A Dystopian Reality: Social Inequality and Dystopian Narratives in Korea's Contemporary Cultural Production

In recent years, dystopian narratives have become one key feature of many Korean cultural products, especially films and TV series, often obtaining widespread success, not only in Korea but at the international level as well. The global breakthrough of Squid Game certainly represents a case in point, but also other important examples can be found in movies such as Snowpiercer and Train to Busan, and other TV shows such as All of us are dead. One important characteristic that all these products share is that they are deeply rooted in the social and economic context of contemporary Korea and offer harsh criticism of existing inequalities. Against this backdrop, this chapter aims at analyzing the historical, political and economic causes of this rising inequality in South Korea and of the attention that cultural products have started to reserve to it. In order to achieve this goal, the paper starts from analyzing the consequences of the 1997 economic crisis in Korea, that led to a substantial transformation of the economic and social structure, and subsequently addresses the new forms of social inequality that have emerged during the 2000s, focusing specifically on how these inequalities have been represented in films and TV shows. The goal will be to understand where the conflicts and tension of contemporary Korean society come from, why they have influenced cultural production so much and how they have been represented on screen.