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A Study on the Adaptation of The Tale of Shim Cheong and Reader Responses in the Webtoon Her Tale of Shim Chong - Focusing on Analysis of Narrative Structure and Comments

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2025, 31(3), pp.351~399
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : July 27, 2025
  • Accepted : October 20, 2025
  • Published : October 31, 2025

Li, Huizhen 1

1연세대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examines the webtoon Her Tale of Shim Chong by Seri (writer) and Biwan (illustrator), which concluded its run on Naver Series in June 2020, using a comment analysis approach to analyze reader responses and thoughts on how the narrative departs from traditional frameworks. The webtoon Her Tale of Shim Chong can be regarded as a work that deliberately departs from a traditional narrative that originally reinforced gender stereotypes, male- centred storytelling, filial piety norms, and authoritarian structures. The way Shim Chong is depicted in the work rejects the conventional ideals of beauty, filial devotion, and femininity, instead transforming the narrative into one grounded in solidarity and autonomy among women. Through a disillusioned portrayal of religious and patriarchal authority, the work reveals a critical awareness of the traditional social order and attempts to reconstruct and expand gender-based narrative structures. This study investigated how audiences responded to the non-traditional narrative elements of Her Tale of Shim Chong, and their thoughts about these elements, through comment analysis. Readers expressed empathy and compassion toward female characters, and criticism or aversion toward male characters, thereby revealing a critical awareness of traditional gender-based authority. Readers were able to re-evaluate the ideology of classical narratives and extend this thought process toward the gender inequality structures present in contemporary society. This analysis shows that readers did not merely consume this reimagining of a classic tale as a familiar story, but actively reconstructed its meaning by critically engaging with the issues of gender hierarchies, moral norms, and social structures prompted by the work. In particular, based on their awareness of the problematic nature of the idealised filial daughter figure and male-dominated authority depicted in classical literature, readers recognised that classics should be reinterpreted as cultural texts that must be reassessed according to era and context, rather than taken as absolute moral models. These audience reactions demonstrate that the genre known as webtoons has gone beyond mere entertainment to function as an effective cultural medium, linking classical narratives to contemporary discourse and fostering social dialogue about traditional values.

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