Gender issues are provoking fierce debate in and out of Korean cinema scene. Along with the Me Too movement, conversation related to feminism has been actively brought up not only in the academic world but also in public discourse. By 2016, the number of female directors who debuted with feature films significantly increased. The stories of female characters, who gain strength from female solidarity, are well received by both critics and audience and suggest a new possibility of female narratives. The narratives driven by female protagonists have appeared also in the action genre, which has long been criticized for excessive male representation. On the other side, amidst the Me Too movement, sex crimes in authority relations keep being committed, and we keep witnessing outright hostility and hatred against sexual minority. Gender inequality in film industry hasn’t been fixed yet. In 2019, female directed films make up only 10 percent of the whole films theatrically released in the year.
In this session, the current circumstance of Korean cinema will be examined in the viewpoint of genders. The questions like ‘how gender dynamics has been changed in Korean cinema since neoliberalism?’, ‘how is it related to supra state and capital?’ and ‘What does the appearance of female action films mean in gender representation in Korean films?’ will be discussed. The keynote presentation on recent Korean films including Peninsula, Deliver Us From Evil, A Special Lady, and The Witch: Part 1. The Supervision will be followed by roundtable discussion of the panels consisting of national and international Korean cinema researchers.
| Moderator | Nam Inyoung(Dongseo Univ.) | |
|---|---|---|
| Speaker | Sohn Hee-jeong(Yonsei Univ.) | Sexless K-Cinema: discussing the gender disposition of the 21st Korean Cinema |
| Sim Hyekyong(Chungang Univ.) | Acting ‘like a woman’: South Korean female action films in the late2010s | |
| Panel | Lee Nam(Chapman Univ.), Park Woosung(Dongguk Univ.), Song Hyo-joung(Daegu Univ.) | |