Vicious Circuits: Korea’s IMF Cinema and the End of the American Century

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Notes

1 Only several months after the book’s publication in March 2019, the serial killer, Lee Choon-jae, confessed that he had killed 14 people, including 10 victims of the Hwaseong serial murders, while he was convicted of another murder and serving his life sentence. This dramatic resolution of one of the most infamous cold cases in Korea has evoked a refreshed interest in Memories of Murder sixteen years after the film’s release.

2 In passing, Helpless was directed by Korean director Byun Young-joo, famous for her documentary trilogy The Murmuring (1995, 1997 and 2000): the trilogy significantly confronts the Korean comfort women issue and has been considered to open the floodgate of media coverages, public discourses, government policies and diplomatic disputes with Japan, reminding the Korean public of the unchecked female suffering in the nation’s colonial past. However, for some reason the director’s full name cannot be found anywhere in the book even in the index and the film is introduced with the name of production company as ‘Filament Pictures’ Helpless’ (69).