한국 공포영화의 장르관습의 변화 연구－<월하의 공동묘지> <여고괴담> <화이트-저주의 멜로디> 비교분석을 중심으로－

Abstract

For a long period of time, Korean horror movies have been transformed andevolved as a category of the minor genre. However, Korean horror films have beenexperiencing a crisis since 2010. The purpose of this writing is to identify and analyze the crisis currently existing inKorean horror movies and to prospects the direction for the future horror films. Todiscuss the crisis, there are two possible approaches. One is an analysis on industrial backgrounds of horror films and the other is ananalysis on aesthetic and cinematic quality of the movies. This writing analyzes andstudies the latter. The reason why the latter was chosen as a study topic is because there have beenactive discussions and studies on Korean industrial backgrounds, while horror as anaesthetic film genre with its own cinematic quality has not been fully vocalized. The aesthetic trait of the horror film can be found in genre. The genre is the methodof classification based on the ‘story’ and ‘style’. While it is possible to classify all themovies into certain genres, horror movies can be more apparently defined into its genre. Therefore, this writing seeks for aesthetics and cinematic quality of horror movies by observing the historical transitions of the films. In order to achieve it, this researchdivided the history of Korean horror films into three periods based on the changes ofKorea horror films, selected three movies which represent the each period, andarticulated the process of how these three film has been evolved. First, <A Public Cemetery Of Wolha>, (1967, Kwon, Chil-Hwi) fashions anarchetype of an Korean horror through the scary story of ‘taxi’ and the style of its maincharacter Yeogw’ or a female ghost. Thus, from 1960’s to 1970’s, Korean horrormovies conventionally depicted a revenge of Yeogwi, a female ghost, who faces‘melancholy’ ‘Jealous’ and ‘conspiracy.’Second, “Whispering Corridors,” (1998, Park Gi-Hyeong) evolved fromtraditional Korean horror movies, introduces a new ‘monster’ replacing traditionalYeogwi, a female ghost, illuminating the social pressure in ‘a highly competitivegrade-oriented society’ stemming from a scary story of schools. Due to this evolution of<Whispering Corridors> Korean horror films in 21st century displayed a rapiddevelopment and growth. Third, <White-dammed melody>(2011, Kim, Gok and Kim, Sun) was not anexemption from the risk Korea horror films was experiencing. Despite of “idol girlgroup,” the new, fresh subject matter, it didn’t get enough support from both critics andaudience. Through an analysis on <White-dammed melody> the root causes of the crisison Korea horror movies could be possibly identified.