영화 <내츄럴 시티>와 <예스터데이>에 나타난 사이버펑크 장르의 한국적 변용

Abstract

This essay examines the generic conventions of cyberpunk and their appropriation seen in two South Korean SF films: Natural City and Yesterday. These two films borrow the genre’s typical characters such as cyborgs and mutants, a futuristic metropolitan setting, and visual images and style from cyberpunk classics, exemplified by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. What distinguishes them from the Western and Japanese cyberpunk texts is that they reveal the particular social problems that Korean society confronted during the early 2000s when these two films were produced: gender hierarchy and sexual violence, poverty and class divisions, and blind faith in science and technology. For example, cyborgs and mutants—respectively seen in Natural City and Yesterday— are the stock characters of the cyberpunk genre, representing the dehumanization of humans living in a world dominated by technocrats, mega-corporations, and totalitarian governments. In this sense, the two movies are loyal to the genre’s ethos, following its central themes and conventions. However, in contrast to cyberpunk’s global setting blurring national and cultural boundaries, Natural City and Yesterday translate the topic of dehumanization into the specific regional conflicts of Korean society, for instance, the sexual oppression of women, the miserable life of the underprivileged, and the discrimination against new immigrants. These issues unfold against the backdrop of contemporary Korean social scenes, set in the “ruined downtown” in Natural city, and the “ghetto” in Yesterday. Another feature that distinguishes classic cyberpunk from these Korean adaptations is the latter’s emphasis on the definitions of humanity and humanism, instead of the original posthuman tendency crossing the boundaries of the human and the nonhuman. This difference may result from Korea’s unique cultural and ideological development whereby the presence of the “premodern” creed and institutions, as well as the influence of universal humanism, is still powerful, despite the nation’s rapid economic growth and modernization.