KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study examines the regression narrative of the web novel Reborn Rich (also known as The Youngest Son of a Conglomerate) by analyzing the binary oppositions of ‘servant/master,’ ‘outsider/legitimate heir,’ and ‘fake/real,’ and explores how their continual reconfiguration through resubjectification exposes the persistent mechanisms of oppression. Although the protagonist Jin Do-jun appears to escape external oppression by regressing to the past and rising from the lower to the upper class, the regression narrative ultimately reveals that this ascent does not eliminate oppression but replaces it with more refined and internalized forms—disciplinary power, competitive pressure, and the burden of expectation within the domain of power itself. The repetitive deployment of these binary oppositions serves three interrelated functions: it ideologically reinforces the endurance of the capitalist order; it delivers frequent, intense cathartic moments that foster emotional addiction in readers; and it operates as an industrial strategy perfectly tailored to the pay-per chapter logic of platform-based web novels. By repeatedly inverting binary pairs, the regression narrative allows readers to vicariously experience societal absurdity and achieve a sense of psychological liberation through an overturned identity. In this way, the regression narrative simultaneously reflects contemporary desires and social contradictions while channeling their temporary resolution through the “cider-like” (highly gratifying and rapid) plot progression that characterizes the genre. Reborn Rich thus exemplifies how the regression narrative reorganizes oppressive structures under the guise of liberation and, in doing so, reveals a key reason why web novels—particularly the regression subgenre—have become a dominant master plot in twenty-first-century Korean popular literature and culture.

Web novel, Regression, <Reborn Rich>, Binary opposition, renarrativization, Structure of oppression