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Suspended Time and Responsibility for the Other in the Drama Light Shop

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2026, 32(3), pp.219~247
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2026.32.3.006
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : September 5, 2026
  • Accepted : October 18, 2026
  • Published : October 31, 2026

Kim Eunjeong 1

1중앙대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examines how the subjects who experience loss in the drama Light Shop enact mourning and solidarity. Mourning is generally regarded as the task of those left behind. Drawing on Derrida’s theory of mourning and Levinas’s ethics of the Other, however, this study argues that the bereaved and the departed alike carry out mourning as a practice of bearing toward one another a responsibility that expects nothing in return. Unlike Freudian mourning, which withdraws libido from its object, this is a mourning that preserves the trace of the Other and responds to it. Chapter 2 defines as “suspended time” the time that neither flows nor stops in the fantasy space where comatose patients are placed, and analyzes how the mystery narrative produces it. The first half of the drama, instead of foregrounding the bus accident that all the characters share, builds an atmosphere of horror through uncanny beings and leads viewers to assemble fragmented clues. This narrative process resembles what Derrida describes as the beginning of mourning. Chapter 3 examines responsibility, solidarity, and mourning. The deceased, who remain on the boundary and respond to the survivors, extend the subject of mourning from those left behind to those who depart. Moreover, whereas the original webtoon emphasizes individual will, the drama shows that will can be formed through the care and response of others. The survivors respond to the Other in different ways: finding the light bulb, breaking it, or resolving to remember the deceased. The character who cannot recover his memory encounters the memorial space at the accident site and tries to return to everyday life, and the nurse passes on the care she once received to another, revealing that solidarity extends beyond existing relationships to people she does not know. This study finds significance in the way Light Shop extends the subject of mourning beyond those left behind to the departed and to others unrelated to the accident, presents mourning as a practice carried out within relationships, and thereby offers a new grammar for dealing with loss and mourning.

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