[KS] CFP: Korean Popular Cinema and Television in the 21st Century

[Ji-hoon Felix Kim]

Dear Koreanists,

Please consider submitting your paper to the CFP below or circulate it to
those who are interested in the topics that the CFP covers:


*Call for Submissions to a Special Issue:*

*Korean Popular Cinema and Television in the 21st Century*



Edited by Jihoon Kim, Dept. of Film Studies, Chung-ang University, South
Korea



During the last several years, both Korean cinema and Korean television
dramas (and K-pop tracks/stars as well, to be sure) have gained not simply
dramatically increased popularity beyond the Pan-Asian scope of the first
‘Korean wave (*hallyu*)’ (across North and South Americas and Europe), but
also critical attention in the academia of cinema studies, cultural
studies, and East Asian/Korean studies. Despite these situations, previous
studies on Korean cinema and television have highlighted only a limited set
of texts: despite a couple of recent edited collections dedicated to
nationally popular genre films such as horror and film noir, most scholarly
writings on Korean cinema have still privileged films directed by so-called
‘auteurs’ (Kim Ki-duk, Hong Sang-soo, Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Lee
Chang-dong) that were already established in global film culture and
academia, thus leaving unexamined a series of popular Korean films that
have not simply had enormous commercial success in the domestic box office
but also had notable cultural influences on Korean audiences’ collective
desire, historical imaginary, and optical unconscious. Likewise, most of
the existing studies on Korean television have discussed only a few
canonical television dramas in the first Korean wave era. The academia’s
failure to catch up with the rapidly growing popularity of Korean network
and cable television programs on both domestic and transnational levels has
left to be uncharted territories many important key cultural texts during
the last few years. These include recent television dramas that enjoyed
either domestic critical attention (for instance, the *Reply* series [1997,
1994, 1988], *Misaeng *(2014), and *Signal *[2016]) or transnational
spectatorship and stardom (for instance, *My Love from the Star* [2013-4]
and *Descendants of the Sun* [2016]), as well as various reality TV
programs across different formats and subjects (*Infinity Challenge*, *Running
Men*, music competition shows [*Superstar K*, *K-Pop Star*, *Show Me the
Money*, *Un-pretty Rap Star,* and *Produce 101*], and Food/Cooking TV
programs).

This special issue of *Journal of Popular Film and Television* aims to fill
these wide vacancies in the current scholarship of Korean cinema and
television studies, thereby expanding its scope into critical
investigations of the previously unexamined key texts and genres, their
relations to Korea’s social, political, and cultural contexts, and their
transnational appeals from industrial and cultural perspectives. Possible
topics include, but not are limited to:


- Genre conventions and their subversion/mixture (the films of Bong
Joon-ho, Ryu Seung-wan, Kim Ji-woon, Na Hong-jin (*The Wailing *[2016]),
and Yeon Sang-ho (*Train to Busan* [2016]))

- Recent Korean film noir/thriller movies and their treatment of the
society’s political and economic antinomies (*New World* [2013],
*Veteran *[2015],
*Inside Men* [2015], *The King* [2016])

- Social reality dramas or films based on the true story (*Silenced *[2011],
*The Attorney* [2013], *Han Gong-ju* [2013])

- Recent Korean blockbuster films and/or their (CGI)
technology/aesthetics/pleasures (*Thieves* [2012], *Roaring Currents*
[2014], *Ode to My Father *[2014])

- Historical films/costume dramas and their historical imaginary, including
the imagery of the colonial/postcolonial history (*Masquerade* [2012],
*Assassination* [2015], *The Handmaiden* [2016])

- Transnational popular films/dramas, including their stardom and industry

- Cultural nostalgia in popular films and TV dramas/reality shows (*The
Attorney*, *Ode to My Father,* the *Reply* series, and the television shows
[*Sugarman *(2016), for instance] on the 1990s’ pop music)

- Key recent Korean television dramas, narratives, styles, and their
cultural identities (class struggle, gender, sexuality, religion,
generational difference, Pan-Asian identity)

- Korean reality TV programs across different genres and formats (including
music competition shows and Food/cooking TV)

- Korean TV’s spreadability, transnational impacts and participatory fan
culture



The CFP encourages a variety of academic, historical, critical, analytical,
and theoretical approaches, as well as submissions from authors in the
popular press. Submissions should be limited to twenty-five pages,
double-spaced, and conform to MLA style. Please include a fifty-word
abstract and five to seven key words to facilitate online searches. Send an
electronic copy no later than *June 30, 2017* to *Jihoon Kim* (
jihoonfelix at gmail.com). For more details on the journal, please consult
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/vjpf20/current



Jihoon Kim
Author of *Between Film, Video, and the Digital: Hybrid Moving Images in
the Post-media Age*
http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/between-film-video-and-the-digital-9781628922912/

Assistant Professor, Cinema and Media Studies
Department of Film Studies
Chung-ang University

website: chungang.academia.edu/JKIM
Art Center (301-dong) RM 507
221 Heukseok-dong, Dongjak-gu
Seoul, South Korea 156-756
Tel: 82-2) 820-5471
Mobile: 82-10) 2929-1895
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