Table of Contents

Foreword / Martin Scorsese ix
Preface xi
Introduction: Hallyu's Virtuality 1
1. Virtual Landscapes: Sopyonje, The Power of Kangwon Province, and The Host 23
2. Viral Colony: Spring of Korean Peninsula and Epitaph 55
3. Virtual Dictatorship: The President's Barber and The President's Last Bang 81
4. Mea Culpa: Reading the North Korean as an Ethnic Other 101
5. Hong Sang-soo's Death, Eroticism, and Virtual Nationalism 123
6. Virtual Trauma: Lee Chang-dong's Oasis and Secret Sunshine 152
7. Park Chan-wook's "Unknowable" Oldboy 178
8. The End of History, the Beginning of Historical Films Korea's New Saguk 200
Notes 213
Bibliography 235
Index 243

Promotional Information

Maintains that the full significance of hallyu can only be understood by exposing the implicit and explicit ideologies of proto-nationalism and capitalism

About the Author

Kyung Hyun Kim is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Director of the Critical Theory Emphasis at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, also published by Duke University Press, and a co-producer of the award-winning feature films The Housemaid and Never Forever.

Reviews

"A highly informative and imaginative account of the multifaceted powers of virtuality that make up the unique phenomenon of Korean cinema in the early twenty-first century."--Rey Chow, author of Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films "Coming close on the heels of The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, his seminal analysis of the psychic and political foundations of the New Korean Cinema of the 1990s, Kyung Hyun Kim has now produced the essential text on hallyu, the phase of Korean cinema and related forms of popular culture that became a global sensation in the first decade of the new millennium. Bringing key Deleuzian concepts into focus with sensitive and nuanced readings of international blockbusters including The Host (Bong Joon-ho) and Oldboy (Park Chan-wook) as well as the work of notable art-cinema auteurs, Kim establishes himself as not just the most important Anglophone critic of South Korean cinema, but a key figure in film and cultural studies generally." David E. James, author of The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles "Kyung Hyun Kim seems well placed to write an interesting study of contemporary Korean cinema. The UC Irvine professor has already written one book on the subject, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (Duke University Press, 2004), produced a number of films (including Im Sang-soo's recent high profile remake of The Housemaid[2010]), and is impressively connected within the Korean film industry." - Mike Walsh, Screening the Past, July 2012