[KS] film/drama class suggestions

[jinakim at u.washington.edu]

Hi,

Keehyeung Lee's "Morae sigye:  "social melodrama" and the politics of memory in contemporary south Korea," in Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann, eds., South Korean Golden Age Melodrama (Wayne State UP, 2005)

So Hee Lee, "The Concept of Female Sexuality in Korean Popular Culture," in Laurel Kendall, ed., Under construction: The gendering of modernity, class, and consumption in the republic Korea (U of Hawaii, 2002)

are two essays on Korean soap operas.  There have also been some secondary research on the Latin American "tele-novellas" which might be used for comparative purposes.

I would recommend Morae sigye (Hourglass, 1995), a twenty some part "mini-series" that looks at the decade of the 1970s and 1980s.  Although I haven't seen many Korean soap operas, compared to say the very popular Winter Sonata, I think Morae sigye is much better structured narratively.  It deals with historical events such as Kwangju, the forced labor camps, and issues such as business-government collusion, student demonstrations, mafia network, etc. I'm not sure, however, if there is an English subtitled version available.

Jina Kim