From Oldboy to Burning: Han in South Korean films

Abstract

Korean culture has been shaped by the traumatic colonial past (1910–1945), which in part facilitated the rise of the historical-cultural han concept in the 1920s onward, often interpreted as rancor, grief, or resentment due to a real or alleged undeserved experience of the Korean people but also beautiful artistic expressions. Scholars have applied han to, for example, Korean music genres like pansori and even Korean American popular culture. The current article critically examines expressions of implicit han in relation to four contemporary South Korean films. The analysis suggests that han is expressed in a plethora of ways, depending on for instance the main characters’ constitution and the specific cultural-ideological framework presented in each text, and must always be understood in relation to such macro variables rather than as an isolated expression of a particular concept.