Transhistorical fear: The representation of colonial memories of horror as a traumatic national consciousness in Korean cinema

Abstract

[EN] Transhistorical fear is a concept related to historical memory and collective imaginaries that emerge from traumatic experiences in the past. From the emergence of the New Korean Cinema, the industry has attempted to portray narratives about Japanese colonization that focus on the fear of repression and the loss of freedom and Korean identity. Fear has translated into the dissolution of family boundaries through the fading of relations, while values such as freedom, equality and fraternity are questioned or evaporate in front of the colonial period memory. This has caused an accumulated fatigue among the Korean population, generation after generation, with the fear of the demise of humanism. This article analyses the representation of fear generated by ‘cold horror’ in Korean cinema, that is, a state that appeals to a distanced gaze to construct another memory of horror linked to historical memory and implicit in a traumatic national consciousness.