Abstract

This essay explores South Korean cinema in the context of the recent resurgence of democratic activism that crystalized in the 2016–2017 Candlelight Movement. Among the recent films that render ordinary people’s experience of the authoritarian era, the successful 2017 feature 1987: When the Day Comes provides a rigorous historical representation of the June uprising. Despite its unprecedented depiction of one of the milestones of democratization, the film glorifies the homogeneous action of the people against state power while presenting the past as completely detached from the present. The film’s limitations are brought into relief when it is juxtaposed with other films, such as The Six-Day Fight in Myeongdong Cathedral (1997) and Yongsan (2010), that offer alternative representations of the historic event. By tracing 1987’s impulse to restore the past in a particular fashion and its implications for the context of re-democratization, this paper claims that mainstream films like 1987: When the Day Comes tend to shut down the civic imagination in the service of an unending struggle toward justice and equality in post-authoritarian society.