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A Study on the 1980s Literary Drama TV Drama Theater

PARK Yuhee 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study set out to investigate the emergence, context, development, and significance of literary dramas in the 1980s with a focus on TV Drama Theater, which aired on KBS and led the era of home theater. It was produced and broadcasted throughout the Fifth Republic of South Korea from 1980 to 1987 and was imprinted as the representative literary drama series in the history of television broadcasting in South Korea. The television broadcasting of the 1980s can be characterized by the KBS based single public broadcasting system for the consolidation of the press and color broadcasting, which were parts of the new military regime's media policy to thoroughly control broadcasting and, at the same time, turn the attention of people elsewhere. The production and organization of TV programs, thus, put an emphasis on sound content fit for the ideas of public broadcasting and on spectacles to highlight the advantages of color broadcasting. When these criteria were applied to dramas, large-scale special dramas whose episodes would last a couple of hours, became the mainstream. This atmosphere became the basis and driving force of the emergence of “literary dramas,” which promoted the artistry of pure literature and movie-like spectacles. TV Drama Theater was one representation of a literary drama program that appeared in those days. Under the purposes of “introducing Korean literature through images and showing the new domain of TV dramas to viewers by turning great novels and original dramas of Korea into TV dramas,” TV Drama Theater received full support from KBS and enjoyed its longevity with a total of 266 episodes that were produced from December, 1980 to November, 1987. This indicates that it was a star program that manifested the ideology of public broadcasting in the drama sector throughout the Fifth Republic of South Korea. Even after its production was over, its reruns did not end. Later, it revived as New TV Drama Theater and HDTV Drama Theater, being produced again several times, which suggests that TV Drama Theater received the attention and support of the public even though it was created in the context of the Fifth Republic's media policy. In short, the production and broadcasting of TV Drama Theater had many different factors crossing each other including appealing to the public, changing media, criteria and limitations of program development, and resulting in aesthetics and rhetoric in addition to the intention of the regime. The people of South Korea had a bigger need for family culture according to the rising living standard and the emergence of television as a medium of family integration. The broadcasting circles were desperate to develop programs fit for the changes to the broadcasting environment, and producers were allowed to exert their desires and capabilities to embody new images within the perimeter approved by the ideology of public broadcasting. The rise and fall of TV Drama Theater along with its emergence was in the middle of these various needs and desires that clashed, conspired, and contended with each other.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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