Folkloric adaptations in Korean cinema

Folkloric adaptations in Korean cinema date back to the pre-war period. The earliest ones encompass adaptations of Korean legends and folktales in films, starting from the Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula. These adaptations sent different cultural and political messages. One notable adaptation by Japanese film company was the adaptation of the “Chunhyangjeon” folktale in 1923 (Lee, 2005, 63). The folktale communicates a longing for a utopian community via its tale of an unwanted love affair between yangban (an aristocrat) and the daughter of a courtesan. The notion of eradication of the class barriers and end of the corrupt rulers are so prevalent in the Korean society that the tale has been adapted in cinema for more than twenty times since it was first adopted in 1923.

Although the Korean cinema industry suffered between 1937 to 1955 due to the banning of Korean films and subsequent replacement with Japanese propaganda films in Japan’s invasion of China, an adaptation of “Chuhyangjeon” folktale, directed by Lee in 1955, inspired another boom in Korean film production (Lee and Choe, 1998, 111). Although the film has not survived, it received a generous viewership by more than 10 % of Seoul’s population in its initial year of release. The folktale continues to be adapted, and most recently, it was adapted to a TV show about present-day teenagers, Delightful Girl Chunhyang. Several other tales have been adopted, such as “Arang” and Janghwa Hongryeonjeon.”

The folktales are spread in various forms and not linked with household names such as the Hand Christian Andersen. Instead, they are identified by the title of the tale. Thus, it is difficult to trace a tale to a specific printed text; these tales arise from “scripts.” Notably, a script can be understood as a stereotyped order of activities that forms an individual’s knowledge of the surrounding. They involve routine behavior such as the procedure involved in getting a train (arrival at the train station, getting a ticket, selecting the right platform, and so on). According to Stephens, the pre-kept acquaintance depiction that we apply at a train station is akin to the stereotypical plot structures that readers rely on to expect the next part of a story. Thus, Korean film adaptations rely on scripts rather than particular written texts, and this way of doing things is depicted in the other source of film adaptations, western fairy tales..

A relatively small number of western fairy tales and folklores have also found their way to Korean films, such as Andersen and Grimms. These adaptations vary slightly from the western tales, which go about as scripts rather than originals. Grimm tales encompass “Cinderella” and “Hansel and Gretel.” Andersen tales enjoy the most extensive popularity in East Asia, and they include “The Red Shoes, “The Ugly Duckling, “The Little Mermaid 2 among others. These western fairy tales are usually adopted to the homegrown genres-romantic comedy, drama, horror-and sometimes a variety of western sources may come to combine via common script elements or homologies, for instance, the blending of “The Little Mermaid” and “Cinderella.”

Princess Snow White was the premier adaptation of a western script to a homegrown genre. The film is about a leader of the Mandal dynasty who treasures his only daughter, Princess Snow White. However, the princess has to run away from the dynasty since her stepmother, who is the second queen, collaborates to overthrow the dynasty with an official from another government. The vice-minister thwarts the plan, and the princess came back to the kingdom to assist his father to rule. This and other films such as Yeonsan the Tyrant (1962) replace the focus of rivalry over personal beauty as is common in western fairy tales with the allegory of power struggles that is commonplace in Korean societies. A mixture of western fairy tales and traditional fairly tales also occur, but they are less common.

Folktale films in Korea serve two main functions, which are sociopolitical allegory and cultural conservation. Chunhyang (2000) was successful in both sociopolitical allegory and cultural preservation. The film’s out most dramatic epitome is the use of pansori, which allegorizes the cultural situation. The political allegory is derived from the influence of the neo-Confucian ideas about class on the pansori. One of the neo Confucian influences in these films is that of patriarchy that a woman, once married, should follow the orders of their husband.

Father as a symbol and patriarchy as a symptom of authoritarianism

Korean society is highly patriarchal. Kim argues that even with the advent of Christianity, the patriarchal system is still subtly taught and upheld (596). According to Kim, Christianity accuses women who violate the traditional gender order for the break up of the Korean family. As the women try to rise above their positions as women, they alter the natural harmony of the family, aggressively nag their husbands, and forget their positions as wives. Christianity thus teaches these women to obey and commit to their husbands to reform them. The religion argues that men have to be given leadership and respect so that they can treat those around them better. The teaching goes as far as suggesting that women should die for their husbands as Jesus did, and Kim argues that they “have to kill themselves” (p. 597). This blame does not extend to the men and, instead, regards them as righteous, which is the very basis of patriarchy. Since patriarchy ignores the rights of one gender and is self-regarding, I argue that it is a symptom of authoritarian leadership.

The patriarchal system is well depicted in Korean films. For example, Chunhyang (2000) has the scene of a woman called Chunhyang, who is, albeit being married, is tortured for rejecting a governor’s sexual advances. The system of government consists of dishonest bureaucrats, but only the governor’s character is fully developed. The governor believes that being a daughter of a courtesan, Chunhyang has to obey his advances, a symptom of patriarchy, and authoritarian governance.

Men represent the systems of patriarchy in Korean society. Authors such as Soyung (294) argue that this community is highly masculinized, where men have to attend compulsory military training that hardens them. When they are back to the community, they continue the oppressive regimes and militaristic behavior. Further, the state is in a state of pseudo-war with the North as the enemy, which creates a suitable environment for militaristic practices that promote patriarchy. Also, the right of women, called comfort women who serve the men in the military, are continuously violated and forgotten. Indeed, the descriptions paint the men as victims of love, whereas the actual victims are the women. Thus, the patriarchal system creates an aggressive state, leading to authoritarian leadership.

In addition to considering Korea as a capitalist development state (CDS), Hang and Lin (1998) argue that authoritarian governments such as that of Park Chun fount their power from western masculinist capitalism. The scholars define CDS as nations that demonstrated rapid economic growth between the 1960s and 1970 by adopting both capitalist institutional and ideological paradigms. Pye 1985 posed that Confucianism elements also led to the development of CDS such as Korea. Although Confucian societies vary in their comprehension and implementation of Confucian elements, most share the propensity to adopt oriental despotism. Pye describes these societies by stating, “They share the common denominator of idealizing benevolent, paternalistic leadership and of legitimizing dependency.” While capitalist society’s value autonomy and personal identity Confucian society favor childlike dependency.

The Confucian authoritative leadership style deems government officials as parents to the people they represent or exercise authority over. The people under authority are then required to demonstrate absolute submission to their leaders just like children obey their parents. To legitimize their childlike dependency theory, the Confucian teachings argue that the ideology that deems the state as a parent to its subject is drawn from the universal divine law that states that heaven and earth are parents to all living things. Thus their authority as parents is sovereign. The teachings also reinforce the idea of absolute submission by the children by implying that dutiful parents never put their children in harm’s way. Therefore altruistic children never subdue their parents’ authority.

Drawing from Confucian elements, Korea’s Confucian monarch placed great emphasis on the distinction between the inferiors and the superiors. The superiors assumed the role of the sovereign parent who demanded unconditional loyalty from their subject children. The development of the superior-inferior relation gave importance to the following bonds; father-son, husband-wife, and ruler-subject. In the highly masculinized Korean society, men were expected to be moral, strict, and responsible for them to achieve success on behalf of their households. Given that state leadership is considered to be the nation’s father, the state adopts the moral, severity, and response characteristics of Korean men (cf. Lee, 1982). The severity element defends the state’s brutality against its people since it is viewed as the act in which a father disciplines his child to protect the dignity of the household. While the morality element defended the state’s actions by deeming them to be beneficial to the subjects, the responsibility aspect argues that the state can pursue economic development through any means necessary.

Korea adopted the Confucian child-parent leadership style long before the Japanese invasion into the country. Since oriental despotism was the prevalent leadership notion throughout Asia, both the Japanese colonizers and the Syngman Rhee’s authoritative government also adopted the leadership flair. In their quest for absolute loyalty from their ‘children’ subjects, the Japanese colonizers and President Rhee used brutal police force to quell down any opposition to their regime. Capitalizing on the superior-inferior relationship, the Japanese colonialists deemed Japan as the superior parent to inferior child Korea and thus exploited Korean labor to achieve economic prosperity to allow Japan entry to China. Given that Rhee’s regime was preceded by the Japanese colonialists, the two governments demonstrate a father-son bond. Japanese as the nation’s father left behind several institutions for the son Rhee to inherit. Rhee inherited the Japanese police administrators, who were mainly Japanese collaborators who retained the brutal and dogmatic Japanese strategies of handling opposition.

Hang, and Lin (1998) argued that in the first half of the 20^th century, Korea adopted Confucian child-parent dependency leadership.  Park Chun’s government, however, transformed Confucian teachings to embrace a child-parent leadership where the subjects took up active duties and responsibilities to foster economic growth. Unlike the previous Japanese colonizers and Rhee’s government that adopted pure Confucian hegemony, Park Chun combined both Confucian elements and western masculine capitalism.  To achieve his parental responsibility for promoting economic growth in Korea, Park Chun transformed the paternal state’s identity from an intrinsic inclination and managerial parenthood to a competitive patriarchy identity. By combining both Confucian teaching and capitalist ideologies, Park Chun engaged in vigorous economic programs to surpass North Korea economically. Due to Park Chun’s government, Korea underwent an economic reconstruction that makes Korea be considered a CDS.

Once in authority, Park rallied Koreans to support his economic developments since it was the only tool they would use to vindicate the underyoking they had experienced. His vindictive strategy relied on hyper-masculine economic progression. The scholars also argue that in the presence of hypermasculine state authority, there exists a hyperfeminized Confucian society that adopts the role of a good Confucian daughter and takes up tasks and responsibilities as directed by the state. Park Chun developed roles and responsibilities for his ‘daughter-wife’ subjects by referencing the Naehoo, which spelled out the proper conduct for young Confucian women. According to the Naehoo, the first womanly virtue was their obedience to the state, which assumed the title of husband or father. Through this virtue, the differences between men and women are emphasized. The virtue dictates that the bond between father and son should be sturdy for influential, authoritative leaders to be developed. Reinforcing the difference between men and women would ensure harmony and peace prevails in the nation since the feminized society was not expected to question or subdue the state’s masculine authority.

The second virtue addressed the women’s right to speech and semblance. This virtue required the feminized Korean society to be careful with their words and thoughts. The society was not expected to humiliate the patriarchy nation through public dissent and demand for individual rights, especially in the presence of foreign donors. The virtue’s core focus was ensuring the feminized society remain politically neutral, industrious towards the nation’s economic programs, and harbor negative perceptions towards communists.

The final Naehoo womanly virtue limited the responsibilities of women to aiding their husbands to perform and manage their masculine roles. The Naehoo further divided this responsibility into three tasks; service to the in-laws, nurturing of children, and total obedience to the husband. Park Chun required the Korean feminized society to nurture the growth of state cooperatives, which were regarded as the state’s children. From 1960 to 1970, Park Chun’s patriarchy government demanded society’s sacrifice to consolidate Koreas’ economic position by supporting the state corporation, Chaebol. The Chaebol Corporation, which comprised of subsidized Korea’s conglomerates, enjoyed low-interest rates, tax incentives, and convenient exchange rates. At the expense of the working Korean society, the national corporation imposed low wages on workers, denied workers the right to join unions, and practiced restrictive hiring policies.  Hang and Lin posit that the Chaebol was deemed as Korean’s first son by the Park administration, and therefore it stood to inherit the nation’s wealth. Through the Chaebol Corporation, Park sought to transform Korea’s economic development so that it could surpass the development in North Korea.

Generational Trauma

Psychologists argue that trauma can be passed from one generation to another (Kellerman 36). The Korean populace has been exposed to conditions that cause trauma, such as war, leading to the possibility that transgenerational trauma exists in the society, and needs a careful analysis and observation to reveal. Indeed, a recent study by Lee et al. sought to investigate the presence of cross-generation trauma in the children of women who served as “Comfort Women” for the Japanese soldiers during the war in Korea. The researcher carried out psychiatric interviews and utilized the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Axis I Disorders with six children who met the inclusion criteria. The results were astounding, finding that five out of the six children demonstrated signs of trauma or precisely the transgenerational trauma. The five children had at least one psychiatric disorder such as alcohol use, somatic symptom, insomnia, major depressive, posttraumatic stress, and adjustment disorders. Lee et al. (251) report that although the children had not been exposed to trauma, those who had mothers with PTSD, demonstrated hypervigilance such as challenges in aggression control and irritability, taking after their mothers.  The children also languished from stigma and shame akin to their mothers when presented with stimuli related to the “Comfort Woman” issue. Besides, the participants demonstrated a disobedient and critical view of the world. (Juni 97) argues that survivors who lead an angry and resentful life are likely to pass on heightened paranoia and negative perspective of the world to their kids. Lee et al. (252) study also found that the majority of the children had internalized aspects of self-loathe via their guilt-haunted mothers (Juni 97) also found that how parents model guilt has a bearing in self-loathing tendencies and causes low self-esteem in the second generation.

Several mechanisms of the passing of trauma exist. First is the insufficient parental care by traumatized parents, which leads to poor development and well being of the children (Field, Muong, and Sochanvimean, 483). Tendencies such as psychic numbing and avoidance may lead to physical and emotional withdrawal for the children, and most mothers with PTSD face challenges in providing sufficient maturational setting for their offspring. The second mechanism of passing on trauma to subsequent generations occurs through inheritance of a biological deficiency. Trauma corrupts the integrity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. More so, an overwhelming body of evidence suggests that transgenerational transmission of trauma occurs through epigenetics (Kellerman 33). The third mechanism is by the victims having been indirectly traumatized by the realization that their mothers were “Comfort Women.” Since there are many Comfort Women still alive in Korea and the militaristic state is still prevalent, I argue that the stimuli of trauma are still live and will seek to investigate their allegory in Korean films.

Various scholars have investigated the trauma in Korean films. For example, Eunah Lee (34) argues that globalization is a major cause of trauma in Korean society, as illustrated in the movies. Lee investigated the Genre commonly referred to as “Asian Genre” and widely promoted by Korean film director, Chan-Wook Park, through the Vengeance Trilogy.  The researcher argues that the “Extreme Genre” is a representation of the trauma caused by the process of modernization in East Asia. The labeling of the Genre as “extreme” is a representation that the west sees something abnormal in the film, even within the horror setting: the trauma as a result of the interaction between the East and west in modernization.

In support of Lee’s  (34) views, in Empathic Vision (2005), Jill Bennet argued that appalling images, when observed under a controlled state, lead to the “instantaneous, affective response” that is akin to the immediate effect of trauma, or the experience after a traumatic incident, epitomized by the reflex repetition of the experience that the brain fails to decode in the usual manner (26). Stated differently, the haptic instances in Park’ Trilogy comprise of a process of functioning, as well as depicting out, by echoing the disturbing experiences of Korea’s present-day nation-building. The Vengeance Trilogy, argued by Lee (34), also depicts the trauma caused by the Asian Financial crisis in the late nineties.

Although the process of modernization was vital and had to be achieved, by all means, its primary motivator was the years of war that left the Korean people living as refugees in their state. Some cultural anthropologists like Hae Joang Cho (Han) posited that most of the populace was unable to focus on anything else but their daily survival (294).  From the ruins of war and being an impoverished agrarian country in the ’50s, Korea underwent a fast transition into an industrialized capitalist country. The process of industrialization was overseen by authoritarian governments of presidents Jung Hee and Doo-hwan. The process created some powerful families, such as Chaebol, who continue to inspire loath and traumatic feelings to the Korean populace to this day. The industrialization process also resulted in the overburdening of families, delays in democratization, and polarization of the social classes. This trauma seemingly went away with the promising culture of indulgence and excesses in the nineties’, while the authoritarian governments receded into history. The Korean populace even began having hopes that the country could be a superpower.

However, the hope bubble busted in 1997 when the news tricked in that the country needed a bailout from the IMF (Cho 291). The citizens saw the situation as a disgrace and blamed the situation on runaway corruption and monopolization tendencies such as Chaebol (Cho Han 291). The situation opened the national wound and brought back the trauma, essentially passing the trauma to this generation. Park’s Vengeance Trilogy, having been created just after the new millennium, captures this Trauma perfectly. I argue that the trauma has been passed on to modern times, twenty years later, and is illustrated in recent movies such as Moss (2010) and The Piper (2015)

CHAPTER 3- METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the techniques used in obtaining and analyzing information on Moss (2010) and The Piper (2015). The section consists of the methods, data collection and analysis techniques, and a summary.

Restatement of the Research Objectives

• To examine the conditions of authority in colonial Korea during the Chosun dynasty
• To explore how post-war authoritarian governments of Rhee and Park maintained power by capitalizing on tribalism and colonial trauma.
• To examine tactics used by post-war authorities to ensure generational traumas reoccurred in their era.
• To evaluate traumatic historical events in Korea that are allegorized through the films, The Piper and Moss.

Source of Data Collection

In qualitative descriptive studies, the data collection process emphasizes on establishing the form of particular events under research. Therefore, the data collection process comprises of small to medium, open-ended, focus group, or personal interviews. Nevertheless, the process of collecting data may also involve observations and investigation of records, reports, documents, and images. The process of analyzing data in qualitative descriptive research, in contrast with other qualitative research, is not premised on a set of rules made from the epistemological bearing where the particular research approach comes from. Instead, qualitative descriptive research is entirely driven by data since codes are produced from the data in the research process. Similar to other qualitative research methods, qualitative descriptive studies are often epitomized by simultaneous collection and analysis of data (Vikie and Clinton, 2012).

There are two sources of data analysis when analyzing Moss and The Piper; the subtitle files and the two movies. The two films are the primary data sources, downloaded from (). The videos alone are the focus of the analysis, where the researcher keenly tracks the main actor together with other actor’s actions to establish the allegory of trauma in the two movies. The secondary data sources are the subtitle files, downloaded from (). The researcher added it in the VLC media player software, which was used to watch the movie, making it easy to analyze the trauma in the two movies.

Data Collection and Analysis Techniques.

The techniques of collecting data allow the researcher to thoroughly gather information about the subjects of the study (rural environment, people, urban setting (Urbania), phenomena).  The data collection process must be systematic.  For instance, quantitative data collection involves random sampling and structured data collection instruments that put a wide range of experiences into pre-established categories of response. They thus give results that are easily summarized, compared, and generalized. In analyzing Moss (2010) and The Piper (2015), the researcher analyzed the data using a qualitative descriptive method. The analysis followed after data collection. The data was collected by watching the films, comprehending them, and putting down all the information.

The researcher watched the movies by including the subtitles and reading the scripts. The subtitle inclusion was meant to aid the researcher to follow though the conversations keenly while ensuring that no word was missed in the films. The researcher watched the movies with subtitles for three times before writing down any information.