Abstract

The most controversially reminisced past in the recent Korean films is that of 1980s. ‘80s carry too many scars from violent political realties to be easily commodified. Until early 2000, the films on the ’80s showed the pattern of diverging into comedies consuming the periods as retro-style fashion items san the political realities and serious epics with explicit political themes. The ‘80s remembered in the current Korean cinema seem to overcome this divergence and seek a more popularized compromise. Sunny and The Attorney made the must successful contacts with the desires of the mass. Sunnyridicules the political austerism of the 80s by reconstructing the period from high school students’ perspectives. Yet its narrative strategy of invoking a nostalgia through the ‘80s’ pop-cultural icons ends up defending capitalism and patriarchy. As a result, this film mocks at the critics of the contemporary political powers and contributes to defending and maintaining the status quo. The Attorney follows the footsteps of a petit bourgeois’s political conscientization in the ‘80s. In the process, the nexus to the historical persons and events were intentionally abandoned so that an otherwise personal narrative was transformed into a the heroic narrative structure. Massive enthusiasm to this film represents both the mass’ subconscious political aspirations for democratic values deficient in the politics of “here and now” and the universal nostalgia for the success stories of self-made riches.