Abstract

This paper examines questions of colonialism in two South Korean horror films: <Public Cemetery under the Moon> (Kwon Chulhui, 1967) and <Epitaph> (The Chung Brothers, 2007). As for <Public Cemetery,> I interrogate the peculiar transformation of the character of prologue from hideous beast-man to dandy pyonsa narrator and its political implications. What is at stake here, I claim, is distinct historicist gambit, according to which the colonial legacy, defined in terms of popular culture, can be overcome and marginalized. Valorized as a new horror in Korean film scene, an omnibus horror film <Epitaph> features three related stories set in a modern hospital against the backdrop of the late colonial period. I focus on the episode of the male protagonist and illustrate how his episode addresses and articulates the larger themes of memory and amnesia, while showcasing his yearning for passive perversion. The inquiry includes notions of violence, suffering, and the “return,” all of which are often central to the spectral universe of horror genre. I approach the film as a key text that addresses and problematizes the thorny problems of colonialism through generic imagination of horror. In particular, I bring attention to the implications of the inter-ethnic romance and reconciliation, the two themes for which the film’s presentation of spectral terror is structured with significance.