KJCKorea
Journal Central

The police procedural is a sub-genre of detective fiction which stirs human beings' long-lasting pleasure arising from solving the riddle of cases through deductive reasoning while letting television viewers participate in the investigating process. What is more, police procedurals play a role in awakening one's desire concealed inside crimes and reflecting their existence as a human being, as well as evoking social consciousness. This study mainly focuses on character types based on the traits of the genre although research with regard to police procedurals has been scarce, which is in contrast to the fact that a great deal of attention has been paid to their values and changes in police drama genre. In other words, the aim of the study is that through the exhaustive examination of police dramas aired in the past and the current days such as <Chief Investigator>, <Sign>, and <Phantom>, the changing trend of character types in these police procedural television series is to be investigated and further to be contemplated as to how this phase has an impact on the evolution of this drama genre. As a consequence of this study, two distinguishing aspects of characters at large have been recognized between current police dramas and traditional ones, one is the extension of a character's external type and the other is the alteration and evolution of traditionally dichotomous characters respectively. To begin with, the development of external characters has had an effect on stimulating viewers' interest by enabling them to experience gratifying moments of dramatic tension in the genre and further contributed to the diversification of drama topics. In addition to this, one of the most remarkable points in the alteration of drama character types is that the characterization of the upper class has become criminalized. This kind of change allows the audience to be exposed to hypocrisy which people in high social status holds and thus to take part in the process of critical thinking and reflecting on social issues that our modern society currently faces. Furthermore, the role of detective characters, who have been tracing and investigating crimes and offenders, has been displaced as that of victims, and criminal characters once in a while tend to become role-changed into the chaser or controller of investigators, leading to escalating drama suspenses in police procedurals. To sum up, current police procedural television series show signs of the changing and strengthening trend in genre traits through modifying and varying the character types of previous police procedurals.

police procedurals, characters, the extension of character types, the alteration of traditionally dichotomous characters, <Chief Investigator>, <Sign>, <Phantom>