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The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema
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Book Presentation:
In one of the first English-language studies of Korean cinema to date, Kyung Hyun Kim shows how the New Korean Cinema of the past quarter century has used the trope of masculinity to mirror the profound sociopolitical changes in the country. Since 1980, South Korea has transformed from an insular, authoritarian culture into a democratic and cosmopolitan society. The transition has fueled anxiety about male identity, and amid this tension, empowerment has been imagined as remasculinization. Kim argues that the brutality and violence ubiquitous in many Korean films is symptomatic of Korea’s on-going quest for modernity and a post-authoritarian identity.
Kim offers in-depth examinations of more than a dozen of the most representative films produced in Korea since 1980. In the process, he draws on the theories of Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze, Rey Chow, and Kaja Silverman to follow the historical trajectory of screen representations of Korean men from self-loathing beings who desire to be controlled to subjects who are not only self-sufficient but also capable of destroying others. He discusses a range of movies from art-house films including To the Starry Island (1993) and The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996) to higher-grossing, popular films like Whale Hunting (1984) and Shiri (1999). He considers the work of several Korean auteurs—Park Kwang-su, Jang Sun-woo, and Hong Sang-su. Kim argues that Korean cinema must begin to imagine gender relations that defy the contradictions of sexual repression in order to move beyond such binary struggles as those between the traditional and the modern, or the traumatic and the post-traumatic.
About the Author:
Kyung Hyun Kim is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Irvine.
Press Reviews:
"Kim contributes new scholarship to both Asian cinema and gender studies. . . . [T]his book is worth reading for the sheer number of Korean films explored alone." - Kathleen Ellis, Intersections
"What Kim does best is to whet the reader’s appetite to find and view these Korean films, to get a new perspective, and to generate discussion. For cinema-philes, this book is seriously good reading on modern Korean film industry." - Bill Drucker , Korean Quarterly
"[E]xcellent ground work which raises the level of understanding of Korean cinema and invites others to invest more on Korean cinema. . . . [Kim's] lengthy and intelligent close readings of fascinating recent Korean films will, without a doubt, be better appreciated when the readers have already watched the film." - Hyunjun Min, Journal of Asian Studies
[T]his book allows readers less familiar with Korean films to easily understand the current Korean cinematic phenomena, while also acting as a wonderful invitation and guide to its recent history." - Chongdae Park , The Communication Review
"Kyung Hyun Kim’s book is a roller coaster ride through modern South Korean masculinity in the cinema. At once unflinching and sympathetic, Kim’s groundbreaking study traces Korean permutations on the gendered imagery of castration and rape and the impossible condition of postcolonial masculinity, caught between incommensurable values and demands." - Chris Berry, coeditor of Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia
"This is an important book. There is a long tradition of scholarship investigating the representation of women in Asian cinema. This has included some consideration of Korean film, which more often than not finds the representations of Korean women wanting in one way or another. It took Kyung Hyun Kim’s writing to turn my attention to the rich complexity of the men. His focus on masculinity—coinciding with the turn to the issue by major feminist film theorists—simply makes perfect sense. His is a particularly compelling contribution to the study of Asian cinema, but is simultaneously in dialogue with all manner of gender studies." - Abé Mark Nornes, University of Michigan
See the publisher website: Duke University Press
> From the same author:
Im Kwon-Taek (2001)
The Making of a Korean National Cinema
Dir. David E. James and Kyung Hyun Kim
Subject: Director > Im Kwon-Taek
> On a related topic:
Cinema under National Reconstruction (2024)
State Censorship and South Korea's Cold War Film Culture
Impossible Speech (2024)
The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film
The South Korean Film Industry (2024)
Dir. Junhyung Cho, Sangjoon Lee and Dal Yong Jin
Surviving Squid Game (2023)
A Guide to K-Drama, Netflix, and Global Streaming Wars
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