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The Reception and Transformation of Chinese Xianxia in Korean Web Novels - Focusing on the Reconfiguration of Neoliberal Narratives

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2026, 32(3), pp.13~47
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2026.32.3.001
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : September 4, 2026
  • Accepted : October 18, 2026
  • Published : October 31, 2026

Yu Inhyeok 1

1전주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article aims to reconstruct the ways in which Korean web novels have appropriated xianxia (仙俠物), an emerging genre in China, and to examine the formal and thematic inflections that occur in this process. By first identifying how Chinese xianxia fiction represents capitalist dystopia and then comparing it with the ways in which Korean xianxia fiction inherits and transforms these narrative conventions, this study seeks to elucidate the forms of translation that arise when a genre crosses national borders. To this end, I first identify four major narrative conventions of Chinese xianxia fiction. First, xianxia narratives primarily center on the stories of young people without capital who achieve dramatic reversals of fortune. Second, the system of cultivation (修道) in xianxia is highly systematized, and this system drives a developmental narrative in which protagonists progress through a series of successive stages. Third, the cultivation and growth of practitioners take place within a harsh system of competition. Fourth, protagonists in xianxia typically assume the form of self-interested individuals who devote themselves to personal growth and competition. These characteristics are interpreted as a dystopian representation of the neoliberal world. I then demonstrate that Korean xianxia fiction largely inherits the first three conventions while transforming the fourth—the figure of the “self-interested individual”—into an altruistic character type. I further examine how this thematic transformation affects the genre’s broader thematic orientation. In doing so, I demonstrate that Korean xianxia fiction, by modifying certain narrative conventions of Chinese xianxia, effectively appropriates and reworks its vision of capitalist dystopia. This article is significant in that it demonstrates concretely how the form and content of a narrative genre interact and transform one another when the genre is translated into new historical and geographical contexts. It also demonstrates that web novels, as a form of commercial storytelling, constitute a cultural practice that simultaneously represents the neoliberal world and subverts aspects of that representation. In this way, the study seeks to broaden the scope of economic and social approaches to the study of web novels.

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