Consideration of Correlation between Periodic Patterns of Economic Crisis and Success of Korean Film with CRIME Subjects: Putting the KOREAN Films in 1998-2016 to the Center

Abstract

This research has been devised to observe an correlation between the degrees of successes of Korean films and social crime trends that occurred in between 1998 and 2016, the era of economic crisis. For the reason, having that the increasing crime rates since the IMF economic crisis and 2008 sub-prime mortgage intensified the structural instability of Korean society in consideration, the patterns dealing with crimes in successful typical Korean movies have been analyzed and the correlation between the trends of crime films which were accepted by the public and the patterns of crimes in realities has been concerned. Two films, <Memories of Murder> and <Another Public Enemy> of the Top 20 successful films between 1998 and 2007, describes the ‘psychopath’ as an ‘invisible enemy’ rather than violent crimes such as rape, murder and rubbery those days, thus, confirmed the intensive interests of the public to ‘psychopath’. Furthermore, the two films are positioned at the lower range of the Top 20 successful films, hence, it is identifiable that crime films faces comparatively stronger difficulties in drawing the continuous interests of the public. Crime films among the Top 20 successful films between 2008 and 2016 were <Veteran> and <A Violent Prosecutor>. Both reenacted an ‘authoritative’ corruption that is not closely relevant to the increasing ‘property crimes’ those days, in association with ‘psychopathic’ criminals. Therefore, it was deducible that there is little correlation between the social crime trends and the successes of Korean films at the era of economic crisis.