ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two works by Park Chan-wook, one of the most celebrated Korean directors on the international film festival circuit, as contending with the problem of universality and the concept of world cinema. My argument will work with Naoki Sakai’s assertion, from his 2010 essay, ‘Theory and Asian Humanity’, that knowledge produced within and about Asia ‘may well produce certain wisdom, but [this] wisdom could never transcend their ethnic particularity and thus reach the domain of theoretical universality’. Focusing on the analysis of the psyche in I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok (Ssaibogŭjiman Kwaench’ana, dir. Park Chan-wook, 2006) and the role of Catholicism in Thirst (Pakchwi, dir. Park Chan-wook, 2009), this chapter shows how Park engages this epistemic and historical problem of how Korean cinema can be thought of as universal (as understood within its Eurocentric legacy).
