ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two productions that blend Korean and Western traditions, a short film and a 16-part television series. Korean “fairy-tale” films and television dramas seek to represent what is important about Korea through the use of traditional folktale and legendary elements. Korean folktale in film and television drama is mined for its darker elements and the capacity of the stories to connect with history, memory, trauma and the society’s endemic economic, political and juridical corruption. Adaptation of local traditional tales to film is only one means of keeping them in the public memory. Television drama is especially important because of its wide reach and inventive adaptations of familiar stories. Most modern film adaptations of Korean folktales and legends are ghost/horror stories. Ghost stories are usually melodramas and/or psychological thrillers, and this modal connection draws upon a key aspect of the dominance of melodrama in South Korean film.
