Tag: Korean SF

Vampires, Confucianism, Christianity’s Latent Monarchism, and the Translation of Sociohorror

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Seriously, now...
This entry is part 44 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

(Note: I’m filing this under Korean SF, though it only fits there if we define SF as “speculative fiction”: still, I think this post does appeal to a crucial question at the heart of the reception of SF and other fantastical genres in cultures foreign to the culture of a given work’s original production. So there.) So I’ll admit it now: I’ve been watching True Blood. Yes, yes, it’s trashy. But as someone who is not very plot-minded, I have to say, it does a particular trick with a knife that I, too, am learning to do. I’m close to …

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Forthcoming Papers on Korean SF, “Good Night,” and a Summary of “Another Undiscovered Country”

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This entry is part 43 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, I have submitted the final corrected version of my paper on Korean SF films in the 21st century to Acta Koreana: it’s been approved for publication, pending those edits, so I figure that’s one more paper in the can, to bring my current total of pending academic publications to two: “Politics, Ecology on the Korean Left: Anti-Americanism and Environmental Dystopia in The Host” supposedly forthcoming in the Arena Journal. “Another Undiscovered Country: Culture and the Reception and Adoption of the Science Fiction Genre in 21st-Century South Korean Cinema,” which if all goes well should be appearing in Acta Koreana sometime …

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More About Korean SF, and Some Dougal Dixon Links

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This entry is part 42 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

You might think that I’ve given up on the topic, but I haven’t. In fact, I’ve been working on a few papers on the subject. I don’t know if they’ll ever see the light of day, but I’m sending them out, slowly. In the meantime, I’ve had a few discussions with Anselmo Quemot, a blogger over at Acheron LV-426. You can see the discussions in the comment threads to these two posts: Placing the Future in South Korea? An open letter to Gord Sellar about South Korean sci fi Acheron LV-426 is full of other interesting stuff, too; it was …

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초능력자

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This entry is part 41 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Tonight I saw 초능력자 (Choneungryeokja, which you could translate as “Psychic” or “Person with Supernatural Powers”1) with Miss Jiwaku, and I have to say that it actually pretty much was what one of my students described: …pretty good for the first hour or so, and then ramps up an exponential curve of silliness until it hits infinite silliness at the end. That said, the film seems to have been received rather well by the Korean public, and some people are praising it. My experience is that films that are very highly praised in Korea are sometimes good, but often don’t …

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Coming Soon: Gwacheon International SF Film Festival!

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This entry is part 40 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

So I should have posted about this before, but there’s an SF Film Festival on soon. It’s starting in a few days (28 October) and runs until 7 November, down at the National Science Museum in Gwacheon, South Korea. There’s a twitter account that’s announcing events and so on, but unless you read Korean, it won’t mean much to you. Much better to head over to the website. It’s a chance to see all kinds of SF films on the big screen, from 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the sequel) to an all-night Back to the Future trilogy marathon this …

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