Asia Extreme: Beauty and Violence in Korean Media

Korean films are often identifiable within two distinct tropes – the beautiful, tranquil Orient and a violent, frenetic hyper-modernity. Koreans, however, grapple with identifying themselves and their modern experiences differently beyond how the international community and the “West” sees them – as the exotic “East.” Seeking to understand and complicate this dichotomy, we will explore how Korea has struggled to hone and complicate national identity (their critique, their futurities) through film, and examine how Korea has been struggling since the 1990s to overcome the national in the face of globalization and cosmopolitanism to address the local and the liminal.