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@article{ART002411819},
author={Kang, Kyoung-Lae},
title={The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse},
journal={Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University},
issn={1598-3021},
year={2018},
volume={75},
number={4},
pages={229-262},
doi={10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229}

TY - JOUR
AU - Kang, Kyoung-Lae
TI - The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse
JO - Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
PY - 2018
VL - 75
IS - 4
PB - Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
SP - 229
EP - 262
SN - 1598-3021
AB - This essay examines the recent changes in Korean cinema representing former comfort women. Discourses on comfort women have grown since the early 1990s — the time in which the first testimony of a former comfort woman came out. Early Korean cinematic representations on comfort women were invested in recording the colonial victims’ testimonies in a documentary mode, in the hope of maintaining an ethical distance from the victims’ undescribable experiences. Recent Korean films, such as Snowy Road (Najeong Lee, 2015) and I Can Speak (Hyunseok Kim, 2017), however, mark a deviation from the early mode of cinematic depiction. While dramatizing the traumatic history of comfort women, these films highlight a certain solidarity between two protagonists, often portrayed as two female friends suffering together at a comfort station, or the convoluted relationship between the colonial victims and contemporary Korean people. This essay seeks to understand this newly-conspicuous relationship depicted in these films ― particularly through a theoretical lens of “post-memory generation“ discourse, and in so doing, hopes to disclose how this new cinematic representation of comfort women contributes to establishing a close and family-like relationship between the colonial victims and the young generation in our society, thereby helping to redraw the boundary of contemporary Korean society.
KW - Comfort Women;“Post-Memory Generation”;Counter-Memory;Reenactment;Affective History
DO - 10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229
ER -

Kang, Kyoung-Lae. (2018). The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, 75(4), 229-262.

Kang, Kyoung-Lae. 2018, "The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse", Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, vol.75, no.4 pp.229-262. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229

Kang, Kyoung-Lae "The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 75.4 pp.229-262 (2018) : 229.

Kang, Kyoung-Lae. The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse. 2018; 75(4), 229-262. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229

Kang, Kyoung-Lae. "The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 75, no.4 (2018) : 229-262.doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229

Kang, Kyoung-Lae. The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, 75(4), 229-262. doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229

Kang, Kyoung-Lae. The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University. 2018; 75(4) 229-262. doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229

Kang, Kyoung-Lae. The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse. 2018; 75(4), 229-262. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229

Kang, Kyoung-Lae. "The Recent Cinematic Depiction of Comfort Women and Its Cultural Significance in Korean Society: Examined through “Post-Memory Generation” Discourse" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 75, no.4 (2018) : 229-262.doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.75.4.201811.229