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A study on the initial acceptance of occult genre in Korean horror movies

Han Sang-yun 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

While traditional Korean horror movies had been criticized for similar stories, the occult movie from Hollywood, The Exorcist (1973), which was popular around the world, influenced on Korean movie industry, and occult movies also appeared in Korea. However, the sociocultural context of occult movies in Korea was different from the case in the West. Occult movies in the West were accepted as part of a culture of New Age, which is based on anti-modernism, On the other hand, in Korea, occult movies were considered as ‘a modern genre’ that would help us break away from the pre-modernism in traditional Korean horror movies. Given the fact that Korean society in the 1970s stressed the importance of science, technology, and scientific thinking more than ever before, it could be said that the public interest in modernity or modernization was one of the most important sociocultural factors relevant to occult movies in Korea. One of representative works of Korean occult movies in 1970’s is Neo ttohan byeol-i doe-eo (You become a star, too)(1975). The movie contained scenes that had not seen in traditional Korean horror movies, such as scenes of diagnosis in hospital or of criminal investigation. These scenes represented the modernity by imitating the similar scenes in the movie The Exorcist. Using psychicist characters, which was useful to describe surrealistic phenomena in the scientific point of view, was also an attempt to represent the modernity. Unlike shamanism or superstition, psychics in occult movies had authority as another science. These were the result of attempts to make modernized horror movies. Meanwhile, Korean occult movies also had distinctive features influenced by the traditional narrative convention or cultural customs. For example, demons were replaced by female ghosts in Korean occult movies. Ghosts were eliminated by conciliation in instead of exorcism. Like the governor in Korean traditional ghost stories, Psychicists played a role as the male authority to normalize the chaos caused by Female ghosts. At this point, we can find features of Korean traditional ghost stories that have significantly influenced on Korean horror movies for a long time. From the description above, it can be said that the acceptance of occult genre in Korea was not just an imitation of western movies, but also the creation and transformation of the genre, closely related to the sociocultural situation of Korean society.

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