KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study examines the evolution of the mystery genre within digital games and analyzes the paradigmatic shift in narrative structure brought about by the integration of Generative AI. Traditionally, script-based mystery games followed linear structures that limited player reasoning to searching for predetermined “correct” paths within fixed clue trees. However, cases like Uncover the SMOKING GUN, which utilize Large Language Models (LLM), transform narratives from static databases into probabilistic latent spaces, expanding the act of deduction into real-time rhetorical interaction. This paper defines the linguistic interaction emerging from this process as Process Language and analyzes it through the lens of literary generation. Players are elevated from mere detectives finding culprits to collaborative creators and Transversal Subjects who perform critical judgments while filling narrative gaps through dialogue with AI. This research clarifies how the process of prompt engineering expands narrative volume and sublimates deduction into a literary experience. Ultimately, this study suggests that Generative AI mystery games are reconstructing the essence of the shonkaku (authentic) mystery genre in the digital environment through an evolution from “reading mysteries” to “writing (dialogical) mysteries.”

This study proposes a methodology for constructing and refining databases of Korean detective novels through the collection and quantification of bibliographic materials. Despite the rapid expansion of Korean mystery literature since the 21st century, systematic bibliographic information needed to understand its development remains insufficient. To address this, the study collected approximately 2,200 bibliographic records spanning from the early 1900s to the present, constructed a primary database, and divided them into two periods, and conducts quantitative analysis. Based on these findings, the study develops a relational database(RDB) model to process complex bibliographic information and ensure data integrity, and proposes a multidimensional labeling system reflecting the composite attributes of subgenres. This research provides an objective diagnosis of Korean detective novel studies and establishes a methodological foundation for genre literature research, with potential for future expansion into narrative analysis through text mining.

Settler colonialism produces a specific mode of biopolitics that persists not only within settler states but also within global regimes that inherit, expand, and naturalize their power. This biopolitical mode often manifests as an affective modulation of multispecies power relations encompassing both humans and nonhumans. The space in which such modulation materializes most vividly is the sanctuary. To locate the sanctuary within the cartography of settler-colonial biopolitics, this paper compares two works set in different historical and geographical contexts—Noda Satoru’s manga Golden Kamuy and Ko Yeon-ok’s play The Sensibility of a Wife. Through these works, it examines how human–animal interactions signify the (re)formation of settler-colonial affective geographies, particularly in relation to the process of making a sanctuary. Golden Kamuy presents the possibility of multispecies coexistence through the re-narration of an Ainu bear myth; however, once that myth is appropriated within the settler narrative, its decolonial potential becomes absorbed into the institutional order. In contrast, The Sensibility of a Wife depicts a world in which the affect of the “penitentiary farm” extends to society at large, where care and control overlap within a violent regime and the sensibility of rewilding is enacted. While the former illustrates a “multispecies coexistence through incorporation,” the latter envisions “coexistence through refusal.” Through this contrast, the paper argues that myth and sanctuary form a cyclical structure of historical memory and affective practice, functioning as two axes of decolonial thought that disrupt the order of colonial biopolitics. Furthermore, it explores the transformative politics of interspecies solidarity that emerges from affective reconfigurations in which humans and animals, indigeneity and coloniality, settlement and movement intertwine.