sunshine is the first historical drama written by Kim Eun-sook, combining deliberately rearranged history with the writer's unique grammar of romance. The failed resistance movement of the righteous army in the drama is matched with the love that cannot be achieved based on self-negation. The drama, which deals with the tyranny of Japanese imperialism and the independence of Joseon, fictionalizes key characters and events, transforming the desire of love into the passion of patriotism. Romance in Mr. Sunshine serves as a catalyst for emphasizing the tragedy of historical events and reconstitutes cultural memories. In historical dramas, the fictional plot of romance leads viewers to reflect on human life in history that flows from the past to the future. How does an individual's inner feelings contribute to the historical representation? This research is significant as it is the first attempt to examine the relationship between historical drama and romance in various ways.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.49-72
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• 2010

As the first of Philip Roth's recent series of novels that delve into American Cold War history deeply entwined with the post-war Jewish American experience, American Pastoral traces the tragic fall of a third-generation Jewish American named Seymour "Swede" Levov, whose dream of complete assimilation to the post-ethnic American paradise is irrecoverably disrupted when his young daughter blows up the local post office to protest against the Vietnam War. This essay proposes to examine Swede Levov's interrupted pursuit of the American dream by locating it within specific Cold War contexts and national imaginaries propagated particularly during the years from John F. Kennedy to Lyndon B. Johnson. In so doing, I will argue that Roth presents a paradoxical vision of Jewish American identity that could be acquired by performing perpetual self-effacement and submergence into the non-place of anonymity and doubleness, a mythic location of the post-ethnic Cold War American family. Levov's life becomes true part of the mythic narrative of American history when he realizes that his life, just like the nation's history, is a series of temporalities radically discontinued without any manageable detour ot divine bypass to cross over. Rather than indicating Roth's retraction from the postmodern understanding of subjectivity, the novel's historical realism, I will argue, serves to illuminate the postmodern conditions of American Cold War history and ethnic identity.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.9-37
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• 2020

The present study examines the transnational "Hallyu" (the Korean wave) phenomenon after the 1990s in the context of a solidarity movement of East Asian women. It also focuses on the passion for the world stage given the cultural industry was supported by the government as a "chimney-less factory" during the IMF financial crisis. Over the past twenty years and through Hallyu 1.0, Hallyu 2.0, and Hallyu 3.0, "K-entertainment" has been advocated, as a concept that encompasses K-drama, K-pop, etc. in the cultural industry. Furthermore, everything Korean, through K-culture, is being put at the forefront. However, there is insufficient discussion regarding the actions of the women who led the Korean wave. This paper examines the female fans and girl groups who played leading roles in the rise of popular culture and its transnational prominence within the context of the female agency and female labor involved. The lack of acknowledgment of their roles is linked to the current erasure of the discussion on the female youth. Discussion on "woman" is still limited to the domain of reproduction in the generational discussion that has replaced the existing nation-state or class led discussions in the current era of neoliberalism. However, since The reboot or the popularity of feminism in recent years, the interest in the female narrative, in works such as 'Kim Ji-young, Born 1982' has been expanding beyond East Asia to the rest of the world. Just as Hallyu was created by women in the beginning, there is a new trend in which women across national borders are joining in solidarity. As such, the present study attempts to prove that the female fan, girl group, and female youths must be one meta-narrative through a feminist reading, rather than individuals with separate identities.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• no.26
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• pp.413-433
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• 2011

What this study aims is to analyze that how the stories of Prince Hodong are represented in modern historical fictions. The stories have been reproduced in many forms such as TV dramas, films, fictions, plays. It can be depicted that the narratives are indeed national and popular. Interestingly, however, the description of Hodong has not been found in pre-modern documents or fictions. The story began to appear and became popular in 1935 by Yoon Baek Nam. It can be explained that the narratives are the one of the example of the invented tradition since it became visible in modern period. Yoon, Lee Tae Joon, and Yu Chi Jin have constructed the character of Hodong what we are familiar with. Yoon depicted Hodong as a romatic lover with the motif of a lovers suicide. Lee and Yu put a context of nationalism by explaining Nakrang as a Nakrangkun of Hansagun(the four colonies of China). These are pure invention of the writers which cannot be found in The History of Three Kingdoms(三國史記). These characters are closely related with the surrounding of their own society. Yoon shows how the past can be seen as a nostalgic object by modern aesthetic perspective. Lee illustrates the ambiguous thought of a colonial intellectual who (anti)internalizes the ideology of militarism. Yu tries to find the way to recover the muscularity of the nation by re-colouring the memory of the past. These, the representations created in various contexts, make our common knowledges of Prince Hodong nowadays.