Presenter: Emma Koontz − Planning Public Policy and Management
Faculty Mentor(s): Ulrick Casimir
Session: (Virtual) Oral Panel—Read, Speak and Act, Poster Presentation
The democratic reforms of the 1987 June 29 Declaration opened the floodgates for Korean New Wave films. The repeal of censorship regulations gave Korean filmmakers the autonomy to actualize their creative vision for the first time since Japanese colonialism. The result were films that grappled with the trauma of eighty years of colonialism, war, and authoritarian dictatorship through biting political commentary. This study explores Park Chan-wook’s representation of 한 (han) Korean cultural trauma in his New Wave films Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Literature on trauma, film, and Korean history was reviewed and combined with film analysis to explain Chan-wook’s critique of revenge fantasies and conscious and unconscious ignorance. His films demonstrate that the only way to heal한 is to acknowledge and accept all wrongdoing, even one’s own, and mourn the consequences of the atrocities. While 한 is specific to Koreans, cultural trauma is not. From the effects of Apartheid in South Africa, the Rwandan Genocide, the legacy of slavery and ongoing atrocities committed against BIPOC Americans, the ubiquity of cultural trauma makes the lessons in Chan-wook’s works of paramount importance. While resolution of trauma is never final, Chan-wook’s films are both a guideline and a performance on how cultures can begin to heal in the face of moral atrocities.