The Making of Post-National and Post-Socialist Korean Literature and Film: Toward a New Cultural Politics in 1980-90s South Korea

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

This panel proposes to explore the Korean literary and cultural field of the 1980s and 1990s and to re-evaluate this important period in Korean and global history that experienced the marginalization of Socialist movements worldwide and post-1987 democratization and liberalization in South Korea. Furthermore, aside from the fundamental ideological changes, these two decades ushered in changes in popular media culture, advanced women’s literature and feminism, and introduced new ways of thinking about national literature and film.

Members of this panel will explore new ways to evaluate both the transitions and continuities of these two important decades which have been largely neglected in Korean studies thus far. Lee Hye-ryoung locates the “cultural turn” as an important moment that dovetails with the rising feminist movement in Korea. Cheon Jung-hwan will attempt to develop a new methodology for understanding the history of Korean literature and culture through probing the relationship between labor and intellectual production in the 80s-90s. Jina Kim will examine novels and films by Korean, Korean American, and Korean residents of Japan to think about the post-national turn in Korean literary/cultural field. Chon Woohyung charts the history of Korean independent film’s post-national characteristics as it becomes enmeshed with global media production.

Area of Study

• Korea

Session Organizer

• Jina Eleanor Kim, Dickinson College

Chair

• Henry Em, Yonsei University

Individual Presentations

• Expressions of Post-Socialist Era: The Cultural Turn and Post-Nationalism in South Korea in the 1990s - Hye Ryoung Lee, Sungkyunkwan University

• Between Labor and Intellectual Production: Toward Defining a New Methodology for Understanding the History of Korean Literature and Culture of the 1980-1990s  - Jung-hwan Cheon, Sungkyunkwan University

• A Post-National Turn in South Korean Literature and Film of the 1980s-90s - Jina Eleanor Kim, Dickinson College

• Korean Independent Film in the 1990s: The Transition from National Reality to Sensual Modernity - Woohyung Chon, Konkuk University

Discussant

• Henry Em, Yonsei University